About Lead & Gain

Lead & Gain is a global employer of record specializing in providing US-based payroll, compliance, and employee management solutions for international staffing firms. Founded in 2019, the company serves global recruitment agencies that need a compliant and efficient solution for managing temp workers in the US. Their mission is to streamline payroll and compliance for staffing agencies, allowing them to focus on business growth.

Lead & Gain’s clients span a wide range of industries, including IT, pharmaceuticals, biotech, life sciences, engineering, construction, oil and gas, and financial services. Whether a staffing agency needs to place workers in IT roles or manage construction site teams, Lead & Gain handles the backend payroll processing seamlessly.

The Challenge: Manual Payroll Processes and Inefficient Systems 

Before partnering with Zeal, Lead & Gain relied on Gusto for payroll, but the system proved cumbersome, error-prone, and limiting which prevented them from scaling. Payroll processing involved manually entering worker information, pay rates, and hours, often requiring multiple exports for each pay period. This process not only increased the risk of errors but also consumed a full day of the payroll team’s time each week.

Additionally, Lead & Gain needed to handle complex payroll scenarios common in staffing, including managing off-cycle payrolls and back payments. Each off-cycle payroll was treated as a separate run, requiring reopening previous periods and manually entering data, leading to confusion and inefficiency.

The Solution: An API-Driven Payroll System

While Lead & Gain evaluated multiple payroll providers, Zeal stood out for its API-first approach and willingness to develop custom integrations for benefits and 401(k) plans. Zeal’s APIs allowed Lead & Gain to automate payroll processing, significantly reducing manual entry and eliminating the need for endless CSV imports and exports.

“With Zeal, we were able to integrate pretty much every piece of the puzzle with the API,” explained Josh Gitman, CEO of Lead & Gain. “It’s really just cut down our payroll processing from basically an entire full day for our payroll team down to minutes. The processing itself is minutes, and we can click a button, create hundreds of paychecks, and approve them right in our system. It’s been a huge time saver.”

Zeal’s team worked closely with Lead & Gain to develop integrations for healthcare insurance and 401(k) plans, which were critical for retaining talent and meeting client demands. The flexible API setup meant that all data, from timekeeping to expense reporting, could be seamlessly integrated into Zeal’s system, allowing payroll to be processed in minutes rather than hours.

Results: A Future-Proof Payroll System

 Since implementing Zeal, Lead & Gain has achieved:

• 25% reduction in payroll processing time: Automated workflows reduced payroll from a full day to just minutes. 
• Elimination of manual data entry: Integrating with the API allowed them to replace CSV exports, reducing human error. 
• Enhanced reporting capabilities: Implementing Zeal allowed Lead & Gain to access better reporting including cost and profit projections, broken down by location and worker classification.
• Improved employee satisfaction: The seamless integration of healthcare insurance and 401(k) benefits made workers more happy and helped Lead & Gain stay competitive. 
• Faster support and troubleshooting: Zeal’s responsive customer support replaced the slow and inefficient ticketing systems of previous providers.

“One of the things that really stood out for me about Zeal was the ease of use. Obviously, this is an API-driven platform, and the APIs were very easy to build on… the time it took to build and go live with the integration wasn’t nearly as clunky and drawn out as it probably could have been with some other payroll APIs out there.”
– Josh Gitman, CEO of Lead & Gain

The Impact: Scaling with Confidence 

With Zeal’s reliable payroll and integration capabilities, Lead & Gain is positioned to continue its rapid growth, expanding its workforce and client base without worrying about payroll inefficiencies. As they move forward, Lead & Gain plans to leverage Zeal’s capabilities to further streamline operations and support their mission of providing compliant, efficient payroll solutions for global staffing firms.