ADP licensing is the set of terms under which ADP supplies payroll and human capital management software, mostly as hosted services, to employers. Automatic Data Processing, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates describe themselves collectively as “ADP” in their web site terms.[1] The company’s offerings in the retrieved sources include payroll and HR platforms for small, midsized and large employers, time and attendance, talent, benefits, compliance services, a professional employer organization (PEO) service, multi-country payroll, an app marketplace and a developer program.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
ADP differs from most vendors in the wiki in one respect that matters to a software asset manager. It does not publish a master subscription agreement or a price list for its platforms. Its client contract portal says that the documents published there “apply to you only if you have a written agreement with ADP that specifically references them.”[8] Product pages for ADP Workforce Now and RUN offer package comparisons and a pricing enquiry in place of prices.[4][3] The licensing facts that can be cited are therefore spread across several kinds of document, summarised below and treated in the deeper articles.
Editions
ADP names its platforms by the size of employer they are aimed at, and its own documents give slightly different bands. ADP’s developer catalogue describes RUN Powered by ADP as for small businesses, usually clients with up to 50 employees; ADP Workforce Now as for small to mid-size clients, typically with 25-3,000 employees; ADP Workforce Now Next Generation as a newer version sold only to new clients with 25-3,000 employees; and ADP Vantage HCM as for large businesses, typically with over 1,000 employees.[2] The Marketplace partner guide gives 50 to 3,000 employees for Workforce Now and 50 to 1,000 or more for the Next Generation version.[9] These bands are descriptive, not contractual limits. No retrieved document says that exceeding a band changes a licence.
| Product line | What the retrieved documents show | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|
| RUN Powered by ADP | Four packages: Essential Payroll, Enhanced Payroll, Complete Payroll & HR+ and HR Pro Payroll & HR; fee notes for off-cycle payrolls, W-2 and 1099 delivery and contractor payments[3][10] | Workforce Now, RUN and TotalSource licensing |
| ADP Workforce Now | Three packages: Select, Plus and Premium; no price shown[4] | same |
| ADP TotalSource | PEO co-employment service; pricing quoted, not listed[5] | same |
| ADP Vantage HCM | Online terms with a licence to the ADP Products listed in the client’s Annex Z[11] | Vantage HCM, Workforce Manager and Global Payroll licensing |
| ADP Lyric HCM | Full-suite HCM; payroll in 140+ countries and territories[6] | same |
| ADP Workforce Manager | Additional terms with tenant, SFTP and API limits[12] | same |
| ADP Global Payroll (formerly ADP Celergo) | Multi-country payroll with three outsourcing levels[7][13] | same |
| ADP Embedded Payroll | Payroll sold inside a partner platform with a revenue share[14] | ADP Marketplace and API Central licensing |
| ADP API Central, Document Cloud and other Marketplace applications | Published per-employee or per-user monthly prices for some listings[15][16][17] | same |
Metrics
ADP’s public documents rarely name a licence metric for its core platforms, because the order quantities sit in the client’s own agreement. Where a unit is named, it is one of the following.
- Unique lives. The ADP API Central Terms of Service say the billing count is “all unique lives in the database paid in the previous calendar month.”[18] See API Central employee (unique lives).
- Active employees. ADP Document Cloud is billed per employee per month on the number of active employees.[16] See Active employee (Document Cloud PEPM).
- Users and employees in Annex Z. The Vantage HCM terms license “as many users of the ADP Products as are specified in Annex Z,” and talent planning for as many employees as Annex Z specifies.[11] See Users specified in Annex Z (Vantage HCM) and Employees specified in Annex Z (Vantage HCM Talent Management powered by CSOD).
- Authorized Users. Workforce Manager defines Authorized Users by credentials used to access the services.[12] See Client's Authorized Users (Workforce Manager).
- Users. Some Marketplace listings show a Recurring Edition priced per user per month.[17] See User (Marketplace recurring edition).
- Contractors. RUN’s contractor payment bundle charges a monthly base price plus a per-contractor fee.[10] See Contractor (RUN contractor payment bundle).
Counting and floors
The published floors are small and attach to specific listings. Document Cloud shows a USD 1,000 set-up fee due at completion in addition to USD 1.00 per employee per month.[16] API Central for Workforce Now publishes four price tiers from the first 999 employees to 5000-9999 employees, and does not state whether a tier price applies to every employee or only to those within a band.[15] For the large-enterprise platforms the API Central listing shows no price.[19] Nothing retrieved states a minimum employee count for Workforce Now, RUN, Vantage HCM or Lyric.
A practical point follows. The quantity ADP bills is usually an employee count taken from ADP’s own payroll database, not a count the client reports. For API Central the terms say the count is unique lives paid in the previous calendar month.[18] A licence manager reconciling an ADP invoice should therefore start from the number of paid employees in the relevant month rather than from the number of people with system logins.
Programs
- Client agreement framework. The contract portal and the Data Privacy Appendix describe how ADP documents attach to a client’s agreement. See ADP Client Contract Portal documents and ADP Data Privacy Appendix and the article on ADP client agreements and the Data Privacy Appendix.
- ADP Marketplace. Clients buy ADP and third-party applications on the Marketplace under separate terms, and independent software vendors join through a partner program. See ADP Marketplace partner program (sandbox stage and Developer's Participation Agreement) and ADP Marketplace billing models (Prepaid and Postpaid).
- API Central. A subscription that gives a client’s developers access to ADP APIs. See ADP API Central and ADP API Central consulting.
- Annex Z. The Vantage HCM ordering schedule that lists licensed products and quantities. See Annex Z (ADP Vantage HCM order schedule).
- TotalSource. ADP’s PEO co-employment model. See ADP TotalSource co-employment.
Contract hierarchy
The documents interact in ways a manager should map before relying on any single one. The Marketplace Terms of Service say that, for an ADP Application, they prevail over a separate Customer Agreement where the two conflict.[20] The API Central and Document Cloud application terms say the opposite for those applications: the existing services agreement governs, except payment terms agreed at checkout.[18][21] The Data Privacy Appendix ranks applicable law, then the ADP Privacy Codes, then the Appendix, then the Agreement.[22] The details are in the article on client agreements and the Data Privacy Appendix.
Audit and data rights
None of the retrieved ADP terms contains a clause that lets ADP audit a client’s use of its software. The audit clause in the Data Privacy Appendix runs the other way: it lets a client audit ADP’s processing of its personal data, no more than once per year on 45 days written notice, under an ADP-approved plan and for a reasonable fee.[22] The Marketplace Terms and the Vantage HCM terms say nothing about licence audits in the retrieved text. The client agreement may differ and was not available to the wiki.
ADP’s web site terms also restrict how systems are accessed. They prohibit giving credentials to data scrapers, data aggregators and other Unauthorized Third Parties, and allow ADP to suspend a client site without notice if unauthorized use is suspected.[1] Integrations that need payroll data are expected to use the developer program described in the Marketplace and API Central article.
Out of scope
This article does not cover ADP’s tax filing, insurance, retirement or benefits services as such, ADP’s own consumer products, or contracts outside the United States, where ADP’s terms may differ. It does not give prices for Workforce Now, RUN, Vantage HCM or Lyric, because ADP does not publish them in the retrieved pages. Documents on adp.com were read through a web browser because the site blocks command-line clients; PDF terms were read in the same way. Documents that the portal does not host, including the client’s master services agreement, order forms and Annex Z, were not available.