After weathering a pandemic-induced period of volatile cash flow, Hovercraft is “leaning into our identity more,” said Lisa Koluvek, the experiential marketing agency’s Director of Finance and Operations. 

“We want to focus on building our portfolio and filling it with projects we’re passionate about.” With its team of 35 employees—mostly producers, designers, and software developers—that means prioritizing creative strategy over paperwork. Easier said than done when your workforce spans multiple states and leaves only two employees responsible for all things people operations.

Hovercraft is headquartered in Denver, and in addition to having employees in Colorado, has remote workers across the US in Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. From an HR standpoint, that means ensuring compliance with local labor laws and administering state payroll taxes in nine separate states, each with their own requirements, websites, and nuances like unemployment contributions and paid leave laws. Unless you’re a local employment law or tax expert, handling this manually is a tall task. 

“It’s almost hard to describe because it’s so inconsistent from state to state,” Lisa said. She’s a self-described “Jane of all trades” who found herself researching niche local labor laws, juggling different account credentials on state websites, and manually logging tax information in each new state where Hovercraft hired. “It would eat up a whole day or two. It’s bananas confusing.”

Hovercraft was a Rippling customer before Lisa joined the company, using a bevy of its products to help run payroll, administer benefits, and manage other administrative tasks. An admirer of Rippling and in need of support, Lisa approached Hovercraft’s partners a couple months into her new job and recommended they join the recently launched Rippling ASO, which automatically creates and manages state payroll taxes on a company’s behalf. 

“We made the case that it added value,” she said. “If you calculated my hourly rate and how long it would take to figure out each individual state website, it made sense fiscally to sign up for the ASO.”

Once implemented, Rippling ASO took hours of low-value administrative work off of Lisa’s plate, handling registration on each state tax website and guaranteeing state payroll taxes were paid on time. “It’s really handy,” Lisa said.

If I’m inarticulate about state taxes, it’s because I haven’t had to think about them since I started using Rippling.

Lisa Koluvek

Director of Finance and Operations at Hovercraft

Since using Rippling ASO, Lisa estimates she and People Operations Administrator Callahan McBride—who together make up the Hovercraft People Operations team—save about 15 hours apiece every week on managing state tax accounts. “Between the two of us, you’re freeing up 30 hours a week. That’s almost a full-time 40 hours. It’s like we’re saving an entire employee.”

Rippling ASO provides round-the-clock access to a team of expert HR advisors, which Lisa cites as a huge benefit. “It’s hard to stay on top of all the different laws for every state,” she said. “It’s useful to be able to chat with somebody whenever we run into these weird one-off situations.

Rippling ASO includes access to Mineral, one of the leaders in managing compliance with employment laws. According to Lisa, Mineral helped her gather state-specific information for building Hovercraft’s employee handbook. It also automates the distribution of digital copies of workplace posters, which cover health and safety guidelines and other employee entitlements. The system also helps her track changes to local laws, ensuring compliance in every jurisdiction where Hovercraft team members live.

Delegating cumbersome tax duties also meant more time for Lisa to focus on strategic projects, like updating performance review processes, creating employee handbooks, and bolstering company culture. She said that Rippling simplifies her job and helps her company scale.

“When I first started using Rippling, I felt a lot of relief,” she said.

Lisa thinks Rippling’s biggest draw is that it serves as an interconnected hub of employee data, making it easier to accomplish all of her people operations tasks– from the mundane to the complex. 

“My favorite thing about Rippling is its fundamental nature as a one-stop shop,” she said. Lisa appreciates how the platform lets her plug and play with automated workflows that help with hiring, benefits enrollment, and generating locally-compliant documents like offer letters and tax forms.

Rippling takes all these disparate little units and ties them all together in one central system. It makes it possible to have a far more efficient operations team.

Lisa Koluvek

Director of Finance and Operations at Hovercraft

• Time saved: With Rippling ASO, Hovercraft’s people team saves 30 hours a week on state tax registration and compliance work.
• Headcount spared: The saved time meant Hovercraft could keep its two-person operations team lean and forgo hiring a full-time administrator.
• More strategic bandwidth: Rippling now handles state taxes and digital labor poster distribution, so the operations team can focus on growing the business.