Every time you hire an employee in a new state, you have to open various “accounts” with state agencies.

Usually, you have to register with

• Department of Labor (so that unemployment insurance is deducted)
• Department of Revenue (so that income tax for the state is deducted)
• In addition, it's often necessary to register with some combination of a Secretary of State (because you’re applying to “do business” in the state) and Registered Agent (who serves as a point of contact for the state — this is archaic in the age of virtual mailboxes, but still an active requirement)
• Some local counties / municipalities also require you to register (a few examples include San Francisco, Denver, counties in Ohio & Alabama, etc.)
• Some states also have a Paid Family Leave / Child Support registration

For an exhaustive list, see our guide here.

This is often a 5-10 hour process for a given state, navigating labyrinthine requirements, account creation, confusing state websites, and more. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months to get approved. The above guide shows ETAs ranging from <1 week to 18 weeks(!).

If you don’t do it, you literally cannot run payroll (via Gusto, ADP, Rippling, Paychex, UKG, etc.).

We turn that into a 5-10 minute form. Submit the form, sit back, and watch as the registrations are completed and account numbers appear in your dashboard!

Potentially, if any of the following are challenges for you:

• In a remote-first world, employees move! This immediately triggers registration requirements in a new state or municipality. So even if you're not growing the team, you may still be encountering new registrations every month.
• Are you missing some registrations? Your payroll tool will flag essential registrations to run payroll, but may not suggest Secretary of State & Registered Agent -- this is required in many states if you have employees. It's important to complete this soon, to stay in good standing and avoid penalties or fines. See here for our guide with state-by-state requirements.
• You're paying >$200 / state / year for your Registered Agent and you're looking for alternatives because your services are coming up for renewal.
• Filing annual reports & paying franchise taxes is stacking up across your states. This can be very time-consuming if you're in a lot of states.
• You need a place to manage information about the states: receipt & digitization of snail mail, centralizing account details, logins, due dates.
• Beyond the above needs, you might want a review of your existing states, or help with a one-off heavy lift such as a PEO to Payroll migration. We can help with these sorts of things with a Pro Services engagement (only available as an add-on for Platform customers).
  

There are a few reasons why this might be a need. Perhaps you need to review past registrations for good standing and compliance; or you have a one-off heavy lift for a payroll or PEO migration.

Additionally, our customers tell us that they spend 1-2 hours per state per month(!) troubleshooting filing errors, dealing with penalty notices, responding to unemployment claims, or negotiating with states on incorrect billing statements.

So, if your team is understaffed and you need flex capacity / support, we help manage these sorts of things:

1. Your payroll tool get filings wrong, or overpays / underpays fees or withholding. You might even receive a mistaken notice because a state employee made a mistake. This happens all the time. We know how to work with them to get this resolved ASAP.
2. Terminated employees might file for unemployment claims. You need to respond to the state in a reasonable fashion when you’re notified of the fact.
3. You’re going to get penalty notices, billing statements, etc. in the mail. Our ML system and support team will route you to the right resolution mechanism, and in most cases we’ll take care of this for you!
4. You create “regulatory exhaust” which tips off scam artists to mail you. They look just like a notice from Washington or Virginia. If you’re not careful, you might waste hundreds of dollars.
5. States add new regulations that you need to keep up with — new agencies to register with, new requirements like 401(k) or pay transparency laws. We'll ensure you're notified of this.

Platform onboarding is easy. It will probably take just 10-15 minutes if you have all your information handy.
- When you register for your first new state, you'll be asked to fill out essential information about your company, governance, ownership, executives, etc.
- In addition, you can store existing registration information (account numbers, files, etc.) for free and invite internal users -- or even your accountants -- to ensure everyone has access to state compliance information.
- If you'd like for us to take over management of an existing state (for RA services, annual report filings, etc.) you'll just need to share the credentials for the various state agencies.

If you're signing up for the Pro Services add-on, we need a bit more access; we'll set up a vault to securely share state logins, and we'll need to be invited as an admin to your HRIS / payroll tool, etc.

A registered agent is just one element of complying with state registration requirements — in fact, it’s usually the simplest / quickest, and we actually include RA services where required, in every plan.

The most time-consuming aspects of registering to hire or operate in a state (especially as a remote company) are registering with the state’s department of labor, department of revenue, municipalities, etc.

Most RAs also provide a fairly antiquated experience -- while our platform provides a modern interface and a lot of automation (digitizing & scanning snail mail; a centralized file vault; the ability to centralize account numbers and credentials; secure, permissioned access for your team; etc.).

In short: we include RA services + fees as part of our subscription, but AbstractOps covers so much more.
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If you are migrating off a PEO, AbstractOps will be a gamechanger. This can be a massive undertaking to register in 10 or 20+ states in a short timeframe, and our ability to spin up each new state seamlessly will mitigate the stress in this process by an order of magnitude.

If you are currently happy with a PEO, the answer is "it depends".
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PEOs fall into two categories:
1. those where the PEO is the employer of record (e.g., your paystubs actually say "Justworks, Inc.") vs.
2. the PEO is an administrative services organization (your paystubs will probably state your company's name).

In case #1, you probably will not benefit from AbstractOps, since your PEO will be taking care of everything to do with payroll tax compliance. You may still need our help for business registrations with Secretaries of State, but your accountant or sales tax provider might be better suited to help with that.

In case #2, it's probably still helpful to have a conversation, because a) not every state works with a PEO, and some require you to register directly, and b) you are likely still obligated to register with Secretaries of State and Registered Agents -- the litmus test varies by state (physical location, conducting sales in a state, an exec's residence in the state).

1. We don't cover commercial taxes: Income Tax, Sales Tax, Use Tax, Excise Tax.

These forms of filings and support typically constitute tax advice, so we cannot provide that. Moreover, there are a lot of excellent products and service providers that just specialize in these sorts of taxes, so we'll be happy to refer you to them.

It's typical that income taxes would be handled by your corporate CPA; and your Sales Tax & similar are handled by a Sales Tax accountant (usually working via Avalara, Taxjar, or a newer platform such as Anrok, Zamp, or Numeral). We'd be happy to make introductions to these providers if you like, and even provide permissioned access to them to the AbstractOps platform.

In addition, it usually doesn't make sense for us to handle certain things that are covered by most payroll platforms:
- Quarterly wage report filings (always filed by payroll)
- Worker's Compensation insurance (usually integrated with your payroll platform)
- General employee compliance (I-9, labor law compliance, etc.)

2. We cannot help with industry-specific compliance requirements

For example, insurance, financial services, food service, liquor, etc. are industries that are heavily regulated by state or local requirements. These are areas that are very specialized and we do not have expertise here.

The diagnostic is a one-time upfront project to get you set up on AbstractOps successfully, while also ensuring that your existing state activities are reviewed and cleaned up for good hygiene and compliance. It includes:

1. Centralizing your account details on the platform
2. If you are missing any state logins / account details, working with you to restore access
3. Checking to see that you are registered in all required departments for each state
4. Checking to see that you are not registered in any unnecessary departments
5. Identifying if the company is in good standing with each state; if not, what is needed to obtain the status of Good Standing
6. Updating your Registered Agent or obtaining a Registered Agent where necessary
7. Ensuring your Mailing Address, Point of Contact, and Legal Name / DBA is up to date with each state and department