Rippling is a sophisticated, multi-module employee management service that also offers excellent payroll-processing tools. Despite a price suitable for small businesses, its advanced features and exceptional customizability make it suitable for a company with hundreds of employees (it even integrates with several midrange accounting applications). Rippling’s usability and support earn it an Editors’ Choice award for businesses with more than 10 employees and those that anticipate significant growth. Because of Rippling’s complexity, however, Editors’ Choice winner Gusto is the better choice for companies with 10 employees or fewer.
How Much Does Rippling Cost?
Rippling’s Core platform starts at $35 per month plus $8 per employee per month for payroll services. The Core platform gets you features such as applicant tracking, employee management, onboarding, time tracking, and HR integrations. In addition to HR functionality, Rippling also specializes in IT services; access management and security add-ons cost $5 per user per month.
Choosing to use Rippling to administer benefits (either through a partnership between Rippling and NFP Corporation or another broker entirely), may affect the cost. Rippling offers that first option for free, and in this case, technically functions as your broker. You can work with Rippling as your broker in 25 states and use other brokers with Rippling in all 50 states. When you use other brokers, however, you have to pay the full site fees.
Rippling’s pricing is on par with Gusto—or right about in the middle of the pack. Patriot Software is the least expensive payroll service we tested. Its base price is $10 per month plus $4 per month per employee, but at that price, you have to submit your own payroll taxes and filings (the base price goes up to $35 per month if you want the company to do this automatically). QuickBooks Payroll Elite comes in at the top. It costs $125 per month plus $10 per month per employee.
Comprehensive Setup
Payroll websites (and especially those such as Rippling that cover benefits administration) require a complex setup process. Rippling’s setup tools take you through every step as you indicate what services you need and specify your preferences. Since the site has the features and capacity to support a business with hundreds of employees, you’ll probably be able to skip some steps if you only have a handful.
That said, Rippling has done a beautiful job of building a step-by-step guide for preparing employee and contractor compensation. It uses an automated wizard to walk you through the process. Depending on your responses (which you provide by clicking buttons, entering data in blank fields, and selecting options from drop-down lists), it will either request additional information or move you on to the next step. Rippling does this prep work within an elegant, intuitive user interface; its navigation tools rarely leave you wondering how to proceed. Only Gusto’s setup process rivals it.
Once you set up an account, Rippling asks whether you’ll be using payroll. If you are already using another payroll website, you can select it from a drop-down list. The list includes industry leaders in payroll (such as ADP Workforce and Run, SurePayroll, and Patriot Software) as well as financial applications like QuickBooks Online and Sage. Rippling automatically imports tax information from all of them and it can bring in virtually all payroll data from Gusto and Zenefits, including employee details, pay schedules, and benefits data, very quickly. You supply the last paycheck date from your existing service and your first through Rippling. No competitor offers this kind of generous integration.
Countless Questions
To help you keep all of your setup tasks straight, Rippling provides an extensive to-do list—a guide to additional setup steps based on the answers you already provided. This might be a long list, but the setup is always the most time-consuming part of using a payroll website. It includes directives like “Tell us more about your company,” with links to the screens where you can do so. For example, you may need to specify tax entity type, provide contact details, create departments, and add email domains. It might also prompt you with options to add your employees to Rippling and install its Payroll app.
Will you be bringing in your own insurance broker or do you want to use Rippling in that capacity? Offering a 401(k) retirement plan? Supporting Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), commuter benefits, PTO, and workers’ compensation? Tracking time off? When you answer in the affirmative, Rippling automatically generates tasks and sets up deadlines for you.
You also have to indicate whether you want to use the task and custom field options. If you subscribe or plan to subscribe to any of hundreds of third-party apps (like Microsoft Office 365, Slack, Salesforce, and QuickBooks Time), the site automatically installs them and sets up user accounts.
Additional company information is required, as it is on every payroll website. You establish pay schedules (pay periods and paydays) and provide your federal and state tax details. You also set up a connection to your payroll bank account and define the contribution scheme (employer/employee split) for supported benefits like health insurance and 401(k)s. During the setup process, you work with a specific contact at Rippling who guides you via phone and email. Once you’re on your own and running payrolls, however, help is only available through email.
