Steve Fentriss, CEO and Co-FounderHCM TradeSeal was founded to simplify prevailing wage compliance for companies working on public projects across complex legal jurisdictions. From large national contractors to specialized utilities and service providers, its platform, TradeSeal, has earned recognition for helping reduce compliance errors, simplify reporting, and future-proof internal payroll operations. One such client—a 5,000-employee enterprise operating across multiple states, unions, and systems like Viewpoint Vista—successfully leveraged the platform to unify its compliance processes and reduce risk at scale.
While many tools treat compliance as secondary, TradeSeal is purpose-built for prevailing wage and union workforce management complexities. Companies in these sectors often face a patchwork of regulations—from state-specific wage determinations to local union agreements and fringe benefit reporting standards. Managing these manually or through generic HR and payroll tools increases non-compliance risk, slows down internal processes, and puts undue strain on administrative teams.
TradeSeal addresses this by integrating directly with existing ERP and payroll platforms, ensuring seamless data exchange through robust APIs. It offers advanced compliance tools, like a rate validation screen that verifies wages based on job classification, location, and project terms before payroll processing. The platform also auto-validates timecards, worker classifications, and fringe benefit rates, helping resolve discrepancies early.
The solution's support for nuanced scenarios like multi-role assignments, city-specific union terms, and intricate wage tables makes it especially powerful. TradeSeal’s flexible compliance logic ensures these cases are handled accurately and consistently. It even includes an AI-powered wage setup feature that automatically interprets and digitizes new union agreements, translating complex contract language into system-ready rules.
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What is unique is how we have brought compliance, payroll, and technology thinking into one product. We did not build this in a vacuum—we built it with the teams who live these problems daily. That is why it works
“Nothing else out there gives you this level of visibility and control across prevailing wage and union compliance. We have built this platform to make payroll teams feel like they are operating with a safety net, not on a tightrope,” says Liz Everson, Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer for TradeSeal.
Clients have praised the platform for what it does and how it does—providing clarity through automation while offering enough transparency to keep teams in control. The objective is to streamline and enhance payroll operations by equipping teams with advanced tools. This enables them to minimize time spent on error resolution and focus more on supporting strategic workforce initiatives.
Reducing Compliance Burdens, Increasing Operational Confidence
In unionized and publicly funded industries, compliance requirements burden payroll and HR departments substantially. Manually compiling reports, reconciling fringe benefit deductions, and submitting them to various agencies can consume hours each week. Beyond that, any unintentional inconsistency can result in fines, delays in payment, or reputational harm.
HCM TradeSeal addresses these challenges by embedding compliance directly into payroll operations. Rather than correcting issues after submission, the platform enables preventive compliance. A built-in rate validation screen flags wage discrepancies before payroll is processed, ensuring alignment with project-specific wage determinations. If an employee transitions between roles midweek, each requiring different pay rates, TradeSeal will automatically identify and apply the correct rates. The platform also supports the generation of certified payroll reports tailored to agency-specific requirements and performs automated fringe benefit calculations, including retroactive corrections if needed.
This functionality is especially valuable as many companies still rely on spreadsheets and ad hoc tools for reporting. Clients report saving up to eight hours per week per payroll staff member by automating report generation, wage validation, and compliance tracking. This time savings boosts efficiency and allows HR teams to focus on higher-value strategic work.
Data accuracy is another critical area TradeSeal addresses. Inconsistencies can lead to costly errors in decentralized organizations. The platform enforces standardized workflows, ensuring accuracy and consistency. By integrating directly with leading ERP and payroll systems via API, TradeSeal reduces the risk of errors during data transfer and eliminates manual reconciliations. Each payroll team works from the same source of truth, improving operational reliability and audit readiness.
The impact of HCM TradeSeal extends beyond day-to-day operations, offering strategic HR value. By reducing administrative burdens and improving compliance accuracy, businesses can confidently scale. As organizations grow, TradeSeal scales with them, meeting rising compliance demands without increasing headcount.
“What is unique is how we have brought compliance, payroll, and technology thinking into one product. We did not build this in a vacuum—we built it with the teams who live these problems daily. That is why it works,” says Steve Fentriss, CEO and co-founder of HCM TradeSeal.
Enabling Strategic Growth in a Changing Regulatory Landscape
Prevailing wage compliance is evolving rapidly as new state and federal rules tie public funding to strict wage and reporting standards. Sectors like renewable energy, broadband, and advanced manufacturing now face expanded obligations, while private employers in adjacent industries—like logistics and fabrication—are adopting these principles to stay competitive.
TradeSeal evolves alongside these changes. Onboarding is collaborative and efficient, with implementation teams helping define requirements, providing team trainings, and ensure a smooth go-live.
In addition, the platform’s union engine digitizes the most complex contracts, ensuring that payroll logic reflects the current terms of each agreement. Leveraging AI, the system automatically interprets and converts new union agreements into structured, digital logic—eliminating manual setup and reducing inconsistencies across departments or job sites. This ensures a consistent, streamlined approach to configuring union compensation logic and compliance rules, regardless of how individual branches previously handled them.
As a result, organizations benefit from a unified system that scales cleanly and reduces reliance on institutional knowledge. By embedding institutional knowledge within the system rather than relying on individual employees, organizations can ensure continuity and minimize disruption caused by staff turnover. TradeSeal is a central hub for workforce compliance—an asset that increases in value as the company grows.
HCM TradeSeal's leadership sees compliance maturing from a reactive obligation into a strategic advantage. Companies that proactively embrace compliance with the right tools will lead in highly regulated industries—not just keeping up but setting the pace.
