Running the Platform Glossary · Workforce

Account change hold: a hold on a newly changed deposit or funding account, near a check date or on a first deposit, released only after out-of-band verification; the run pays held destinations by a fallback (Payroll Fraud & Security).
Alternate procedure (Rev. Proc. 2004-53): by agreement, the successor in an acquisition furnishes one W-2 per acquired employee that includes the predecessor's wages and withholding, and both employers file Schedule D (Form 941) (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Assisted connection: a unified API connection in which the vendor operates a third-party administrator account in the employer's payroll system, refreshing data weekly and entering writes by hand within days (Unified HR & Payroll APIs).
Automated connection: a unified API connection authorized by OAuth, credentials or an API token that syncs on a schedule (Finch: every 24 hours) and submits writes directly (Unified HR & Payroll APIs).
Business email compromise (BEC): a scam that compromises or spoofs email and other communications to trick a business into an unauthorized transfer or disclosure; in payroll, a request to change an employee's bank account or to send W-2s (Payroll Fraud & Security).
Calculation snapshot: the complete, hashed input document a pay statement's calculation read (assignments, rates, hours, elections, year-to-date, rule versions), stored so the statement can be replayed exactly (Payroll Platform Architecture).
Client retention: the share of a period's beginning clients still clients at its end; differs from revenue retention, which counts dollars (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Complementary user entity control (CUEC): a control a service organization's SOC 1 report assumes the client operates, such as approving payroll registers, reviewing changes and user access, and verifying tax deposits (Controls, Audits & SOC 1).
Correction rate: correction, void and reversal statements as a share of all statements in a period, split by cause (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Crosswalk (migration): the table mapping a previous provider's employee IDs and codes to the new system's records, kept as data beyond the migration (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Deduction write-back: a change to a payroll deduction (a 401(k) deferral, a premium) sent into the employer's payroll system by a recordkeeper or benefits platform through an API, effective for the pay period it reaches before the close (Unified HR & Payroll APIs).
Embedded payroll: a payroll provider's engine, money movement and tax filing sold as APIs and UI components to a software platform that offers payroll to its own customers under its own brand (Embedded Payroll).
Ghost employee: a worker on the payroll who doesn't work for the employer, invented or a former employee never terminated, whose pay goes to someone else (Payroll Fraud & Security).
Historical payroll: a previous provider's payroll loaded per check date as a paid run with no money movement, so year-to-date, quarter totals and Schedule B come from rows (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Insurance cost ratio (ICR): TriNet's ratio of insurance costs to insurance service revenues (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Master file review: a periodic confirmation by managers of every active worker on the payroll, the control that finds ghost employees (Payroll Fraud & Security).
On-time pay rate: the share of expected payments available to workers by the check date; reported as provider-attributable (excluding employer and worker-data causes) and worker-experienced (all causes) (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Onboard status: an embedded payroll partner's per-company readiness, such as Check's completed, needs_attention and blocking, by requirement category (Embedded Payroll).
Parallel run: a pay period computed on both the old and new payroll system and compared worker by worker before go-live, with differences classified and a go rule set in advance (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Payroll blocker: a named condition that stops a company from running payroll, such as a missing bank verification, missing state tax setup or an open recovery case (Embedded Payroll).
Payroll diversion: redirecting an employee's direct deposit to an account a criminal controls, through a phished login or an impersonated request (Payroll Fraud & Security).
Platform (embedded payroll): the software company that embeds a payroll partner, owns the customer relationship and the inputs, and carries the losses its contract assigns (Embedded Payroll).
Reopen deadline: on Check, the time until which an approved payroll can return to draft: the later of 11am ET on the approval deadline day or one hour after approval, capped at the approval deadline (Embedded Payroll).
Replay (payroll): recomputing a paid statement from its stored snapshot and comparing to the cent, which proves the engine read nothing outside its inputs (Payroll Platform Architecture).
Revenues per WSEE per month: Insperity's gross billings per worksite employee per month less payroll costs per worksite employee per month (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Rule version: a published edition of a rule set (rates, taxability, limits, engine code), recorded on every calculation that read it; a correction is a new version (Payroll Platform Architecture).
Schedule D (Form 941): the IRS schedule that explains differences between Forms 941 and W-2 caused by acquisitions, statutory mergers and consolidations; filed under the alternate procedure, not the standard (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Separations rate (JOLTS): separations from the payroll in a month divided by employment, times 100; split into quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations (Payroll & HR Metrics).
SOC 1: an examination of controls at a service organization relevant to its user entities' internal control over financial reporting, used by those entities' auditors (Controls, Audits & SOC 1).
Standard procedure (Rev. Proc. 2004-53): each employer in an acquisition reports and furnishes W-2s for the wages it paid; no Schedule D (Changing Providers Mid-Year).
Subservice organization: a vendor of a service organization (a bank, a tax engine, a host) whose controls matter to the service organization's SOC 1 objectives (Controls, Audits & SOC 1).
Tax notice rate: agency notices received per 1,000 employer-quarters, split by cause (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Time to hire: days between two hiring endpoints the platform states (application or requisition to accepted offer or start); no official definition (Payroll & HR Metrics).
Unified HR and payroll API: one API over many employers' payroll and HRIS systems, normalizing their data into common models and, for some products, writing deductions back (Unified HR & Payroll APIs).
Variance review: comparing a payroll register with prior runs by total and by worker, with thresholds that force an explanation before approval (Controls, Audits & SOC 1).
W-2 phishing: a spoofed email, usually appearing to come from an executive, asking payroll or HR for every employee's W-2; the IRS asks victims to report to dataloss@irs.gov (Payroll Fraud & Security).
Year-to-date load: the batch of a previous provider's or predecessor's history loaded before a new system's first live payroll, reconciled to the source's registers and returns (Changing Providers Mid-Year).