For your Finance Team - How Alice Works for Employers

What is Alice?

Alice serves your company with commuter benefits based on what employees actually spend. This means that they do not need to prepay or purchase passes through your company. Instead, they connect their normal spending cards and accounts to Alice or use Alice Card to pay for mass transit and parking as needed. We confirm their transactions with them to keep them compliant and process their spending on payroll in accordance with IRS limits. 

How does it work for employees?

If an employee spends using their regular cards, Alice creates a deduction and a reimbursement in payroll for the amount they spend. This “netted deduction” method protects the amount spent by the employee from taxes, which raises their net pay. 

If an employee spends using Alice Card, they’ve already been “reimbursed” since their transaction went through. They will have a deduction on payroll to offset the transaction. That creates the same increase in net pay. Alice then withdraws the amount from your payroll bank account to balance your books. In this case, there will not be an on-payroll reimbursement.

This means that in order to properly serve your employees, Alice must be connected to your payroll bank account.

What does it cost for our business?

Alice only charges you based on actual employee spending. Every pay period, we calculate the federal, local, and state taxes that your company saved by reducing taxable income with Alice. That’s our fee. This means that even though your Alice bill may fluctuate between pay periods, you still come out even — and you’re offering a simple, straightforward, and compliant commuter benefit that increases employee net pay at no additional cost to you.

We automatically charge your connected payment method (which must be connected separately from your payroll bank account) every pay period.