Fizz Social Uses Wingspan To Save $150k & Scale Their 1099 Network to 200 Campuses

Fizz is a booming social platform with a bold mission: creating safe, authentic social media communities for college students. With over $40 million in funding, the two-year old company has created private campus-specific networks at over 200 colleges across the country. Fizz engages students as contractors to work as brand ambassadors and to moderate their campus’ network. 

‍At first, Fizz relied largely on its finance team to manage the process of onboarding and paying its ambassadors. But as the company began scaling, that process became time intensive and expensive. Looking for a partner that could support its ambitious growth, Fizz decided to switch to Wingspan to streamline its onboarding, payment and compliance processes. 

Challenge

Fizz was initially using a standard payroll software to pay its student ambassadors. That process required the company to enter each contractor’s payment amount manually. 

“I was in charge of making campus payments,” said Astrid Sanchez, Fizz’s Operations Manager. “The platform didn’t let us upload spreadsheets with payment information, and it had plenty of bugs.” 

Despite its limitations, the system was tolerable when the business was in fewer campuses. “We could handle data entry for a few hundred students,” said Srini Srinivasan, Fizz’s VP. 

However, the platform became more cumbersome as the company grew to over 200 campuses. Srinivasan and his team didn’t have enough time to enter payment amounts for thousands of contractors.

Beyond the slow and inefficient payment processes, Fizz had another issue—students were often skeptical about working for the company. “They hear us committing to pay and assume there’s a catch,” said Srinivasan. 

The company relies almost exclusively on students to generate buzz about their social network, so retaining them is critical. Fizz’s leadership team knew they needed to show students their business model was credible to earn their trust and grow their network.

Solution

Srinivasan and his team began searching for a platform that could scale alongside its business as it continued its rapid expansion across the country. They were looking for a centralized system to automate manually-intensive workflows associated with getting their 1099 ambassadors onboarded correctly, paid quickly and properly supported. 

The company found Wingspan after looking for a solution online that handled onboarding, payroll and compliance for large scale contractor networks. During an intro call, Srinivasan and his team were impressed with the company’s vision, momentum, and its purpose-built capabilities. “The idea that Fizz and Wingspan could grow together was attractive to us,” said Srinivasan. 

Fizz was especially interested with Wingspan’s bulk payment feature which would allow it to automate verification and payments for hundreds of contractors. Sanchez and her team could now approve and issue payments for thousands of contractors in just a few clicks, saving her several hours each week. Just as importantly, this automation made the payment experience simple and reliable for Fizz’s ambassadors.

“Because of Wingspan, our students know they can rely on their Fizz payment,” says Srinivasan. 

Wingspan automatically requests bank information from students and ensures their payments are made on time, via their preferred payment methods. Moreover, a help desk provided by Wingspan helps resolve any support issues contractors may have and frees up Sanchez and her team to focus on other priorities. 

Beyond making faster payments, Wingspan also ensures Fizz meets the IRS' filing deadlines. The platform automatically generates 1099-NEC forms based on verified W-9 data and handles e-filing for every student, giving Srinivasan and his team peace of mind. “When you work with thousands of contractors, it’s a huge relief to know you don’t have to worry about compliance risks,” said Srinivasan. Once Fizz fully integrated Wingspan with their processes, the company stopped using their previous payroll system altogether.

Results

Before using Wingspan, Srinivasan and his team spent up to five hours a week verifying information and entering payment amounts for thousands of students. Sanchez spent nearly half of her time just making payments. “We’ve saved more than 25 hours a month by letting Wingspan automate these critical payment processes,” said Srinivasan. 

“We’re also paying our ambassadors 3 times faster which they love.” 

Srinivasan estimates he would need two full-time employees to do all the work that Wingspan does, everything from verifying student TINs and requesting tax documentation to paying students on time and generating accurate 1099 forms. “We don’t have to worry about privacy and tax compliance now that we’re using Wingspan,” said Srinivasan. 

Wingspan also gave Fizz the credibility it needed to build students’ trust in its business. “Students could see we were doing everything a reputable business should do: collecting their tax credentials, paying them on time, filing 1099s at the end of the year, and providing support throughout the filing process,” said Srinivasan. 

To other finance and operations leaders managing large 1099 workforces, Srinivasan recommends Wingspan wholeheartedly. “It’s a fully-baked solution with a dependable staff,” he said.

“Wingspan is a critical part of our infrastructure. At this point, we’d be lost without it.”