Retrieval · reference
What is the difference between an assisted payroll connection and an automated one, and does the data differ?
An automated connection is software calling an API; an assisted connection is a person with administrator credentials performing the change, and the difference is not just latency — Finch documents assisted integrations as write-only, needing a configuration period, and bound by a two-business-day service level rather than a technical response time.
By Eli Wilson · Published
The words suggest a difference of degree. The documentation describes a difference of kind.
What Finch publishes
Finch is the vendor that documents this split openly, so its own implementation guide is the best available source:
| Automated | Assisted | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations | Read and write | “Writing only” |
| Write timing | “Near-real-time in the provider” | Within the assisted SLA |
| Configuration period | None | Required before the first write |
| Submission guidance | 24 hours before payroll close | 3 days before payroll close |
The stated service level for assisted deduction writes is two business days.
Three things follow that are easy to miss when reading a comparison table.
It is write-only. Not slower reads — no reads. Any use case that needs to confirm what payroll actually did, or to reconcile actuals, cannot be served on an assisted connection.
The two days are a service level, not a latency. A latency is a property of a system; a service level is a commitment about people. That is why the guidance is expressed in business days and why it comes with a three-day submission buffer.
There is a configuration period. The first write is not available when the employer connects. Onboarding timelines that assume otherwise slip.
Why the tier exists at all
Not as a cost saving. For several major payroll systems there is no public API specification a third party can build against — our index records Paycom, Paychex, isolved and Rippling as publishing nothing readable at field level. Where the vendor publishes no contract, a credential-mediated connection is the only route to that employer’s data.
So assisted connections are an availability mechanism. They exist because of the documentation vacuum, which makes them a symptom of the same problem this publication documents.
Dated evidence table
| Documented evidence | Finch’s implementation guide states the Automated/Assisted split, “Writing only” for assisted, the required configuration period, near-real-time for automated, the two-business-day SLA and both submission-buffer recommendations. Checked 2026-09-10. |
| Strongest example | “Writing only” as the documented operation set for assisted integrations — the read capability is absent, not degraded, which is a product limitation rather than a performance characteristic. |
| What remains unproven | Which providers are served by which tier; Finch directs that enquiry to sales rather than publishing it. Whether the SLA is met in practice. Whether other vendors operate unpublished equivalents. |
The scorecard
Before you accept a connection tier, establish:
- Which tier is this specific provider on? It varies within one vendor’s estate, and it can change.
- Does the tier support read? If not, your reconciliation story needs a different source.
- Is the number a latency or an SLA? Ask which, in writing. The distinction determines whether you can design a real-time flow at all.
- Is there a configuration period? Affects onboarding, not just runtime.
- Who holds the credentials, and has the customer been told? This is the question a security review will ask, and the answer should not surprise anyone.
Frequently asked
- What is the actual timing guidance?
- For automated integrations, Finch says writes land near-real-time in the provider and advises submitting 24 hours before payroll close. For assisted, it advises submitting three days before the customer's payroll close date, against a stated two-business-day SLA.
- Is this acceptable for a security review?
- It is a genuine question for your security team rather than for us, and the honest framing is that credential-mediated access means a third party holds administrator access to your customer's payroll system. That is a different risk posture from a scoped OAuth token, and it should be disclosed to the customer rather than described as an API integration.
Source limits
Not verified hands-on. We have not opened an assisted connection or timed a write, so the two-business-day figure is Finch's published SLA rather than an observed latency. Finch states that field support depends on provider and integration type and directs enquiries to sales for assisted specifics, so we cannot enumerate which providers are assisted or what fields each supports — that mapping is not public. We assessed Finch because it documents the distinction openly; other vendors may operate similar tiers without publishing them, and their absence here is not evidence they do not.
Sources checked
| Source | Publisher | Document date | We checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write Data — Automated versus Assisted | Finch | — | 2026-09-10 |
| Enroll Individuals in Deductions | Finch | — | 2026-09-10 |
| Finch — isolved integration | Finch | — | 2026-09-10 |
Wrong or out of date? payrolldataspecs@gmail.com — corrections are free. How claims are scored: methodology.