Files.com moves enrollment, eligibility, census, time, and payroll files between your HR systems, your carriers, your processors, and your employer clients, encrypted, on schedule, with a record of every delivery. Each counterparty gets its own fenced folder and credential. Each feed runs unattended.
Every one of those files is due before a pay run or an enrollment deadline, and a missed one means someone is not paid or not covered. Today the hop is a person with a desktop client, a script per partner, or a server you let outsiders into.
Payroll and benefits run on files because the systems on each end do not share an API. The HRIS exports; the carrier’s SFTP server accepts; the processor’s import insists on its own filename and its own window. Between them sits the hop, and the hop is where the deadline lives.
Run by hand, it is one person exporting, encrypting, and uploading against a calendar. Run on scripts, it is a bespoke procedure per bank and carrier that only its author understands. Run on your own server, it is infrastructure you patch so that outsiders can log in. On Files.com the hop is a folder, a credential, a key, and a schedule, and adding the next counterparty is configuration.
Real companies. Real file flows. Real results.
The same platform carries feeds out to processors and carriers, feeds in from employer clients, and feeds between the systems inside your own walls.
Your HRIS exports the pay file into a folder. Files.com encrypts it with the processor’s PGP key and delivers it to their SFTP endpoint on the schedule they set, named the way their import expects. ADP, Paychex, UKG, and Paylocity all take files this way.
One export from the HR system, fanned out to every carrier, retirement provider, and benefits vendor on its own endpoint, with its own key and its own filename rule. Adding the next carrier is a folder and a credential, not an integration project.
A benefits administrator, PEO, or payroll provider gives each employer group its own fenced folder and login, and the file that lands there is handed to processing automatically. Employers push from whatever payroll system they run; you never build an integration per client.
Payroll and GL extracts from Workday land where NetSuite or your ERP picks them up. Worker rosters feed the directory that provisions accounts. Two systems that cannot talk to each other exchange files through a folder both can reach.
Files.com pulls hours from the timekeeping vendor’s SFTP server on a schedule and lands them where payroll reads them, so the pay run never waits on someone downloading a file the morning of.
A server does nothing when a file fails to show up. Expectations know the payroll file is due by a deadline and raise an alert when it is missing, late, or malformed, before the pay run finds out the hard way.
Four things do the work: isolation per counterparty, encryption as a folder setting, schedules and arrival triggers, and a record.
Every carrier, processor, employer client, and system gets its own folder on your branded endpoint and its own login, scoped to that folder alone. No counterparty sees another’s files, and every login is one you can revoke without touching the rest.
PGP is a folder setting. A file dropped in the carrier’s outbound folder is encrypted with the carrier’s public key on the way out, and an encrypted file from a vendor is decrypted on arrival with yours. Nobody on your team holds a key on a laptop or runs the encryption step by hand before a deadline.
Automations run when a file lands or on a schedule: rename it to the counterparty’s convention, route it, deliver it to their SFTP endpoint, or hand it to your processing over a webhook. The Files.com Agent reaches an on-premises HCM export folder over an outbound-only connection.
The audit log records every delivery and every download, so a question about a pay file is a lookup. Retention rules expire files once they have been picked up, so a transfer platform never turns into a store of employee data.
A workflow-by-workflow parallel run kept frequent carrier exchanges live while Files.com rebuilt transfers, automation, and access for cloud operations.
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The migration had to add vendor isolation, tighter payroll access, and auditability while leaving existing SFTP paths and automations intact.
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A durable Files.com hub gave SAP, payroll providers, and vendors a governed exchange point that could outlast the systems around it.
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Files.com gave non-API vendors and legacy internal systems a common exchange point without requiring either side to change.
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“We use Files.com for automated SFTP transfers with our trading partners. The automation lets us handle every partner's quirks without writing custom code.”
“Great REST API for automating everything, well documented. Every SFTP use case we have is covered, with encryption end-to-end.”
The three ways payroll and benefits files move today, and why each one eventually misses a deadline.
Someone exports the file, encrypts it by hand, and uploads it against the calendar. It works until that person is out, the naming rule changes, or the file lands in the processor’s unprocessed folder and nobody notices until payday.
Each carrier and bank gets its own script, credentials, and quirks, maintained by whoever wrote it. When a partner mandates PGP or a new naming convention, someone builds it again. The estate grows one bespoke procedure at a time.
A self-hosted SFTP server lets employer clients and vendors onto infrastructure you patch and defend, with accounts nobody audits. Retiring it without partners changing anything is its own job, and this one runs on top of it.
What HR, payroll, and benefits teams ask before moving their feeds onto Files.com.
The HR system exports the file into a Files.com folder, over SFTP or from an on-premises folder the Files.com Agent watches. A folder rule encrypts it with the provider’s PGP key, and an Automation delivers it to the provider’s SFTP endpoint on the schedule and under the filename their import expects. Files.com logs the delivery, and an Expectation alerts you if the export never appears.
Yes. Files.com gives each employer client its own folder and credential under your domain, scoped so clients never see each other’s files. When a file lands, a webhook or an Automation hands it to your processing pipeline, moves it to a staging folder, or lands it in your own cloud storage. Onboarding the next client is a folder and a login.
Files.com offers a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, encrypts files at rest and in transit, and records every access in an immutable audit log. Benefits administrators and health plans exchange 834 enrollment, eligibility, and census files carrying protected health information on Files.com under that agreement. SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS attestations are in place as well.
Files.com PGP encryption is a folder setting. Store the carrier’s public key in the key manager, attach it to the carrier’s outbound folder, and every file dropped there is encrypted before delivery. Different carriers get different keys on different folders, and inbound files from a vendor are decrypted on arrival with your key.
Files.com Expectations define what a correct delivery looks like: which file, in which folder, by which deadline. When the file is missing, late, or does not match, Files.com opens an incident and alerts your team. A plain SFTP server only reports what arrives; Expectations report what did not.
Yes. Files.com connects to the vendor’s SFTP server as a client, pulls the file on the schedule you set, and lands it where payroll reads it, on Files.com, in your own cloud storage, or on an internal server through the Files.com Agent. The vendor’s host key is pinned, and the credentials live in Files.com rather than in a script.
The Files.com Agent runs on a server inside your network with read access to the folder the HCM system drops files into, and it connects outbound to Files.com. No inbound port is opened and nothing on your network is exposed. Files.com picks up the export, encrypts it, and delivers it from there.
Yes. A Files.com Automation renames files as it routes them, appending dates, timestamps, or a fixed convention, so the file arrives under the name the processor’s import expects. Folder naming rules can also reject a file that does not match the pattern, so a misnamed export never leaves your side.
Per-folder retention rules expire files after a window you set, so a file is gone once the counterparty has picked it up. Teams handling SSNs and PHI commonly run the platform as a conduit with files clearing within a day, and the audit log keeps the record of what moved after the file itself is gone.
A fenced folder per counterparty, encryption as a folder setting, delivery on their schedule, and an alert when a file is late. Start the 7-day free trial and move the first feed before the next pay run.
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