Build payroll your way: Why Salsa gives you control without compromise

Legacy payroll platforms are often rigid, brittle, and full of hidden limitations. Change anything, and you’re stuck navigating workarounds that weren’t designed for how modern platforms operate. Embedded payroll providers promised more flexibility, but many still force teams into all-or-nothing integrations or weeks of rework to fit their edge cases.

Salsa was built differently. We believe payroll infrastructure should feel more like Legos – a system of composable, reliable blocks you can snap together, rearrange, or build on top of. Whether you're embedding payroll into your platform or powering logic behind the scenes, Salsa gives you full control – without compromising compliance, scalability, or speed.

Build with the blocks you need

Not every team wants the same payroll experience. Some need embeddable screens to move fast. Others prefer full control, plugging directly into APIs with their own logic and UI.

Salsa is built to support both – and everything in between. Think of it like Lego blocks for payroll: modular components that can be used independently or snapped together, depending on how you want to build. Drop in onboarding or tax setup screens, or skip them and go fully custom. Each block works on its own or as part of a larger system.

What makes Salsa different is how well our platform adapts to the data structure and UI architecture partners already have. Our embeddable components are designed to complement – not replace – your systems. We collect only the information you don’t already have, which prevents duplicate data entry and avoids forcing your team into an all-or-nothing integration approach. Most payroll platforms require you to either fully adopt their frontend or build your own from scratch – costing months of design, product, and engineering time. Salsa gives you a third, better option.

That flexibility extends into the details that matter most to your user experience. For example:

• You can embed help links that lead directly to your own support docs.
• You can mark key fields as read-only, allowing our partners to lock down inputs while maintaining transparency and user guidance.
• And you can control how our UI appears  –  whether as side-panel drawers, modals, or fully inline. We wrote more about that here.

Combined, this level of configurability allows Salsa to blend seamlessly into your product, not sit beside it – offering the most brand-aligned experience on the market.

Whether you're managing worker onboarding, benefits, payroll runs, or reporting, you can start with one piece and scale up over time – without replatforming or reworking your product.

At the core of this modular flexibility is Salsa’s metadata-driven architecture. Complex workflows – like jurisdiction-specific tax setup – aren’t hardcoded into rigid screens. This architecture gives you the building blocks to create a seamless, scalable payroll experience – tailored to your product, not constrained by ours.

And while flexibility matters, it’s only valuable when backed by infrastructure you can trust.

Confidence in every block

Flexibility doesn’t mean cutting corners. Salsa was built by people who’ve spent decades in payroll – and know how high the stakes can be. Behind the components, overrides, and APIs is a system designed to ensure everything runs in a compliant, auditable, and transparent way.

We don’t just hand you the building blocks and walk away. Our team of payroll, compliance, and engineering experts works with partners to ensure their configurations are accurate and sound. Whether you're launching in a single state or across many, we help you stay within the rules while building something unique to your platform.

Ultimately, we want every partner to feel confident they’re running efficient, compliant payroll – without having to contort their business to fit a rigid system.

Let’s build it together

Salsa isn’t a closed-off product. It’s infrastructure made for builders.

You bring the blueprint – a vision for how payroll should work in your product. We provide the foundational components, override tools, and expert support to help you assemble it – block by block, in a way that fits.

Whether you need a few pieces to complete your product, or you’re laying the groundwork for a fully custom experience, Salsa lets you build payroll your way – and do it right.