Introducing the Provider Sandbox: Your Testing Ground for HR & Payroll Integrations

Software sandboxes offer a controlled environment where developers can play, explore, and learn about a product without real-world consequences. While Finch has always had a sandbox for our API, we’re excited to share a brand new sandbox experience that will help developers test our integrations with specific HR and payroll providers. We call it the Provider Sandbox.

What is the Provider Sandbox?

The Provider Sandbox is the easiest way to test our integrations with HR and payroll providers. It provides a realistic environment where developers can initiate an external connection with live providers like Gusto and Deel — and receive data from demo and trial accounts.

The beauty of the Provider Sandbox is the ability to test live, external connections with specific providers. It’s as realistic as you can get outside of a live customer scenario. That means you can test everything our API offers – like request forwarding and data syncs – just as you would a production account.

The Value of Dummy Data from Providers

Each HR and payroll provider is unique. They offer different features, specialize in different industries and customer sizes, and even if the data they store is similar – the way that they manage the data is different. Without actually connecting to providers’ systems during the testing phase, it’s difficult to know what data you’ll actually have access to. And that makes it tricky to test your unique use case. 

With the Provider Sandbox, you can test for specific field support and understand specific nuances of a provider - for example how contractors are handled in the system. Most importantly, you’ll be able to update your demo company within the provider’s dashboard, resync with Finch, and see those changes reflected in the Finch API response. This is the simplest way to realize the power of Finch without having to worry about using a live customer – or worse, your own payroll account – to test.

How to Connect To Your First Demo or Trial Account

In order to use the Provider Sandbox, you’ll need to first set up a demo or trial account with a supported provider. Then, you can modify the data in your account, sync with Finch, and understand how those changes are reflected in the Finch API. Getting comfortable with this back and forth can help you feel more confident that this provider can support your use case.

Currently, the Provider Sandbox supports Gusto, Deel, and Square demo accounts and BambooHR, Bob, Humaans, Personio, Sage, Square, and Zenefits trial accounts. 

In the demo below, you can see the process of setting up a demo account and testing your first connection with Gusto. 

Experiment with Finch’s API and Dashboard

Connecting to an external provider is only the first step. With the Provider Sandbox, you can use this connection to test many of Finch’s API and Dashboard features.

For example, say you’re building a financial forecasting product, and require weekly working hours from Personio. While this isn’t supported in our standardized data model, it is possible to access it with Finch Request Forwarding. Simply use our /Forward API to request data from Personio in their native API data model. Once the raw data is returned, you can understand exactly how this data can be utilized in your production application. To see how this works, watch our Request Forwarding demo.

This is just one example of how you might use the Finch API to experiment with provider data. Please note that Request Forwarding is only available for active customers on our scale plan.

Conclusion

Together, we hope both our Provider Sandbox and Finch Sandbox can help developers test exciting new applications of Finch without having to worry about the sensitivity of live customer data and PII. 

Our Provider Sandbox is free for developers. If you’re already a Finch customer, get started by visiting your Sandbox Application in the Finch Dashboard. If not, sign up for free.