A Restaurant Operator Replaces Manual WinSCP Payroll Transfers With Automated GPG Delivery to ADP

A multi-brand restaurant operator runs franchised quick-service and casual-dining locations across its region: more than a hundred restaurants and thousands of employees.

When the operator decided to move its payroll processing to ADP, payroll files covering thousands of workers across several brands had to start arriving at a new destination under ADP’s rules. The existing manual WinSCP process could send files over SFTP, but it could not deliver the GPG-encrypted deposits ADP would accept. The operator used Files.com to automate the encryption and delivery, allowing the ADP migration to proceed without reworking the payroll systems that produced the files.

ADP Required Encrypted Deposits, and a Desktop Client Could Not Provide Them

ADP set the terms for how the operator’s payroll files would arrive: deposited into ADP’s secure SFTP service, already encrypted with a GPG key that ADP supplied, and placed in the inbound folder ADP designated.

The operator’s established way of moving files to an outside party was hands-on. The IT manager drove each transfer himself from WinSCP, a desktop SFTP client. That approach could push files onto ADP’s server, but it could not deliver them in the encrypted form ADP would accept. The first test deposits came back rejected for exactly that reason.

The cost landed on the payroll migration itself. Until the files arrived encrypted, the move to ADP could not go forward, and a recurring, deadline-driven deposit covering pay for thousands of people sat blocked on a transfer-layer requirement. Every attempt in the meantime meant someone hand-carrying files through a client that could not satisfy the mandate.

Meeting ADP’s Terms Without Building Encryption Tooling In-House

The encryption requirement was not the operator’s design choice. ADP dictated the key, the format, and the destination folder. The mandate arrived from outside, and implementing it was the operator’s problem.

Solving it with desktop tooling would have meant the IT team standing up its own GPG operation: holding and managing ADP’s key, encrypting every file before every deposit, and keeping that machinery running around a payroll flow whose source systems needed to remain unchanged. Payroll runs on a calendar that does not wait, so whatever performed the encryption had to work every period without a person remembering to run it.

The fix had a clear specification. It had to encrypt every payroll file with the key ADP supplied, automatically. It had to deliver the encrypted files over SFTP into the inbound folder ADP designated. And it had to do both without hands-on transfers and without reworking the internal payroll systems that produced the files. The operator built that delivery layer on Files.com.

Encrypt on Upload, Then Move Into ADP’s Inbound Folder

The operator configured a Files.com Remote Server connection to ADP’s secure SFTP endpoint. Once a payroll file arrived in the designated Files.com folder, Files.com GPG encryption applied ADP’s key automatically, and a Files.com move automation delivered the encrypted file to ADP’s inbound folder. Nobody handled the key or drove a client for each transfer.

The operator’s payroll systems continue to produce the files the same way they always did. From the moment a file lands in the Files.com folder, encryption and delivery happen without anyone driving a client or touching a key.

A Payroll Deposit That Runs the Same Way Every Period

With the workflow in production, the operator replaced hand-driven desktop transfers that could not meet ADP’s requirement with an automated deposit that does.

• Every payroll file reaches ADP GPG-encrypted with ADP’s key, over SFTP, in ADP’s designated folder. The platform enforces the mandate on every deposit rather than relying on a person to remember to encrypt.
• The recurring deposit no longer depends on anyone driving each transfer.
• The payroll migration to ADP could proceed. The transfer layer stopped being the blocker.

A Partner Mandate Absorbed at the Transfer Layer

Today, payroll for thousands of employees across more than a hundred restaurants moves to ADP every pay period without anyone at the operator touching a file. What used to open with a desktop client and end with a rejected deposit now runs inside a Files.com workflow that encrypts and delivers on its own.