A Different Dashboard
Rippling’s Dashboard (home page) contains three types of content There’s a navigation tool in the left vertical pane that contains a broad set of links, since the site’s feature set is so deep. There are links to, for example, Tools (Reports, Tasks, Documents), HR Management, Payroll & Time, Insurance & Benefits, and IT Management.
A second element here is a to-do list outlining work that needs attention. But the bulk of the page displays icons for any apps you install. The link to Payroll is here, as are links to other tools, like Time Off, Time & Attendance, Custom Fields, Medical, and Dental, as well as to other integrated apps. Rippling treats these as separate-but-integrated apps, rather than menu items in a toolbar. The site uses this navigation scheme because Rippling is a full-service payroll, HR, and IT system, rather than a payroll-centric app with some added HR functions, unlike other payroll sites we reviewed.
Extra Security
Another administration feature Rippling offers will make security-conscious IT professionals happy. Rippling supports enables multifactor authentication (MFA), which forces anyone attempting to log onto the system to provide an additional identification method aside from username and password, typically a physical token like a USB fob or a TOTP code that’s generated dynamically and sent to the user’s cell phone.
This added layer of security can be critical when protecting the personal information that’s usually stored in HR systems. And while it’s something you can implement in other ways, such as through a third-party identity management system, small businesses will find it helpful to have the option embedded.
Adding Employees
You need to create very detailed employee records as a part of the setup, which is at least as easy to do in Rippling as on other services. The records must all be completed for existing staff before you run the first payroll, of course. After that, you can only add a worker by onboarding a new one. You can enter the details manually or download a template for importing a list of employees in CSV format and map the matching fields. The site offers two views of this data: a simple employee list and an organization chart that it builds from the information you enter.
Whether you’re adding an employee as a step in setup or clicking the Onboarding link to create a new one, you go through a similar process and supply a similar set of details. You choose an employment type (hourly, salaried, contractor, and so on) and a payroll entity (group), then supply the worker’s name and email. You can edit and use the provided templates for offer letters and contractor agreements in the next step. Other screens collect contact details, like department, job title, compensation amount (and number of shares, if applicable), and manager. Rippling also asks you to provide a job description.
There’s also a summary of the documents the employee will be able to sign electronically (like a W-4), the information that must be collected by the new worker, and the things that Rippling will do (like set up the employee in payroll and prorate the first paycheck). It also lists the user accounts for apps that will be established for the incoming hire. Once you entered employee data in Rippling, it automatically transfers that information to the apps themselves. Finally, you can set up a work email address and review any offer letter you created.
Once you complete a record for one or more employees, you can send an email inviting them to set up their own Rippling account to add anything that hasn’t been imported (tax information, emergency contact, picture, and so on). When the profile is complete, each employee gets a page accessible through the company directory that contains everything. These screens are divided into various individual elements of personnel issues, like Personal information, Documents, and Payroll. The Payroll section is further divided into content areas like Paystubs, Withholding, and Settings. Rippling’s employee records are the most comprehensive of any of the payroll sites we reviewed.
Benefits Administration
Setting up payroll requires a lot of detail work, but not as much as you encounter when you start working with benefits. Rippling excels at administering them.
The main dashboard displays a four-line menu at the top left for Quick Links, My Profile, My Account Settings, Company Settings, and Org Chart. When we logged in to the admin side, we clicked Insurance on the Dashboard. We then proceeded to Open Enrollment and saw a helpful view of who had signed up for various benefits like (medical, dental, vision, short term disability, and life insurance).
However, the employees that we had onboarded on our own were not listed in this admin view of Open Enrollment, perhaps because they hadn’t gone through the open enrollment process yet. If you click on each circle, you can see a helpful pop-up message with the plan they have signed up for. If you click the employee’s name, you can see their employee profile.
Rippling stands out for its ability to manage Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) benfits directly within the application rather than requiring you to go through a third-party administrator. This feature is useful for termination processes, whether that’s voluntary or involuntary. Like Zenefits, Rippling handles 1095-C tax filings, and on the payroll side, W2s. The last time we looked at Rippling it won an Editors’ Choice for benefits administrations, along with Zenefits; we’re working on new benefits administrations reviews at press time, so look for a new updates to this review soon.
Medical and Life Insurance
During the enrollment process, we easily added a dependent via the Add New Dependent button. The names and dates of birth for each person respectively appear under the Self and Child sections. To edit personal details for yourself or any dependents, click on the pencil icon at the bottom of the page. Rippling updates the cost of the medical, dental, and vision benefits you choose in real time as you select them and assign dependents.
