Full Service Embedded Setup timelines and SLAs
Explore updated timelines and SLAs for Full Service Embedded Setup processes and requirements.
Our timelines have been updated as of May 19th, 2025. If you have any questions not answered in this article, feel free to reach out to Support or your Partner Success manager.
When submitting a setup, you’ll be asked for a Desired First Payday. This is the date the employer seeks to go live on Check, and we do our best to accommodate that where possible. Once you submit the setup to Check, we complete the Preliminary Review process and finalize that payday based on number of employees, prior provider and other payroll complexities. If access or required information is missing, the setup will remain in Preliminary Review until all requisite data is provided.
The final first pay day is based on two setup timelines:
- Standard Timeline: 10 Business Days (including Preliminary Review)
- Enterprise Timeline: Custom, agreed upon start date
Standard timelines are used primarily for smaller, simpler setups while the Enterprise timeline is leveraged for larger companies or those with complex prior provider data. Details on the requirements for each are below.
Full Service Embedded Setup SLAs
Check adheres to the following SLAs during the Setup phase.
- Preliminary Review: 2 business days
- SLA for completing Preliminary Review, a process in which Check’s team will assess the expected complexity of the Setup and ensure all required information was provided.
- Ticket Response: 1 business day
- SLA for responding to a Partner or employer inquiry. Timely responses during setup help eliminate unnecessary delays.
- Setup Completion: ~3 business days prior to first pay date
- SLA for completing the Setup in its entirety. At this point, the employer can move forward with filing authorization and running their first payroll.
- The time it takes to complete a Setup varies based on the size and complexity of the company. See below for how Check establishes those timelines.
Standard Timeline and Sales Guidance
The Standard Timeline is for companies with the following characteristics:
- They are an Easy or Medium provider in Prior Provider Resources and Complexity Guidance and
- They have up to 50 workers (employees or contractors), and
- They have granted us prior provider access
The standard timeline is 10 business days until the start date.
- Preliminary Review - 2 Business Days
- End to End Setup - 8 Business Days from Payday (including payroll processing time)
A standard timeline will take roughly 2 calendar weeks end to end to complete a setup, assuming we have no issues with data access to the prior provider. If issues do arise that cause issues accessing data (e.g., wrong payroll account, incorrect login), the Preliminary Review process may take longer putting at risk the start date.
For your sales team, they can sell start dates that are 2 calendar weeks out from when an Embedded Setup is submitted for our Standard Timelines. We advise they notify customers that this is contingent on ensuring we have access to their prior payroll provider and they meet the criteria above.
Enterprise Timeline and Sales Guidance
The Enterprise Timeline is for companies with the following characteristics:
- They are a Hard, or manual, provider in Prior Provider Resources and Complexity Guidance , or
- They have greater than 50 workers (employees or contractors)
The Enterprise timeline is set on a custom basis, based on our team’s assessment of level of complexity of the setup. For Enterprise, our Preliminary Review is 2 Business Days, in order to give our team adequate time to review reports to set an agreed upon start date.
Despite this customization, we recognize your sales team needs a clear timeline to sell against for Enterprise setups. We recommend selling a start date for no earlier than 6 weeks prior to when Check receives the embedded setup. In the vast majority of cases, Check will be able to deliver against this start date, but we should note there may be exceptions for setups that are abnormally complex. In those scenarios, we’ll work with you to agree on the right date that works for Check and the client.
Note, for smaller setups that may come from a difficult provider, we may be able to do these on a faster timeline than 6 weeks, but we will assess that on a case by case basis in Preliminary Review.
Factors the Impact Enterprise Setup Timelines
In addition to the challenges that might be specific to a prior provider, there are additional considerations when determining the complexity of the setup that will impact a custom timeline:
- Company is in multiple states or if the employees have withholdings from multiple states: When companies are in multiple states, it requires additional setup time to get the right state (and potentially local) taxes built correctly in Check. It is common that these aren’t correct in prior providers so Check works to ensure that withholdings are accurate and taxes are being calculated correctly. If employees have withholdings in multiple states in a single payroll, Check needs additional information around Labor Distribution to ensure the wages associated with the respective states is clear in order to calculate the correct taxes. If these aren’t built correctly, there is a high likelihood of correction/amendment down the road
- PA, OH, (labor taxes) WA (PF&L and P&I), OR (labor distribution: PA and OH have local/school district taxes that need to be mapped individually to ensure accurate tax calculations. WA has more requirements around PF&L and L&I which normally requires coordination with the specific agency to ensure accuracy. Companies/employees based in OR often have labor distribution (working in different states) which requires wages to be attributed to the right state for tax calculations. If these aren’t built correctly, there is a high likelihood of correction/amendment later on
- Unique benefit/deduction types: A high volume of unique deduction types (also known as codes) are common when prior payroll providers are built to appropriately support industry or company-specific deductions. Check works to identify these during the preliminary review process and request additional information. That additional information is typically a mapping key to understand use case and whether it is pre or post tax.
