Rippling

Overview

Rippling provides a unified dashboard within its Spend Management platform that displays real-time software spend and payroll costs together. This capability is designed to give finance teams a consolidated view of total company expenditures, enabling a more accurate calculation of the 'fully loaded' cost of their workforce. The platform achieves this by integrating data from its IT Cloud, Payroll, and Spend Management modules. Because Rippling can manage employee payroll, corporate card transactions, and the provisioning of third-party software applications, it has direct visibility into these distinct cost categories. This integration allows the system to aggregate these disparate data points into a single, live dashboard, eliminating the need for manual data consolidation from various sources like SaaS invoices, payroll registers, and credit card statements. The dashboard provides a financial overview that supports more dynamic budgeting, forecasting, and cost analysis activities for the entire organization.

Key Features

Key to this functionality is the mechanism for tracking and mapping software costs. Rippling's IT Cloud module automates the provisioning and de-provisioning of software licenses for applications like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Through API-based integrations, the system can detect software license fees and map them directly to the specific employees using those tools. This license-to-employee mapping is fundamental for calculating per-employee software spend and is aggregated alongside salary, benefits, and tax information from the Rippling Payroll module. The Spend Management module further enhances this view by incorporating all transactions from Rippling's corporate cards, which can be used to pay for software subscriptions. Every transaction, whether a card swipe or an employee reimbursement, appears in the dashboard in real-time, providing an up-to-the-minute perspective on company spending.

Technical Specifications

From a technical standpoint, the platform offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities. It features a point-and-click report and dashboard builder that allows administrators to join workforce data from HR and Payroll with business spend data. This enables the creation of custom reports that can analyze costs by various dimensions, such as department, cost center, project, or manager. Pre-built dashboards are available to surface spend insights by category or timeframe.

How It Works

For instance, a finance administrator can run a report that displays the total cost per employee, breaking down the specific software subscriptions assigned to each user. This granular level of detail helps in identifying unused or underutilized software licenses, as well as redundant tools, which can present significant cost-saving opportunities. The system's ability to track compensation ratios and budgets, when combined with software and operational spend data, provides the components necessary to understand the comprehensive cost of each employee.

Use Cases

The use cases for such an integrated dashboard are primarily centered on financial control and operational efficiency. By having a live, unified view of spending, businesses can monitor budget adherence in real-time and make more informed financial decisions. Finance teams can move away from reactive, month-end reporting to proactive spend management. Customer testimonials referenced in research findings, such as from the company Andros, indicate that this consolidation can lead to significant reductions in the time required for month-end financial closing, in some cases from ten days down to three. The automation of license management within the IT Cloud module also reduces the manual workload on IT departments and minimizes the risk of paying for licenses for former employees, a common source of wasted SaaS spend.

Limitations and Requirements

However, there are several limitations and considerations. The accuracy of the software cost tracking is highly dependent on applications being provisioned and managed through Rippling's IT Cloud system. Software purchased outside of this system, often referred to as 'shadow IT,' may not automatically appear in the consolidated dashboard, leading to an incomplete picture of total software spend. Additionally, complex enterprise software agreements with tiered or volume-based pricing may require manual cost allocation to accurately reflect per-user expenses, as the system may not be able to parse these non-standard contracts automatically. The pricing for these capabilities involves layering modules; Rippling Spend starts at a per-employee-per-month (PEPM) fee, with corporate cards as an additional cost, on top of the core HRIS platform. Some user reviews have also noted that the all-in-one nature of the platform can be complex for new users to navigate, and certain advanced configurations might require manual workarounds.

Comparison to Alternatives

Summary

In conclusion, Rippling does offer a dashboard that consolidates real-time software spend and payroll costs. This is achieved through the deep integration of its Payroll, IT Cloud, and Spend Management modules, which allows for the aggregation of salary data, software license fees, and corporate card transactions into a single view. The platform provides granular reporting that can map these costs down to the individual employee level, supporting detailed cost analysis and the identification of savings opportunities. Organizations should be aware that the effectiveness of this feature is contingent on managing software provisioning through the Rippling platform and that costs associated with 'shadow IT' may not be captured automatically. The system offers a powerful tool for financial oversight but requires the adoption of its integrated ecosystem to realize its full potential.