During open enrollment, you have a chance to waive the various health plans, but for life insurance, this wasn’t an option— many employers offer this automatically. If you choose, you can purchase additional life insurance; simply move the tab to a new value (such as 1x, 2x, or 3x) on Rippling’s well-designed scale.
Next, Rippling shows a neatly outlined Summary page of our benefits elections. Once you review the document and add your signature, you’re done. However, you get only a minute to cancel, which may be a bit short. After the benefits enrollment is official, employees receive a clean view of coverage details and when they will begin. There’s a pencil mark to enter your member ID.
Click on the Overview, Medical, Dental, Vision, Short Term Disability (STD), and Life options in the top menu to see a summary of each of these coverage selections. If you have a qualifying event, then you can go to Change My Benefits, and select the reason, such as “I got married” or “I had a baby.” Rippling helps simplify the complexity of selecting benefits by including useful tooltips across the benefits sections that define and contextualize terms.
Exiting Employees
As part of our testing, we tried to delete a profile. Note that if an employee joined the company and was paid, then you need to use the Terminate option, instead of Delete. The software provides a smart security check before deleting the profile—you have to type Delete in to confirm the action. You can turn off an employee immediately or schedule for a later date. Then, you specify if the termination is voluntary or involuntary. Next, you indicate if you would rehire the employee in the future and the reason for termination. Once that’s done, you reassign a manager for the person’s reports, indicate the amount of the severance agreement, and designate how long the employee will have to sign the severance agreement.
At the end of the process, you get a nice view of the Severance Agreement with a bright blue background, with the option to generate a 1099. Rippling lets you specify which systems access will be turned off for that user on the specified date and can automate those shutdowns for other apps that support a REST API, a very long list that includes everything from Dropbox Business to Zendesk.
Rippling notes that the employee’s computer must be connected to the internet to deactivate. It’s also very specific about letting you specify whether to set up the computer for the next hire or deactivate and leave the data in the system. Again, Rippling provides a security check when you try to wipe a computer—you must type Wipe to confirm the action. Next, the software provides a view of the insurance that the employee will lose upon termination. Then, you indicate whether the employee is eligible for COBRA benefits.
It’s also very straightforward to indicate when the employee will receive their final paycheck. You specify whether to send the paycheck electronically or by mail. The summary of the final paycheck is simple and clear; it tells you the gross pay, the total employee taxes, and the net pay. After you confirm those details and complete the termination process, Rippling takes you back to the dashboard.
Running Payroll
Once you complete your setup tasks thoroughly, the actual payroll processing shouldn’t take much time. You open the Payroll app to see a list of your upcoming pay runs. A horizontal toolbar takes you to your payroll settings, which is where you’ll return if you need to modify anything you previously set up, such as state tax information and pay types. The toolbar also has links to screens where you can add or edit reimbursements, deductions, and garnishments. You can set up connections to integrated accounting applications and view related reports and tax documents, too.
If you set up multiple payroll entities (such as salaried employees, hourly employees, and contractors) on the same pay schedule, you have to process them as individual groups. Most competitors let you see them all on one screen to enter hours and make any changes necessary to withholding or additional pay. Larger companies can benefit from the support of payroll entities, but they may create an extra step or two for smaller businesses.
A table on the first screen displays links to upcoming and completed payrolls, with the current one at the top in Draft form. This page also displays the approval deadline for the current payroll. Click Run Payroll and the next screen opens to the Earnings tab, which includes a list of your salaried employees and their earning types (like Salary, Bonus, and Commission) and amounts. Click the Deductions tab to see what’s being taken out and for what, and the Settings tab to toggle between direct deposit and checks. Click on an employee name, and a window displaying background details slides out from the right.
Click the Next: Hourly Employees button to see a list of hourly workers along with their base pay, overtime and double overtime pay, hours in every applicable column, and reimbursements. The Deductions and Settings tabs are available on this page, too. When you’re satisfied that the numbers are correct, click Next: Contractors. This screen only contains columns for 1099 payments and reimbursements.
