Leading small business payroll provider relies on Symmetry products to expand into the U.S.

In 2010, software developers Kirk Simpson and James Lochrie launched a company called Wave Accounting out of a shared workspace in Toronto, Canada. Today, Wave has more than 250 employees. Symmetry has played a role in Wave’s success story since 2016.

The Challenge

Wave’s initial customers were all in Canada, where the tax system is much simpler than in the U.S. In Canada, all taxes — including payroll withholding taxes that employers are responsible for submitting — are collected by a single federal agency, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The CRA collects taxes and administers tax laws for the Canadian federal government and all of Canada’s provinces and territories except Quebec.

Wave had built its own payroll tax calculation engine to manage payroll withholding and reporting for Canadian employers. When it set its sights on small businesses in the U.S., Wave was challenged by a much more complex tax system.

The U.S. has a maze of tax authorities and agencies from the federal government down to states, county, municipal, and local jurisdictions — such as school districts and park and recreation departments.

The Search

To expand to the U.S. and offer solutions for payroll forms and payroll processing and tax calculations, Wave faced a riddle common to similar payroll providers: build the engine themselves or find a partner.

Wave did consider a competitor to Symmetry as part of the company’s due diligence at this stage and during its renewal period with Symmetry. “The ease of working with the Symmetry client support team was very important,” Spence said. “Whenever we need anything from them, they’re very quick to respond and help us.”

The Solution

Wave continued and expanded its reliance on Symmetry’s innovative technology and service by 2017, embedding the Symmetry Tax Engine (STE) for payroll processing and payroll tax calculations into the Wave payroll platform. STE covered the U.S. then, and it now also serves Canada, through a unified schema and consistent endpoints.

The integration and implementation of the Symmetry payroll tax calculation engine was supported and made less challenging thanks to what Spence defined as “great release notes and responses” from Symmetry. As the manager of Wave payroll compliance, Spence is responsible for ensuring accuracy and personally performing audits of Symmetry’s tax calculations and processes.

“They had no qualms with me asking them to confirm or verify a piece of data,” Spence said. “We’ve always had very open communication with Symmetry, and they are never defensive when we challenge them on something. It makes me feel very comfortable with them.”

Symmetry has always been “very receptive to requests for any way to help us implement their releases,” Spence said. For example, Symmetry once provided the Wave team with an example of a code that had been written in a specific technical language, which was “extremely helpful” to the Wave developers in integrating the Symmetry product.

“Being able to ask questions, having the Q&A format, and for them to be so forthcoming about release notes and other documentation is very helpful,” Spence said.

The working relationship continued to evolve. Early in their partnership, Wave chose to receive notices of changes to tax rates from Symmetry and implement the changes themself.

“Now, we work more closely with Symmetry on changes, and they’re handled on their end,” Spence said. “It’s also become a lot easier to submit job tickets (for system changes) because Symmetry has changed the system they use for that.”

The Outcome

Since adding Symmetry’s payroll tax calculation engine, Wave has expanded its services to offer payroll tax withholding calculations and tax form generation to customers in 14 U.S. states, including California. Wave relies on Symmetry technology to offer payroll tax calculations for clients in all 50 states.

“With Symmetry,” Spence said, “we were literally able to expand our marketing into another country, without needing to build it all out ourselves.”

Wave has benefited greatly not only from Symmetry’s technology but also from its relationships with taxing agencies and authorities throughout the U.S., and particularly at the local level.

Armed with that information, Wave can confidently advise its clients that what they’re getting from Wave is, in fact, more accurate than what they’re seeing on state websites.

“If we didn’t trust Symmetry like we do, I wouldn’t feel as easy communicating that to our clients, without having the actual documentation in front of me,” Spence said.

About Wave

Wave provides a full suite of integrated, cloud-based financial, payroll, and accounting tools for small businesses.

Along the way, Wave — renamed as Wave Financial — was recognized by Best Workplaces in six categories and was listed among Deloitte North America’s Fast 500. In 2019, after tremendous growth and making an acquisition of its own to expand its functionality, Wave was acquired by H&R Block for $405 million in cash. H&R Block said in a press release at the time that the acquisition would accelerate its small-business strategy and was “a great strategic fit, as both companies can leverage each other’s capabilities to bring tax and financial solutions to small business owners, serving more clients in more ways.”

Among the financial solutions Wave offers are payroll management, including payroll tax calculations, payroll generation, and automatic tax filing and payments in Canada and many U.S. states.

“In essence, we provide tools and resources for small businesses to run payroll efficiently and compliantly,” said Emily Spence, manager of payroll compliance at Wave.