Payroll & Bookkeeping Specialist

About Us and Why We’re Hiring

We’re YNAB (“why-nab”), a financial education company with a money management app. We teach four habits that change your relationship with money—one where you love how you spend and celebrate how you save. For nearly two decades, people have been using YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. Check out our community on Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit (really!), or read some of our app reviews, and you’ll see what we mean. We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.

It will come as no surprise that we’re all passionate about finances over here, but our Accounting Specialist, Lauren, takes the cake. Lauren’s passion and dedication to excellence, along with YNAB’s increasing size and complexity, has turned her job into two and now we need—you! As our new Payroll & Bookkeeping Specialist, you’ll be responsible for all spend-related areas. You’ll run both stateside and international… payroll, manage accounts payable, spend, and team stipends, and, as needed, assist with the month-end financials and our budget processes.

You’re the person we’re looking for if you continually seek ownership and growth. You relish the fact that payroll happens often, because it means you can continually iterate and make our processes more efficient and easier for your teammates. You find joy in helping others, and go out of your way to answer personal paycheck questions or explain difficult payroll situations in a way that’s clear, concise, and kind. Which leads us to your next amazing quality: You’re an excellent communicator. You’re not the gatekeeper for what spending is and is not okay, but you excel (get it?) at helping people understand the intent of the budget. You provide spending guidance and information that empowers them to make spending decisions and complete individual and team purchases. Most of all, you’re extremely detail-oriented and deadline-driven—because making sure everyone gets paid accurately and on time is no small task. We know you’re up to the challenge, though!

Requirements (these are real, actual requirements)

In this role, you’ll have four main responsibilities:
• Your primary focus will be payroll. Our teammates live all over the world, so you’ll need to be comfortable creating and preparing payroll for employees in the US and the UK, and independent contractors in numerous other countries. You’ll ensure that they’re paid on-time, accurately, and with the necessary payroll taxes and deductions withheld on their behalf.
• You’ll own the processes for all of our accounts payable, so we expect that you’ll already have some experience in this area. You’ll make sure all invoices are entered into our accounts payable/spend platform (Airbase), move them through the correct approval flow, and manage all vendor information.
• You’ll also be responsible for managing our team stipends. You should be skilled at creating helpful internal documentation and keeping it up to date, managing and assisting teammates with purchases in Airbase, and delivering proper reporting for the financials.
• Finally, you’ll help with the month-end financials and budget processes. These tasks may vary, but to start you can expect to assist with stipend reconciliations and updating various team expense trackers.

That’s a brief intro to what you’ll be working on. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. Let’s talk a bit about life at YNAB, and then we’ll go into more detail about what we’re looking for.

YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re established, profitable, and in this for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our original Core Value Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably really like it here, and we can’t wait to hear from you!

We live our Core Values every day at YNAB, and we mean it when we say we are an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, beliefs, and experiences is critical to our success, and we are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team that loves working together to build something that matters.

We also work really hard, together, to make working at YNAB an amazing experience, and we’re (humbly) proud to have received many of Fortune’s “great place to work” awards over the last several years. We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. We’d love to introduce you to a few of them!

Who you’ll be working with:

You’ll work most closely with Lauren, our Accounting Specialist, who will also be your manager. Lauren obsesses about numbers and how to explain the story behind them. She loves to budget, and spends her time outside of YNAB teaching others about YNAB. When she’s not jamming on her 10-key, you can catch Lauren attempting a new recipe or trying a new pizza restaurant with her family.

You’ll also work closely with our HR team, Caitlin and KC. Caitlin runs point on most things related to HR—comp, benefits, and state laws to name a few. She loves YNAB and how it allows her to work and be a mom to three ridiculously cute boys. Her happy place is on the beach (preferably Maui) with a Diet Coke in hand. When she’s stuck in the snow in Utah, you can find her reading a book, watching reality TV, and planning her next vacation.

KC rounds out the HR team as our HR Specialist, where she gets to dive into making YNAB the best it can be for our team members. She lives the small-town life with her partner and stepsons in a coastal community in the Pacific Northwest, and has a serious knack for international travel. As a self-proclaimed extrovert, KC’s adapted well to remote-working through her exuberant emoji use (she really wants to :wave: at you right now) and her “is it an Asana comment or is it a stream-of-consciousness diary entry?” style of communication; she looks forward to celebrating your arrival with both!

Bigger picture: You’ll be on the Ops team, so you’ll definitely get to know Chance, Emily, Jess, Charlene, Emma, Sara, and Amber too. Our job is to make working at YNAB the best experience ever—so if the Why behind all the numbers you’re crunching excites you, you’re in good company. We love our people!

Speaking of our people, you’ll probably cross paths with—well—everyone at YNAB. (After all, we all get paid and we all spend money!) We can’t even list them all, really. But we can say that we are all excited to get to know you.

How You’ll Work at YNAB

Now that you’ve met some of your potential future teammates, let’s talk more about YNAB as a company. Here’s how we operate:

Live (Almost) Anywhere You Want

We’ve always been a fully remote team, and have people all over the world. For this particular position, however, we’re only considering candidates based in the United States. Anywhere in the U.S. is fair game though. Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.

