A Construction Software Company Replaced Its On-Premises Workday-to-NetSuite Payroll Path With an Auditable Files.com Transfer Layer

A construction management software company makes software for owners, general contractors, and specialty contractors, bringing project, financial, and workforce management into the cloud.

The company runs its own business the same way. Two of the systems behind its own operations are Workday and NetSuite, and payroll files produced in Workday have to reach NetSuite. Between those two cloud applications sat the one piece of the chain that was not cloud: an on-premises file server that carried files from one to the other.

The Server NetSuite Would Not Whitelist

That transfer path was troublesome, in part because NetSuite would not whitelist the server’s IP addresses. The problem was not server performance. Its on-premises endpoint was incompatible with a destination policy the company could not change from its side of the connection.

The situation persisted because of what the server carried. A live payroll integration is exactly the thing nobody re-platforms casually, so the server stayed in place, and the trouble stayed with it. The only real fix was structural: take the on-premises hop out of the path entirely.

A Transfer Layer in the Cloud, Not a Better Server

Removing the hop set the requirements for whatever replaced it. The transfer layer had to run in the cloud, operate unattended on service accounts, and keep its own record of the files it moved.

The company selected Files.com to be that layer.

The migration off the on-premises server was completed in 2023. Payroll file movement between the company’s internal systems now runs through Files.com, including the Workday-to-NetSuite sync the old server had carried. Service accounts do the work, so no person is in the path. Files.com Automations move the files, while the History page records system and integration activity.

The change also established a repeatable model beyond the original payroll workflow. When a file has to move between the company’s internal systems, it moves on a service account through Files.com, and a new integration inherits that path instead of bringing a server of its own.

An Unattended Payroll Sync With Its Own Audit Trail

With the workflow in production, the company replaced an on-premises endpoint that NetSuite would not whitelist with a cloud transfer layer built to sit between the two systems.

• The Workday-to-NetSuite payroll sync runs unattended in production on service accounts, and the on-premises server it once depended on is retired.
• The Files.com History page, which records integration activity alongside user actions, serves as the audit log of record for an internal audit process at the company. Evidence of how payroll data moved comes from the same platform that moved it.
• Beyond the payroll sync, the company’s broader Files.com deployment handles millions of API calls a day. That scale reflects a shared file-transfer foundation rather than a one-off server replacement.

A Shared Transfer Path Instead of a Dedicated Server

Since the 2023 cutover, the company has no longer used the on-premises server for its Workday-to-NetSuite payroll path. Payroll files move through Files.com on service accounts, and when the internal audit process asks how the data moved, the answer is a report from the Files.com History log rather than a reconstruction.

The old server had not failed at moving files; its endpoint could not satisfy NetSuite’s whitelisting policy. Files.com took over the job as an unattended, auditable transfer layer that the company can reuse across internal integrations.