If that page checks out, click Preview payroll. On the next page, Rippling displays the pay period, pay date, and deadline at the top. Below that are totals for your direct deposits, employer and employee taxes, and the total debit and debit date. If you scroll down, you see a table listing key numbers for each employee. Click a link at the end of a row, and the current pay stub appears. Rippling adds a bit of graphical whimsy to these, which is a nice touch. You can also see a comparison to your previous two payrolls.
A link on the page takes you to the Cash Requirements Report for the current payroll and breakdowns of the payroll by department, employee, and job (that last option is unusual at this level of payroll services). Click Approve, and you’re done, unless you want to undo the payroll or download reports.
Impressive Flexibility
Every service that offers payroll includes a certain level of flexibility and customizability. OnPay, for example, supports custom fields. SurePayroll integrates with its own accounting application. But no one in the group reviewed here is quite as accommodating as Rippling. That’s one of the reasons why it can handle hundreds of employees and support integrations with midrange accounting applications in addition to small business solutions.
This flexibility is evident in countless ways. Rippling supports international work locations and allows you to create profiles for and pay contractors, even those located in other countries. You can convert contractors to employees (and vice versa) using automated tools.
Payroll itself is especially flexible. You can set up multiple, separate pay schedules (salaried, hourly, contractors, etc.) for the same pay period and run unlimited payrolls. Employees can be assigned multiple pay rates if, for example, an individual works as a server and a bartender in the same pay period. Rippling can update salary changes in the middle of a payroll period and set up salary changes for future dates. The site allows you to maintain a cash balance so you can do an overnight payroll if necessary.
Rippling’s search and filter capabilities make it possible for companies with dozens or hundreds of employees and multiple departments and other staff groupings to apply attributes to select individuals. Its granular user permissions allow you to grant access down to the screen and function level.
Employees benefit from Rippling’s customizability, too. They can add and edit their own information on the site and access numerous types of HR documents, like confidentiality agreements, employee handbooks, and severance agreements (the administrator can see who’s e-signed which documents on a grid view). Hourly workers can track their hours using one of the many time-tracking apps available through Rippling if the company subscribes to them. And a Chrome browser extension provides an employee dashboard, where workers can see a company directory and find out who’s out of the office—even read and contribute to the so-called water cooler section (an online employee chat group). This tool will soon be available in the web-based version. Rippling is the only service that provides the latter feature.
Mobile Access and Reports
Rippling offers companion apps for both iOS and Android, which are attractive, intuitive, and improved since the last time we reviewed them. With the apps, employees can access a personnel directory with minimal contact records and message, call, or email co-workers. They can also use any apps they’re subscribed to, such as Zendesk and Expensify. The apps let employees view pay stubs and edit payment information, as well as their W-2s and 1099s and withholding. If you’re an employer logging in, you get all the same capabilities, as well as the ability to manage time off and timecards. Both the Android and iOS versions look and work similarly, with four icons at the bottom of the screen for navigation.
While you can access the site through a mobile browser, you have to double-click to make anything big enough to see and then scroll around a lot. Running a payroll would be very difficult from Rippling’s mobile site, which is not surprising, given that it is such a massive site. That said, Gusto and SurePayroll make it easy to run payroll from a mobile device.
Every other service we reviewed offers at least a dozen preformatted payroll (yet customizable) reports. Rippling takes a different approach. Most of its built-in reports cover HR or IT-related topics such as compensation, computer inventory, and headcount change. But there are seven custom payroll-related reports that are exceptionally customizable: Point in Time Report (shows data as it was on a specific date), Trend Report (tells you how a variable changed over time), and Payroll Report. Rippling has added four new ones since our last review: Time and Jobs, Time and Attendance, Time and Attendance Change History, and Candidate reports. Reports are shareable and you can download them in multiple formats.
A Great Midrange Choice
Rippling’s depth and flexibility make it an excellent choice for a company with dozens or hundreds of employees with complex payroll needs. Its price and user experience, though, may appeal to smaller businesses who anticipate growth. For those reasons, it’s our Editors’ Choice winner for companies with more than 10 employees.
We believe that Gusto, our other Editors’ Choice pick for payroll, is a better option for small companies. The site offers features and usability that are geared toward companies with only a few or a few dozen employees. While Rippling’s more sophisticated capabilities don’t exactly get in the way for small business users, a payroll manager might find all of the complexity intimidating. We recommend Gusto first for very small businesses.
For more reviews of financial services for yourself and your small business, take a look at our roundups of the best personal finance software and best tax software.
