Product updates

We’ve been hard at work this month and are excited to share some of the latest features that shipped at Check! Our team has made many improvements across our platform, specifically around bank account verifications, FEIN validations, benefits support, and Console features. Below is a recap of our November launches.‍

Launched bank account verifications

To ensure the highest payment success rates, Check now verifies all bank accounts. You can view the status of these verifications via the `status` and `disabled_reason` fields in the bank account object and bank account webhooks.

To learn more, check out our guide on bank account verifications.‍

Released company W-4 exemptions endpoint

You can now get federal and state withholding exemption status for all employees at a company via this endpoint. With a Form W-4, you are able to determine the amount to withhold from an employee’s paycheck for federal tax purposes. This form needs to be updated annually for employees marked as exempt, so this new report can help you understand which employees to notify.

Please see our reference documentation for more information, and feel free to reach out with any questions.‍

Released support for effective dated tax withholding settings in Console

This feature provides more visibility and granularity on when settings are effective. For example, tax rates may go into effect only on January 1 of next year. Prior to this launch, users could only define settings once, and needed to make changes to those values on the day they went into effect. Now, users can update current and past setting values as well as create new ones in the future.

As always, you can visit our Console guide for a product overview and can also request an API key to gain full access to Console and its guides.‍

Added validation for FEIN inputs

‍We now enforce all FEIN input values to be in the following format: ##-#######. This validation occurs in Console, Check Components, and Check Onboard to ensure consistent and compliant FEIN inputs from your employers.‍

Added ability to define multiple benefits of the same type for an employee

You can now define multiple benefits of the same type for an employee with non-overlapping effective dates. In addition, you can now define concurrent benefits of the same type for the same employee for Section 125 benefits. For these benefits, a maximum of 10 can exist at the same time for an employee.

For all other benefits, only one benefit of a given type can be effective for a given employee.

This month, Check shipped several new features to make building and operating payroll even simpler than before. These features include several new updates to our API, encompassing the Earning Rate API, W2 preview report endpoints, and support for setting an employee’s primary workplace. We’re also excited to announce Console enhancements that will allow your operations team to perform historical payroll audits more efficiently and bulk create up to 25 employees in one fell swoop.

Released Check's Earning Rate API

Developers now have the ability to store employee salary and hourly wages in Check as earning rates. With earning rates, you can calculate the correct gross pay directly via Check’s API when running payroll. This drastically simplifies what developers need to build to launch payroll with Check, saving time and reducing complexity when getting your payroll integration live.

To learn more about Check’s Earning Rates API, check out our guide and our official release blog post.

Launched support for defining benefits at a company level

With the launch of company-level benefits, implementation and benefits administration have never been easier. Prior to this launch, users could only create benefits defined at the employee level. Now, you can define a single company-level benefit and then create multiple employee-level benefits that inherit from that company benefit in a single transaction.

Note: You can still create benefits at the employee level as you’ve done to date — we’ve made this a non-breaking change to our API.

To dive deeper into our company-level benefits, see our reference documentation and Defining Benefits guide.To learn more about Check’s Earning Rates API, check out our guide and our official release blog post.

Added support for Primary Workplaces

Check now supports setting primary workplaces for employees. This enables Check to calculate taxes for employees in multi-state situations more accurately. For employees with a single workplace, their primary workplace will default to that location. For employees who have multiple workplaces, their primary workplace can be assigned via the API or in Console. 

Launched W2 Preview Report Endpoint

With this report, you can get a preview of all of the W2 data for a given company's employees, which will help your team ensure W2 data is correct for end-of-year reporting.

To get more information on the W2 preview report endpoint, see our API reference documentation here.

Launched Payroll Audit revamp and Bulk Employee creation in Console

We are excited to add two new features to Console to support your operations team as they scale your payroll business. 

• Payroll Audit Revamp
• Run multiple audits at once
• Save progress so you can come back later
• Re-run individual audits with one click
• Bulk employee creation
• Employees can be bulk uploaded 25 at a time
• This removes the manual key-in of information such as employee name, address, date of birth, start date, etc.
  

Interested in learning more about how Console can help accelerate your payroll product development? See our Console guide for a product overview. You can also request an API key to gain full access to Console and its guides.

We’re excited to announce a handful of features shipped at Check in August! This month, our team was focused on increasing visibility into our platform through more informative warnings, logs, and statuses. These changes will provide our partners with more transparency and allow them to build better and even more delightful experiences for their end customers. 

API logs + guide

In Check Console, you will find a dashboard that allows users to view their requests to Check’s API. You can find this dashboard in the API Logs tab of the Developers section. Access to this view is limited to admin users of Console. For information, see our API logs guide.

Interested in learning more about how Check Console can help accelerate your payroll product development? Request an API key to gain full access to Console and its guides.

Implementation Status object and KYB status

For every company that a partner onboards, implementation is a necessary precursor to running its first payroll. The term “implementation” in payroll refers to the process of loading data for a company into a new payroll system. Check now surfaces the implementation status of a company on the company object. Within the implementation status object, we now surface the KYB (know your business — a compliance verification of the company in question) status, giving you transparency into the  KYB process for the company. Check will also emit webhooks when these statuses are modified. For information, see our Implementation Status guide.

Introducing `partially_applied` warning code for post-tax deductions

Sometimes, an employee may not have enough net pay to cover a post-tax deduction. For example, they may have net pay of $100 but have a miscellaneous post-tax deduction of $200, so we can’t fully apply that deduction. In this case, you would see the `partially_applied` warning code. We would only apply part of the post-tax deduction in the payroll, in this case, $100. This warning code is now part of our currently available warnings found here.

Introducing `exceeds_max_percent` warning reason for child support garnishment

When an employee has a child support garnishment, they have an amount field and a `max_percent` field. The max percent indicates the max amount of disposable earnings that can be garnished. Today, our API automatically enforces this max percent, but we are now showing `exceeds_max_percent` as a warning in this release. You will be able to find this warning with our current list of warnings, and you can read more about our child support garnishment support here.

Company Start Date is now editable in Console (within the current quarter)

External implementation teams can now edit a company’s Start Date in Console. Based on the company’s implementation status (see above), listed below are how partners can change start dates and how Check will automatically be notified of these changes

• If the company is in `needs_attention`, then the start date will be editable with no notification sent to Check.
• If the company is in `in_review`, then the start date will be editable, but if it is changed, a notification will be sent to Check for that particular company to inform Check that the start date has changed.
• If the company is in `complete`, then the start date will be editable, but if it is changed, a notification will be sent to Check for that particular company to inform Check that the start date has changed.
• Start date cannot be set to a date in the past.
• Start date cannot be edited outside of the quarter it was initially set.
  

For more information on Company Start Date, see our reference document. For a more in-depth experience of Console, request an API key here.

The new async paper checks API is live

This API returns a generated URL that partners can poll for paper checks. With this API, you can now get paper checks for an entire payroll in an async manner instead of having to synchronously print paper checks on a per employee basis.

API limit: Note that the maximum number of items/contractors that this API can render for a given payroll is 50. For more information, see our paper checks reference.

Updated semi-monthly pay schedules configuration

Check now supports selecting any pair of dates in a month for semi-monthly pay schedules instead of only supporting the 1st-15th or 15th-end of the month. An optional `second_payday` attribute to the Pay Schedule object has been added. This field should only be used with the semimonthly frequency to specify custom paydays besides the 15th and last day of the month. For more information, see our pay schedules guide.