- Multiple prior payroll providers (most common within a multi-FEIN setup: There are a couple reasons why this makes set up complex: The availability of data varies by prior provider so the Check team may be able to migrate data for one FEIN but not the other. The accuracy of the data once it is pulled into the same environment can be lower. It is common for multi-FEINs to have different payroll practices (based on the payroll provider or decision maker) so the Check team will need to time to align the data and determine the best path forward now that all FEINs will be operating out of the same system. This typically involves discussion and potentially change management around reporting/outputs/processes.
- Any unsupported features for Check: There are unsupported features within Check today and if a company has one of those, the Check team needs time to communicate that and provide options on how best to move forward. We want to make sure the company and partner are aligned with the decisions to minimize risk and confusion post launch.
- PDF vs. Excel: When reports from a prior provider are only available in PDF, it requires Check to programmatically parse that data to get it into our system, or for more difficult providers, do that process manually. This can add hours to setups in many cases, so will cause a longer go live timeline. Where possible, ensuring data is available via Excel can make setups significantly easier.
Monitoring progress
You can now track progress of the setup in the Embedded Setup tab in Console and monitor where Check is in completing the setup through each phase and the target setup completion date.
Below is what occurs during each phase:
- Preliminary Review: Check is reviewing the setup, analyzing prior provider reports and assessing complexity of the setup to determine your setup timeline and start date
- Worker Setup: Check is adding employees and contractors, including adding all withholdings, benefits, deductions and bank accounts. Note, some partners own this step in their own system, and only send to Check after worker setup is complete
- Company & Pay Setup: Check adds in pay frequencies, Tax IDs and Tax rates across all jurisdictions (e.g., Federal, Texas) your company has operations in
- YTD Setup: Check uploads all year to date payroll history from the prior provider including gross pay, deductions and tax amounts
- Audit: Check reviews the Year to Data payroll calculations against our systems to ensure it matches, checks for any variances and ensures tax amounts add up to the same in our system
- Final Steps: Our team is doing a quick final review to ensure your setup is fully completed and done accurately
- Run Payroll: Our setup is complete, and the only next step for the employer is to run their first payroll!
You will also see a Setup Completion Date in the dashboard, this date is set to three days before your first paydate. Note, for some partners, you may have custom arrangements with Check where we finalize data right after Year To Date setup for parallel payrolls.
Risks for delayed starts
Delays in Embedded Setup can happen due to several risk factors. Partners should be prepared to address these with their customers to help avoid disruptions to the first payroll run.
- Communication Delays: During the setup process, Check may require additional information from partners or clients. If responses are delayed, the setup timeline may be pushed back.
- Incomplete Data: The accuracy and completeness of the payroll data are critical. Missing or incomplete information may lead to delays in meeting the targeted first payday.
- Multiple Work Locations: While Check can accommodate multiple work locations, a significant increase in the number of workplaces (e.g., hundreds) may extend the setup time. The Extended Timeline is often recommended in such cases to ensure accuracy.
- Access to Reports: We must have all necessary reports including all data required for payroll migration before we can start the setup. This can be either from the prior provider or uploaded in the correct format.
FAQs
What has changed from the prior timelines?
- We removed the “Extended” timeline. We don’t use this timeline that often, and we determined it added too much complexity
- We’re removing number of states from the criteria for Standard, and focusing on:
- Easy/Medium Prior Providers
- Less than 50 employees
- Do we have prior provider Access
- Everything else will be with the Enterprise (Custom) timeline
Why are some Setup Timeline deadlines set so far out?
The full Setup Timeline is determined by the complexity of the payroll setup. This ensures an accurate and thorough payroll implementation. The timeline is aligned with your client’s first payroll date, allowing us to validate all necessary data and avoid errors in the initial payroll runs.
How do you determine a company's Setup Timeline?
The Setup Timeline is based on the size and complexity of the business. Factors include employee count, the prior provider, and if Check has access to the provider. The available timelines are:
- Standard Timeline: 10 Business Days
- Enterprise Timeline: Custom, agreed upon start date
Each timeline is designed to ensure we have the necessary time to verify payroll data and complete a successful setup.
What happens if the employer changes their start date?
If the first payroll date changes, please update the setup ticket as soon as possible. Check will automatically adjust the Setup Timeline to align with the new payroll schedule. However, frequent changes to start dates are not ideal, as they can make it harder to ensure the right team is working on the correct accounts. Changing start dates may also duplicate work, introduce inefficiencies, and increase the risk of errors in the payroll setup. To maintain accuracy and efficiency, we encourage setting a firm payroll start date whenever possible.
Can we request a faster Setup Timeline?
Yes, expedited setups are considered on a case-by-case basis. During the Preliminary Review, we will assess whether an accelerated timeline is feasible.
Last updated on February 28, 2025