MainStreet and Finch — A match made in tax credit heaven

MainStreet is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that helps thousands of startups and SMBs discover and claim hundreds of local, state, and federal tax credit and incentive programs in minutes.

Every year, $100B is set aside by local, state, and federal representatives to help SMBs and startups turn their dreams into reality. But, claiming these credits is time-intensive, expensive, and often-times, unpredictable — so billions sit unclaimed for years, waiting for founders to discover them.

MainStreet automatically qualifies companies for 200+ local, state, and federal tax programs and wins them back what they are owed in minutes — instead of the hundreds of hours it would take an expert accountant to understand and apply to these programs.

• 💰 $65M+ in tax credits found and claimed, with an average of $51,040 saved per company
• 🕓 Two minutes — Customers can connect their payroll and HR systems and onboard to MainStreet in minutes using Finch
• 📊 Two days — The integration with Finch took two days, instead of the 8+ months it would have taken to build the integrations internally.

Without Finch — Manual AE-Assisted Onboarding

Before Finch, MainStreet’s team of Account Executives (AE) onboarded every customer manually, working with them to add MainStreet as a third-party admin to their payroll platform. Then, their in-house operations team manually exported the relevant data and manually formatted the various fields. Painful for customers, and time-intensive for MainStreet: a lose-lose.

MainStreet needed a way to let SMBs quickly and securely share their historical payroll data without an AE’s help over the phone. Payroll data is essential to their business — without it, they wouldn’t be able to authenticate data or generate the required paperwork for each tax credit.

With Finch — Automated Self-Serve Onboarding

Now, with Finch, onboarding takes minutes. Customers authorize MainStreet to retrieve data from their payroll and HR systems in moments, and they’re good to go forever — MainStreet can now programmatically pull the data they need in real-time across multiple payroll and HR systems.

1. Finch Connect, Finch’s secure front-end module, prompts customers to choose their payroll provider.
2. Customers authenticate their payroll accounts and authorize a set of permissions by entering their admin credentials.
3. That’s it! In just a few seconds, MainStreet can start retrieving payroll data.

And… post-onboarding, Finch’s historical data access and standardized schema lets MainStreet streamline their data ingestion to their proprietary tax credit algorithms no matter what provider their clients use — Gusto, ADP, TriNet, Justworks, Finch supports it all.

Finch let us streamline MainStreet’s onboarding flow and gain access to crucial compensation data required to make complex tax credit calculations. Now we can move even faster and save more startups more money when they need it most. — Dan Lindquist, Cofounder & CPO

Integrating with Finch was simple. It took just a week vs. six months of engineering and business development efforts required for even a single payroll integration.

Engineering time is one of our most valuable resources. We worked closely with Finch’s engineers to ensure a smooth integration — they have been incredibly quick to add new providers while continuing to add functionality to make our lives easier. They’re an absolute delight. — Daniel Griffin, Cofounder & CTO

Strengthening partnership

Implementing Finch was just the beginning of a long-term relationship that’s already starting to pay dividends. Every time Finch supports a new payroll provider MainStreet automatically receives access to that integration without lifting a finger. Greater coverage means MainStreet can offer more SMBs access to the government credits they deserve.

Making our customers feel comfortable with our onboarding and product is our top priority — Finch’s secure, smooth, and professional product puts founders at ease during onboarding and gives us access to the surprisingly fragmented landscape of payroll providers we need. — Nick Abouzeid, Head of Marketing

Finch is always looking to partner with innovators like MainStreet, so if you’re building a product that can leverage payroll and HR data sign up to test out our API here.