Executive Payroll Risk Advisory
Making Payroll a Strategic Advantage.
Your payroll runs on time. Is it actually under control?
We find the hidden risks in your payroll and help you fix them. We review how your payroll really operates, show leadership exactly where it is exposed and who owns each risk, then help put the fixes in place, before an error, a resignation, or a PAGA notice forces the issue.
For CFOs, CHROs, and controllers at organizations with 100+ employees. Founded by Trina Aguirre (25 years in payroll leadership, 12 at ADP) and Molly Travis, MBA (30+ years in corporate finance). Deep California payroll expertise.
Three ways we protect your payroll: diagnose, fix, protect.
Step 1 · Diagnose
Payroll Risk & Continuity Review
Find out exactly where payroll is exposed and what to fix first.
- Executive Payroll Risk Brief, ranked by severity
- Key-person, access, and approval gaps mapped
- Prioritized 30/60/90 roadmap with owners
Step 2 · Fix
Payroll Stabilization Sprint
Put the fixes in place so they are owned and working, not sitting in a report.
- Clear decision ownership and escalation paths
- Critical processes documented
- Backup coverage for key roles
Step 3 · Protect
The Payroll Continuity Office
Ongoing executive oversight so payroll stays protected as things change.
- Standing advisory for leadership
- Support through payroll leadership transitions
- Year-end readiness and oversight
California employer? We help you find and correct payroll issues that create PAGA exposure, working alongside your employment counsel. How it works
Not sure where to start? Every engagement begins with a complimentary 30-minute strategy session. Book yours
A payroll problem is never just a payroll problem.
When payroll breaks, it does not stay in payroll. It reaches your people, your cash, your financial statements, and your legal exposure, usually all at once.
Your people
Late or wrong pay is the fastest way to lose trust. Good people leave when the system stops protecting them.
Penalties
Late federal tax deposits carry IRS penalties of 2% to 15%. In California, unpaid final wages can trigger waiting-time penalties of up to 30 days' pay per employee, and PAGA adds civil penalties per employee, per pay period.
Your numbers
Payroll errors flow into the close, the general ledger, and the reports leadership, boards, lenders, and buyers rely on.
Continuity
When the one person who knows how payroll really works leaves, the knowledge walks out with them.
Step 1: The Payroll Risk & Continuity Review.
An independent, executive-level look at how your payroll really operates, and a clear plan to protect it.
What the Review answers
- Where is payroll currently exposed?
- What depends on individual people instead of documented structure?
- Where are ownership, access, approval, or verification unclear?
- What could affect employees, cash, reporting, deadlines, or business continuity?
- What should leadership fix first, and who should own it?
- Who you work withSenior payroll and finance advisors with executive-level experience. No generic report.
- Your team's timeFocused working sessions with payroll, HR, finance, and IT. We work around your pay calendar, not through it.
- InvestmentScoped to your organization's size, locations, and systems. You receive a clear written proposal before any work begins.
- AfterwardOptional support to put the fixes in place: the Payroll Stabilization Sprint or the Payroll Continuity Office.
What leadership receives, and what it does for you.
Advisory should not be abstract. These are the working documents your team keeps and uses.
Simple for you. Thorough behind the scenes.
Strategy Session
A complimentary 30-minute call. We learn what changed and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
Written Proposal
Clear scope and investment, in writing, before any work begins. No surprises.
The Review
We examine processes, access, controls, documentation, and handoffs across payroll, HR, finance, and IT.
Findings and Roadmap
Your leadership team receives the deliverables, the presentation, and a prioritized plan with owners.
Stabilize (Optional)
If you want help putting the fixes in place, we stay with you through the Sprint or the Continuity Office.
We do not create panic
We will never manufacture urgency to make a sale.
We do not protect bad processes
We are not here to politely agree that everything is fine.
We do not blame payroll
Payroll often receives the consequences of decisions made upstream. We evaluate the structure, not the scapegoat.
We do not hand over generic advice
Everything connects to owners, deadlines, systems, approvals, coverage, and next steps.
We do not disappear
When findings need to become action, we stay to help make it happen.
Companies call us when leadership needs an independent answer.
- A payroll leader has resigned, retired, taken leave, or is struggling.
- One person holds too much knowledge, access, or authority.
- Payroll runs on time, but leadership cannot clearly explain how risks are controlled.
