The Challenge: Payroll pain with ADP

Student Agencies first started using Homebase for scheduling and time tracking in 2016. It immediately proved beneficial, making sure their hundreds of student employees—many of whom were getting work experience for the first time—knew where to be and when, and capturing their hours worked in one system.

But payroll was a different story. Student Agencies had been using ADP for several years, and while it was a functional partner alongside Homebase, it wasn’t an efficient one. The lack of proper integration made running payroll a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process.

“We were tracking our timesheets and documents  in Homebase for all of our employees and then exporting the timesheet to Excel,” Riley explains, “and then editing that whole spreadsheet and then importing it into ADP.”

For a full-time student juggling classes, extracurriculars, and leadership responsibilities, that process wasn’t just slow; it was overwhelming. “The HR director before me could take an entire day to run payroll, manipulating the spreadsheet so it would fit perfectly into ADP,” she says. “There was a lot of room for error, and it was frustrating making sure everything was correct.”

Plus, the outgoing HR directors would have to train their successors on the same tedious process each year. All told, too much time was being spent on payroll—time that could be better spent on the agency’s core mission.  

But time wasn’t the only concern Student Agencies had with ADP; their ADP solution cost the agency about $15,000 a year, on top of their Homebase subscription. As part of its mission to teach students not just how to work but also how to successfully run and grow a business, Student Agencies encourages its staff to find ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs. 

It was easy to identify payroll as an opportunity to do both.  

Homebase is a really simple platform that has a lot of high quality, valuable resources that have allowed us to not only realize our mission at Student Agencies, but streamline it and make it really cost-effective.
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— Riley McGuire, Director of HR at Student Agencies

The Solution: Fully integrated in 2 weeks

When Homebase introduced Payroll, Student Agencies saw the potential in a solution that let them do everything in one place: managing payroll, scheduling, and time tracking. The benefits would mean cost savings, efficiency, and fewer errors. 

Transitioning Student Agencies to Homebase Payroll became Riley’s first major project in her role as Director of HR. And it wasn’t one that she could just ease into. 

“Right when we switched, we actually had two weeks in order to get payroll out,” Riley recalls. “We had to go through the whole process of transferring the information that we had stored in ADP over to Homebase, and then onboard the new employees that needed it.”

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With dedicated support from the Homebase team, the implementation was successfully completed and Riley’s first Homebase-run payroll went out right on time. “I was able to learn everything in those two weeks and run a successful payroll,” Riley says, attributing that success to the user-friendly, easy-to-learn platform, as well as Homebase’s support team. 

“That’s a really great benefit of Homebase,” Riley says. “Anytime I'm having an issue or need help, I can use the chat feature or call, and someone always responds within a minute. That hasn’t been the case in other companies that I‘ve worked with.”

That level of intuitive design combined with hands-on support is particularly valuable in a student-run organization, where high turnover means new leaders must quickly learn and adapt to the systems in place.  

“There are two incoming directors of HR, who will run payroll once my term ends,” Riley says. “I taught them Homebase in maybe 40 minutes. It's kind of cool to be able to teach the next generation of HR how to use it.”

Outside of running payroll every two weeks, Riley is also taking advantage of Homebase’s reporting features. She regularly downloads payroll reports and tax documents that help her and the leadership team verify costs against profit-loss statements and stay on budget, which is much easier than before. “Our past HR director would have to manipulate some of those spreadsheets to present the data the way that our accountant wanted to see it,” Riley says.

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The platform has also made it easier to manage the agency’s bonus program. Each Student Agencies business has a bonus budget, and each individual gets a portion of that budget depending on their performance. With Homebase, Riley and the executive team can confirm the financial performance of each company and the timesheets of the individual performers within that company, making the bonus determination easier than ever. 

In addition to payroll, Homebase has powered up recruitment at Student Agencies. Prior to Homebase, the agency didn’t have an applicant tracking system, meaning Riley and the individual business managers would have to manually review resumes and connect with candidates. Now, Homebase automates much of that process, saving Riley time and providing a smoother candidate experience. 

The Impact: More student growth opportunities

Optimizing payroll was the assignment, and it’s safe to say  Riley and Student Agencies aced it.  

What was once an expensive,  time-consuming, and error-prone process that could take up to a day to run, is now cost-effective and straightforward, taking Riley just 90 minutes.

“The previous HR director came in, and saw me running payroll,” Riley says. “She was like, ‘no way, you just click that button and it goes?’ It was mindblowing to her how much easier it was.”

And the financial benefits have been just as game-changing: By eliminating ADP and adding payroll to their existing Homebase plan, Student Agencies is saving about $10,000 a year. 

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“Being efficient, finding cost savings, these are some of our goals within the businesses,” Riley says. “Because if we’re profitable, we can put that money towards starting new businesses and hiring more people.”

Which is exactly what Student agencies has done: Since implementing Homebase payroll, the organization has launched two new student-led businesses and doubled recruitment efforts. 

“In  fall 2024, we had 60 applicants, and then this past fall we had 135,” Riley says. “We were able to do that through putting our time towards recruitment, towards marketing, towards getting the word out there and finding highly qualified students to come in and run new businesses.” 

By integrating payroll, recruitment, scheduling, and time tracking into one platform, Student Agencies has turned a major pain point into a key strength. The time and cost-savings have allowed Student Agencies to focus on what matters most: providing students with meaningful work experiences and developing them into the next generation of business leaders.