Natalie Morris

Gusto filed taxes in all 50 states but each state had unique deadlines, forms, and rules. The compliance team of 8 manually tracked 200+ filing requirements using spreadsheets. They missed 12 deadlines in Q3, resulting in $340K in penalties passed to customers.

Built a compliance automation system using Retool + Claude. Created a rules engine that parses state tax authority websites for deadline changes, auto-generates filing checklists, and routes tasks to specialists. Integrated with Gusto's payroll system for automatic data population.

Zero missed deadlines in the 12 months since launch. Reduced compliance team from 8 to 3 FTEs while handling 40% more filings. Eliminated $340K/quarter penalty exposure. System now covers 1,200+ unique filing requirements.

During an IRS audit, the team spent 3 weeks assembling documentation because records were scattered across email, Slack, and Google Drive.

Designed a centralized audit trail system in Notion with automated logging from Zapier. Every compliance action now generates a timestamped record with the responsible party and supporting documents.

Audit response time dropped from 3 weeks to 2 days. Passed next IRS audit with zero findings.