- Reconciliations, adjustments, tax issues, or recurring errors remain unresolved.
- Finance, HR, operations, and payroll disagree about decision ownership.
- A new payroll leader is inheriting an undocumented or unstable function.
- Growth has outpaced the company's payroll structure.
- A merger, acquisition, implementation, or provider change is approaching.
- Year-end or quarter-end is approaching without clear readiness.
- Leadership needs to know whether the problem is people, process, controls, technology, capacity, or a combination.
You do not need to diagnose the problem before calling us. Determining what is actually wrong is part of the work.
Built around The Payroll Resilience Framework™.
Payroll Resilience is an organization's ability to consistently deliver accurate, compliant, and uninterrupted payroll despite leadership transitions, regulatory change, technology modernization, or unexpected disruption. It is not measured by whether payroll ran successfully this week. It is measured by whether payroll can keep performing when circumstances change. We evaluate it across nine interconnected dimensions, each tested against the PROVE Method™: Prescribed, Repeatable, Observable, Verified, Evolving.
Leadership
True executive ownership, sponsorship, and escalation support for payroll risk.
Governance
Payroll decisions, roles, policies, and controls are intentionally owned and governed.
People & Capacity
Enough skill, capacity, and redundancy to operate without key-person dependency.
Process & Knowledge
Payroll work is repeatable, documented, and transferable, not tribal knowledge.
Controls & Assurance
The organization can prevent, detect, correct, and prove payroll accuracy.
Compliance & Regulatory Change
The organization can identify, implement, and sustain payroll legal requirements.
Technology & Data
Systems, integrations, access, and data reliably support payroll.
Continuity & Recovery
Payroll can continue and recover when people, systems, or vendors are unavailable.
Ecosystem & Handoffs
Upstream and downstream partners reliably provide what payroll needs, on time.
Get Your Complimentary Resilience Score Book a Complimentary Strategy Session
Situations we have helped navigate.
The following examples reflect prior leadership and advisory experience. Details have been generalized to protect employer and client confidentiality.
Payroll depended on institutional knowledge
- Situation
- Important payroll deadlines, workarounds, reconciliations, and escalation procedures were known primarily by one experienced leader.
- What was at risk
- The company could complete payroll while that person was present, but continuity was uncertain during leave, resignation, retirement, or unexpected absence.
- Work performed
- Critical activities were identified, knowledge dependencies were mapped, documentation priorities were established, and backup ownership was clarified.
- What changed
- Leadership gained a clearer understanding of where the organization was vulnerable and what needed to be documented, transferred, and assigned.
Unclear ownership between payroll, HR, and finance
- Situation
- Errors and delays occurred because multiple departments participated in payroll-impacting decisions without clear responsibility.
- What was at risk
- Important changes could be assumed, delayed, duplicated, or completed without the right approval.
- Work performed
- The end-to-end process was reviewed, decision points were identified, and ownership was clarified across payroll, HR, finance, operations, and system administration.
- What changed
- Leadership received clearer decision rights, escalation paths, and accountability.
A new payroll leader inherited unresolved risk
- Situation
- A new leader entered the organization without a reliable picture of open issues, system weaknesses, upcoming deadlines, or stakeholder expectations.
- What was at risk
- The first several months could be consumed by discovering problems instead of leading the function.
- Work performed
- Current-state concerns were organized, stakeholders and responsibilities were mapped, priorities were ranked, and a 30/60/90 leadership plan was developed.
- What changed
- The incoming leader had a structured starting point and leadership had a clearer method for measuring progress.
"One of us has run payroll. One of us has answered for it."
Trina sees how payroll breaks operationally. Molly sees how those failures affect controls, cash, reporting, and leadership decisions. Together, they give executives a complete view of payroll risk.
Staffing firms fill the seat. Payroll providers run the system. Workforce Integrity Partners gives executives an independent view of the risk, stabilizes ownership, and protects the function before, during, and after any transition.
Trina Aguirre
Managing Partner, Payroll & Operations Advisory
25 years of payroll and HR leadership. 12 years at ADP. Former Director of Payroll at Stanford Children's Health.
Molly Travis, MBA
Managing Partner, Business & Financial Advisory
30+ years of corporate finance leadership. Career controller. ERP implementations, M&A, and executive decision support.
Payroll is not merely a process. It is a promise.
