Executive Payroll Risk Advisory
Making Payroll a Strategic Advantage.
Your payroll runs on time. Is it actually under control?
A payroll that runs cleanly can still hide concentrated access, unclear ownership, unresolved reconciliations, and knowledge that lives in one person's head. We give CFOs, CHROs, and controllers an independent, founder-led answer: where payroll is exposed, who owns each risk, and what to fix first.
Fixed-fee Payroll Risk & Continuity Reviews · Approximately 2 to 3 weeks. Every engagement led directly by Trina Aguirre and Molly Travis. U.S. advisory with deep California payroll expertise.
Protecting payroll before it breaks. See what leadership receives →
Built around The Payroll Resilience Framework™.
Payroll Resilience is an organization's ability to consistently deliver accurate, compliant, and uninterrupted payroll despite leadership transitions, regulatory change, technology modernization, or unexpected disruption. It is not measured by whether payroll ran successfully this week. It is measured by whether payroll can keep performing when circumstances change. We evaluate it across nine interconnected dimensions, each tested against the PROVE Method™: Prescribed, Repeatable, Observable, Verified, Evolving.
Leadership
True executive ownership, sponsorship, and escalation support for payroll risk.
Governance
Payroll decisions, roles, policies, and controls are intentionally owned and governed.
People & Capacity
Enough skill, capacity, and redundancy to operate without key-person dependency.
Process & Knowledge
Payroll work is repeatable, documented, and transferable, not tribal knowledge.
Controls & Assurance
The organization can prevent, detect, correct, and prove payroll accuracy.
Compliance & Regulatory Change
The organization can identify, implement, and sustain payroll legal requirements.
Technology & Data
Systems, integrations, access, and data reliably support payroll.
Continuity & Recovery
Payroll can continue and recover when people, systems, or vendors are unavailable.
Ecosystem & Handoffs
Upstream and downstream partners reliably provide what payroll needs, on time.
Find Out: Is Your Payroll an Asset or a Liability? Book a Payroll Risk Call
What executives are really trying to determine.
Is payroll actually controlled, or just being held together?
An on-time payroll does not prove the function is stable. It may only prove that experienced people are quietly correcting problems before leadership sees them.
What could fail without warning?
Leadership needs to know where knowledge, access, authority, deadlines, and critical decisions are concentrated, and what would happen if the current structure were disrupted.
Who owns each payroll risk?
Payroll is affected by decisions made across HR, finance, operations, IT, and external providers. We clarify who owns the decision, who approves it, who verifies it, and who is accountable when something goes wrong.
What needs attention first?
Not every concern is a crisis. We distinguish immediate exposure from longer-term improvement so leadership can act in the right order.
Start with the Payroll Risk & Continuity Review.
Fixed Fee · Founder-Led · Approximately 2 to 3 Weeks
This engagement gives leadership an independent answer to five critical questions:
- Where is payroll currently exposed?
- What depends on individual people instead of documented structure?
- Where are ownership, access, approval, or verification unclear?
- What could affect employees, cash, reporting, deadlines, or business continuity?
- What should leadership fix first, and who should own it?
- Led byTrina Aguirre and Molly Travis, directly. No junior-team handoff and no generic report.
- AfterwardWhen the findings require implementation or ongoing oversight, the Review can lead into a Payroll Stabilization Sprint or the Payroll Continuity Office. Both are optional and scoped from the organization's needs.
Payroll Risk & Continuity Reviews are offered on a fixed-fee basis. Stabilization and ongoing advisory engagements are scoped according to organizational complexity, urgency, systems, locations, and leadership needs.
We do not create panic
We will never manufacture urgency to make a sale.
We do not protect bad processes
We are not here to politely agree that everything is fine.
We do not blame payroll
Payroll often receives the consequences of decisions made upstream. We evaluate the structure, not the scapegoat.
We do not hand over generic advice
Everything connects to owners, deadlines, systems, approvals, coverage, and next steps.
We do not disappear
When findings need to become action, the Stabilization Sprint and the Payroll Continuity Office are the next step.
Companies call us when leadership needs an independent answer.
- A payroll leader has resigned, retired, taken leave, or is struggling.
- One person holds too much knowledge, access, or authority.
- Payroll runs on time, but leadership cannot clearly explain how risks are controlled.
- Reconciliations, adjustments, tax issues, or recurring errors remain unresolved.
- Finance, HR, operations, and payroll disagree about decision ownership.
- A new payroll leader is inheriting an undocumented or unstable function.