Work Four Days a Week

We’ve adopted a four-day work week (still 100% paid!) and rarely work more than that. There are occasions and seasons where things get busy and people put some extra time in—but then we encourage them to take some extra time off, too. We work hard and smart and we care deeply about what we do, but we also love our families and about 2,000 other things. We have perspective and, ultimately, we think it makes us—and our work—even better.

Flex Your Work Schedule

We’re fully remote, so a lot of our work is done asynchronously, but we love working together in real-time when it makes sense. We try to schedule most meetings between 12-3pm Eastern time Monday-Thursday. Outside of your meetings, we trust you to set your own schedule by balancing your team’s needs with your own needs. You don’t need to ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to see the doctor, or be “active” on Slack if you’re working deeply on a project. We look at what you accomplish—not when or how long you’re in front of a computer.

Take Vacation (Seriously)

We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for our company-wide December Break). It’s important to get plenty of downtime and to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your adventures in our #office-wall Slack channel!

Meet Your Team

Some of our best work (and bonding!) is done in person. You’ll generally have the opportunity to meet with your team once or twice a year, at a small-team work-focused meetup or at our company retreat. At the YNAB retreat, we love to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. (It’s actually hard to write that sentence, even knowing it’s such a good joke.) So far, we’ve gone to Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, Laguna Beach, and most recently, Palm Springs. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every time we meet up, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.

Up Your Game

We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. It’s one of our favorite spending categories, and it’s the most important work of our managers. Think conferences, online courses and subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… It’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.

Other Benefits

Our team is spread all over the world—mostly in the United States, but also in the UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and several other countries. Everyone is eligible for our generous paid family leave, vacation, holidays, and sick time.

Since you’ll be in the United States, you’ll also be eligible for our health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. No need to check your vision, you read that right—100%. (Although if you did need to check your vision, NBD, we’ve got you covered!) We also have a Traditional and Roth 401(k) option, where YNAB matches your contributions up to six percent, and matches vest immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)

Competitive Compensation

At YNAB, we’re committed to equitable, market-driven, data-based compensation and we aim to offer a competitive benefits package to our team members. The starting salary for this role will be between $58,000 – $72,000 annually (with the top of that range reserved only for the most experienced candidates). If we decide to make you an offer, we’ll determine the most appropriate number based on what we know about your experience and competency for the role, and then we’ll make you our best offer and hope that you accept! If you join our team, you’ll also be eligible for a raise once a year and for our profit-share twice a year. (YNAB wins, you win—that kind of thing.)

A Few Final Tidbits
• Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!)
• We love to celebrate with you when you complete something on your bucket list—AND, we love using your bucket list as inspiration for your best birthday present(s) ever.
• We want you firing on all cylinders, so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.
• Did we mention that YNAB makes a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!

If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now we want to talk about you, and how you’ll play a big part in keeping YNAB financially strong and streamlined as we grow.

Now back to you, our new Payroll & Bookkeeping Specialist….

As we mentioned earlier, you’ll be responsible for running both stateside and international payroll, managing accounts payable, spend, and team stipends, and, as needed, assisting with the month-end financials and our budget processes. (You must really love numbers, huh?)

Let’s talk a little bit more about what we think your job might look like day-to-day—we can’t wait to see what you do with it!
To own payroll, you’ll:
• Make sure that your teammates in the US, UK, and several other countries (seven and counting!) are paid on-time and accurately. (You got this.)
• Help your teammates with any questions or adjustments.
• Continually try new methods to make payroll more automated, without losing the human touch of helping people 1:1 when they have payroll questions.
• Proactively keep people in the loop about payroll-related items, including direct communications and internal documentation.
• Ensure that we’re compliant with required employer payroll taxes, and all other federal requirements.
• Manage tax registrations for new states (when we hire new people or when people move—we do love to move!).
• Communicate with our HRIS (Paylocity) about state notices, and help troubleshoot errors.
• Review all annual payroll reporting (W2s) to ensure accuracy.
• Handle state audits for payroll-related taxes.
• Manage 401k funding, reporting, and audits.

To manage accounts payable, spend, and team stipends, you’ll:
• Review vendor invoices and shepherd them through our process for further team review.
• Manage vendor banking and tax information, and troubleshoot any invoice issues.
• Maintain (and improve!) our internal documentation for the spend management process, along with reimbursement and stipend policies.
• Support your teammates with stipend purchases via Airbase.
• Update tracking workbooks for stipend budgets, and provide available balance information to your teammates when asked (or proactively!).
• Complete our annual 1099 reporting.
• Review Airbase transactions throughout the month to ensure everything is nice and tidy.
• Continually look for opportunities to improve our processes… and then take the initiative to act on them. (Are you sensing a theme? We’re always looking for ways to improve our team experience by strengthening the underlying processes.)

To assist with financial and budget processes, you’ll:
• Get real cozy with Airbase reports to help us track expenses for meetups, our company retreat, team stipends, and gifts.
• Help us create our company budget by preparing payroll data and other needed spending information.
• Help Lauren with month-end reconciliations and reporting. (Thank you!)

That’s a whopping twenty-one bullet points, but let’s still say that your success as our Payroll & Bookkeeping Specialist comes down to your ability to take ownership of your areas of responsibility, help your teammates in a way that is genuine and kind, and communicate your work clearly and concisely. If this sounds like the kind of work that would light you up, we can’t wait to get to know you