Behind every payroll cycle are people who are counting on it.
Workforce Integrity Partners exists to help organizations build stronger payroll capabilities by strengthening the processes, governance, controls, knowledge, relationships, and organizational support that payroll depends upon.
We believe payroll deserves to be considered with the same strategic seriousness as every other critical business function, not because of title or hierarchy, but because of its impact on people, financial integrity, compliance, organizational trust, and business continuity.
We believe organizations should understand their payroll operations before weaknesses force themselves into view through errors, disruption, leadership transitions, regulatory issues, employee complaints, or other crises.
And we believe the people who carry the responsibility for payroll deserve the organizational understanding, resources, and support necessary to succeed.
We don’t run payroll. We make sure payroll keeps running.
Our methods will evolve. Our frameworks will improve. Technology will change.
Our commitment to helping people and strengthening organizations through integrity will not.
Most PAGA exposure doesn’t start with a lawsuit. It starts with an ordinary payroll process.
California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) lets employees seek civil penalties for Labor Code violations. The root cause is rarely payroll itself. It usually begins upstream: a manager’s timekeeping practice, a late HR handoff, a compensation workflow, or a policy that no longer matches daily behavior. Payroll is simply where it becomes visible.
For notices filed on or after June 19, 2024, employers who can demonstrate they took “all reasonable steps” may qualify for reduced maximum penalties: 15% when qualifying steps were already underway before notice, or 30% when qualifying prospective steps begin within 60 days after notice. That creates a clear, practical reason to find and correct payroll weaknesses now, before a notice arrives, or quickly after one does.
Before a Notice
A California Payroll Resilience Readiness Review identifies weak handoffs, tests the evidence, and builds a prioritized corrective-action roadmap.
After a Notice or Claim
We trace root causes, support correction, and help build sustainable controls, working alongside your employment counsel, who leads legal strategy.
Book a Complimentary Strategy Session
Workforce Integrity Partners provides payroll operations and business-risk advisory services, not legal advice, legal-compliance determinations, or guaranteed claim prevention. Employment counsel interprets the law and directs legal strategy.
Straight talk, in writing.
Leadership Continuity
Your payroll leader resigned: the first 72 hours
Your first job is not filling the seat. It is finding out what only that person knows.
Read the articleControls and Risk
Seven signs payroll depends on one person
The most common payroll risk we see, and the least visible from the executive floor.
Read the articleExecutive Governance
The CFO's payroll continuity checklist
Fifteen questions. More than three pauses means payroll runs on people, not structure.
Read the articleFrequently asked questions.
Who is Workforce Integrity Partners for?
CFOs, CHROs, controllers, and executive teams who need an independent view of payroll risk. Our work fits best for organizations with 100 or more employees, multiple payroll stakeholders, or a payroll function going through change.
What is a Payroll Risk & Continuity Review?
An independent, executive-level engagement that shows leadership where payroll is exposed, what depends on individual people, where ownership and approvals are unclear, and what to fix first. It ends with an executive presentation and a prioritized 30/60/90 stabilization roadmap.
What does it cost?
Every organization is different, so every engagement is scoped to your size, locations, systems, and urgency. After a complimentary strategy session, you receive a clear written proposal with scope and investment before any work begins.
Do you run payroll or replace our payroll provider?
No. We do not run payroll, sell software, or place staff. We give leadership an independent view of the risk, then help install the ownership, controls, documentation, and coverage that keep payroll running.
Do you work with employment attorneys on PAGA matters?
Yes. Before a notice, we help California employers find and correct payroll weaknesses. After a notice or claim, we trace root causes and support correction while employment counsel leads legal strategy. We do not provide legal advice.
Where are you located?
We are based in Rocklin, California, and work with employers in Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, across California, and nationwide. Engagements can be delivered on site or remotely.
How do we get started?
Book a complimentary 30-minute Payroll Resilience Strategy Session with a senior advisor. We identify what changed, clarify the most immediate exposure, and recommend the logical next step, whether or not it involves us.
Get a clear view of what is putting payroll at risk.
Thirty minutes with a senior advisor. Complimentary, focused, and confidential. You will leave with an initial perspective on the exposure, its urgency, and the most logical path forward.
Book a Complimentary Strategy Session
Not ready to talk? Take the Payroll Resilience Score Download the 2026 Payroll Executive Brief