The problem: Manual benefits, payroll mistakes
MR Diagnostic Services is a Wisconsin-based e-commerce company, founded in 2015, that sells veterinary diagnostic equipment to veterinary practices across the country. The team holds steady at around eight people, including the owners.
The company didn't offer health benefits at all until 2021, when it learned it could give employees money to choose their own coverage. Employees liked the choice. The admin was another story. Every plan assignment and payroll deduction was calculated and entered by hand. More than once, a plan change and a paycheck fell out of sync, and an employee had too much or too little deducted for that pay period.
The manual work became co-owner Samuel Decker's problem once he took over the company's benefits. In 2024, he went looking for a replacement and landed on Thatch. The deciding factor was how directly it connected to Gusto, the payroll platform the company already ran on. For Decker, nothing else offered both real plan choice and that payroll connection.
The result: Payroll that updates itself, and coverage that fits every employee
What changed most is invisible to employees but obvious to Decker. When someone is hired, has a qualifying life event, or switches plans at open enrollment, Thatch sends the change straight to Gusto. He's not calculating deductions by hand anymore.
Employees see the other half of the benefit. Decker's team ranges in age from 24 to 68, and everyone lives in Wisconsin. Even so, no two employees ended up on the same plan. That makes sense once you think about where each person is in life. Someone just starting out at 24 doesn't need the same plan as someone nearing retirement at 68, and across one small team, that adds up to six different choices.