Working with Webhooks

Check emits webhooks about many events that happen asynchronously. For example, when payments land, or fail to land, in employee bank accounts, or when Check successfully validates a bank account (or finds it to be invalid), Check will send out webhooks.

But what should you do with those webhooks? To create the best possible payroll product experience, and reduce the number of inbound questions you receive about common edge cases, we recommend sending employers and employees in-app or email-based notifications when you receive certain webhooks from Check. Below is a short list of edge cases (communicated via webhook) that we recomend notifying employers about.

• Payroll funding failure. This is a common payroll edge case. When Check’s cash requirement debit fails for some reason, we send a webhook about that failure. We also send a Zendesk ticket to your support team about the failure. You should intercept our webhook and also send the employer an email about the failure. This way they can proactively begin to prepare to wire Check funds for the failed payroll. This will make your support teams' lives easier.
• Bank account validation failure. Another relatively common case, when an employee bank account fails validation, Check will send you a webhook about that. You should send an email about the failure to the end employer or employee, indicating that their bank account could not be validated and as a result they will not be able to be paid via direct deposit until they enter a valid account. This will protect your support team from receiving last-minute escalations from employers who realize on their approval deadline that their employee doesn’t have a valid account on file.
• SSN validations. Now that we are exposing SSN validation status through our API, You can intercept the webhooks we send about Employees and send the employer an email anytime one of their employees is found to have an invalid SSN by our system. This will protect your support team from end-of-quarter escalations around invalid SSN data.
• Employee and Company Onboard Status. Check always sends webhooks when the onboard_status of a Company, Employee, or Contractor changes. You should watch for changes to onboard_status that Check communicates through webhooks and notify employers via email if their onboard_status ever changes to blocking. This will protect your support team from last-minute escalations from employers who did not realize they were in a blocking status.

This is a preliminary list of suggestions – there are many more notification flows possible here! As we work to build and release your payroll product, the Check team will work closely with you to help set up notification flows for the most important edge cases.