How to Automate PrismHR

A PEO carries payroll for companies that never meet each other

PrismHR is the platform professional employer organisations and payroll bureaus run on, which makes it an unusual piece of software: the people whose pay it calculates do not work for the company operating it.

A PEO becomes the co-employer of its clients' staff. It runs their payroll, files their employment taxes, buys their health cover on a master plan, carries their workers compensation and answers their HR questions, and it does that for hundreds of small companies at once, each with its own pay cycle, its own benefit elections and its own idea of a deadline.

So PrismHR holds two books. There is the worksite employee: hours, rates, deductions, garnishments, paid time off, benefit elections and a tax jurisdiction that may differ from the one next door. Then there is the client company, with a service agreement, a billing rate, a workers compensation class code and an account manager. Get the first wrong and somebody is short on payday. Get the second wrong and the bureau is working for nothing.

Every client sends its hours a different way

The work in a service bureau is not the calculation. It is the collecting.

The clients submit their hours a dozen different ways, and the variety is the job. One uploads a file on Thursday. One has a timekeeping system the bureau was handed a login to. One emails a spreadsheet, usually late, and one rings with changes after the file went in. Payroll specialists spend the two days before each cycle finding out who has not submitted, then telephoning them.

Around that sits everything the bureau owes somebody else. Benefit enrolments have to reach the carriers, and a carrier bill that does not match the enrolment file gets reconciled by eye. Quarterly returns go to a different agency in every state a client has an employee in. New hire reporting has its own portals. Workers compensation audits arrive once a year and want payroll broken out by class code. Certificates of insurance get requested by clients' customers with no notice.

That is a great many logins, and most of them belong to other organisations.

PrismHR

Hours chased before the cycle Each client's own timekeeping system checked on the morning hours are due, so the list of who is missing exists before anyone starts calling.

Carrier invoices matched to enrolments Cover still being billed for people who left in June flagged in the same month, rather than found during a renewal review.

Agency notices nobody opened Rate changes and filing acknowledgements read where the state posts them, before a wrong rate is billed across every client with staff there.

ClientSpace workflows fire on events PrismHR already recorded

PrismHR automates the parts of this it can see, and a bureau not using them is carrying headcount it does not need.

ClientSpace, the client management side of the platform, runs configurable workflows: setting up a new client assigns a sequence of tasks in order, and completing one notifies whoever owns the next. Workflows also fire on employment events, so a hire, a termination, a promotion or an address change raises the tasks and notifications that ought to follow. The employee portal and manager self-service push data entry outward, so a worksite employee updates their own address and a manager approves their team's time. Tax management covers the filings.

All of it is driven by something recorded in PrismHR. A workflow starts because a termination was keyed.

Nobody keys the fact that a carrier's invoice this month still covers four employees who left in June, that a state agency has posted a rate change, or that a client's timekeeping system shows Thursday empty with the deadline tomorrow.

A carrier discrepancy found in the week it happens

A bureau's expensive discoveries all arrive late, and every one of them was visible in somebody else's system days earlier.

Each client's own timekeeping system checked on the morning hours are due, so the list of who has not submitted is ready before anyone starts calling, with the habitual late ones marked. Carrier invoices read line by line against the enrolment records, so a terminated employee still being billed for cover becomes a credit request in the same month rather than a discovery at renewal.

State agency accounts checked for posted rate notices and filing acknowledgements, because an unemployment rate that changed in one state is a billing error repeated across every client with staff there. Workers compensation audit requests tracked with the payroll breakdown already assembled by class code.

Certificates of insurance and licence expiries watched per client, so the one that lapses is not the one with work booked. New hire reporting confirmed as accepted rather than assumed. Client headcount and billing variance read weekly, so an account that has quietly halved is a conversation while it is still an account.

The filing stays with the person who signs it

Somebody in the bureau already holds every one of those logins. They get opened when a deadline forces it, which is why a carrier is still billing for June.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens a client's timekeeping system, a carrier portal, a state agency account or PrismHR itself, reads what is on the screen and returns the differences: who has not submitted, which invoice line has no matching enrolment, what an agency has posted.

It runs on your schedule, and you can watch a run and stop it. It never submits a payroll, files a return or changes an election. Those are certifications, and a certification belongs to a person.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.