- Growth has outpaced the company's payroll structure.
- A merger, acquisition, implementation, or provider change is approaching.
- Year-end or quarter-end is approaching without clear readiness.
- Leadership needs to know whether the problem is people, process, controls, technology, capacity, or a combination.
You do not need to diagnose the problem before calling us. Determining what is actually wrong is part of the work.
What leadership receives.
Advisory should not be abstract. These are the working documents the Review produces.
- Executive Payroll Risk Brief
- Key-Person Dependency Map
- Payroll Authority and Segregation Matrix
- Critical Deadline and Ownership Map
- Documentation and Backup Coverage Inventory
- Leadership Transition Readiness Review
- Executive Escalation Protocol
- Prioritized 30/60/90 Stabilization Roadmap
- Executive presentation of findings and recommendations
- Incoming-Leader Brief, when a transition is underway
Situations we have helped navigate.
The following examples reflect prior leadership and advisory experience. Details have been generalized to protect employer and client confidentiality.
Payroll depended on institutional knowledge
- Situation
- Important payroll deadlines, workarounds, reconciliations, and escalation procedures were known primarily by one experienced leader.
- What was at risk
- The company could complete payroll while that person was present, but continuity was uncertain during leave, resignation, retirement, or unexpected absence.
- Work performed
- Critical activities were identified, knowledge dependencies were mapped, documentation priorities were established, and backup ownership was clarified.
- What changed
- Leadership gained a clearer understanding of where the organization was vulnerable and what needed to be documented, transferred, and assigned.
Unclear ownership between payroll, HR, and finance
- Situation
- Errors and delays occurred because multiple departments participated in payroll-impacting decisions without clear responsibility.
- What was at risk
- Important changes could be assumed, delayed, duplicated, or completed without the right approval.
- Work performed
- The end-to-end process was reviewed, decision points were identified, and ownership was clarified across payroll, HR, finance, operations, and system administration.
- What changed
- Leadership received clearer decision rights, escalation paths, and accountability.
A new payroll leader inherited unresolved risk
- Situation
- A new leader entered the organization without a reliable picture of open issues, system weaknesses, upcoming deadlines, or stakeholder expectations.
- What was at risk
- The first several months could be consumed by discovering problems instead of leading the function.
- Work performed
- Current-state concerns were organized, stakeholders and responsibilities were mapped, priorities were ranked, and a 30/60/90 leadership plan was developed.
- What changed
- The incoming leader had a structured starting point and leadership had a clearer method for measuring progress.
"One of us has run payroll. One of us has answered for it."
Trina sees how payroll breaks operationally. Molly sees how those failures affect controls, cash, reporting, and leadership decisions. Together, they give executives a complete view of payroll risk.
Staffing firms fill the seat. Payroll providers run the system. Workforce Integrity Partners gives executives an independent view of the risk, stabilizes ownership, and protects the function before, during, and after any transition.
Trina Aguirre
Managing Partner, Payroll & Operations Advisory
25 years of payroll and HR leadership. 12 years at ADP. Former Director of Payroll at Stanford Children's Health.
Molly Travis, MBA
Managing Partner, Business & Financial Advisory
30+ years of corporate finance leadership. Career controller. ERP implementations, M&A, and executive decision support.
When findings need to become action.
Scoped Engagement · 4 to 8 Weeks
Payroll Stabilization Sprint
Installs what the Review found missing: decision ownership, escalation protocols, documentation plans, a governance review cadence, and backup coverage requirements.
See the SprintOngoing Advisory · Monthly or Quarterly
The Payroll Continuity Office
Your independent executive layer for payroll risk and governance: standing advisory, transition support, new-leader onboarding and mentoring, and year-end oversight.
See the OfficeStraight talk, in writing.
Leadership Continuity
Your payroll leader resigned: the first 72 hours
Your first job is not filling the seat. It is finding out what only that person knows.
Read the articleControls and Risk
Seven signs payroll depends on one person
The most common payroll risk we see, and the least visible from the executive floor.
Read the articleExecutive Governance
The CFO's payroll continuity checklist
Fifteen questions. More than three pauses means payroll runs on people, not structure.
Read the articleGet a clear view of what is putting payroll at risk.
Twenty minutes with a managing partner. Complimentary, focused, and confidential. You will leave with an initial perspective on the exposure, its urgency, and the most logical path forward.
Not ready to talk? Find out if your payroll is an asset or a liability Download the 2026 Payroll Executive Brief