UCM by HRlogics
Unemployment tax is one of the few employer costs you can argue with.
Every $1 paid out in unemployment benefits costs an employer $1.39 in future taxes, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That bill does not arrive when the claim is filed. It arrives in next year’s rate notice, after the deadline to protest has closed.
UCM by HRlogics contests the claims you should win, audits the benefit charges you should never have been assigned, and reports what both are worth — across every state you employ in.
HRlogics, a Sheakley company. Sheakley has been family-owned and operating out of Cincinnati since 1963.
- 300+ customers
- Integrated with all six SIDES exchanges
- SOC 2 Type II certified
- SIDES Outstanding Performance Award, 2025 — eighth consecutive year
Why this matters
The bill arrives a year after the mistake.
State unemployment tax is experience-rated. Today’s claim outcomes set next year’s rate, and in most states they influence it for several years after. That lag is the whole problem: by the time finance sees the increase, the experience period that caused it has closed and the protest windows have passed.
The windows are short. California gives employers 10 calendar days from the date the notice is mailed. Virginia is also 10 days, and since July 2025 a late response there can cost you your appeal rights entirely. Texas gives 14.
And the charges themselves are frequently wrong. The U.S. Department of Labor found that 21.5% of UI benefit payments in 2024 were overpaid — $7.6 billion nationally. A share of that sits on employer accounts, feeding experience ratings nobody audited.
Most companies believe rising unemployment taxes are simply a cost of doing business. HRlogics UCM uses industry-leading technology and tenured subject matter expertise to implement an effective Unemployment Cost Management Program. In doing so, our service relieves your employees from administrative burden and reduces your company’s most controllable tax.
- Slow responses. A missed deadline triggers an automatic payout, and that payout raises your tax liability for years.
- Charge errors. Inaccurate benefit charges inflate your SUTA rate quietly. Most employers never learn they can protest them.
- Weak documentation. Records assembled after a claim is filed carry less weight than records created at the time of separation. Thin files lose winnable protests.
- Team silos. HR holds the separation facts. Finance holds the rate. When the two workflows do not connect, neither side sees the exposure.
- Limited visibility. A consolidated SUTA number across every EIN hides the entities driving the cost — three EINs can rate up the whole account at renewal.
- Compounding. Uncorrected charges of $50,000 over three years can move an experience rating several percentage points.
Full-service delivery
We act as your third-party administrator. You get the savings; we handle the execution.
Total UCM manages unemployment claims end to end across all states, inside the deadlines each one sets. You keep control over policy and separation strategy. We keep the file, the calendar, and the record.
- Full TPA service
- We manage claims end to end across all states — documentation, protests, SIDES exchanges, and agency communications, inside every required deadline.
- Documentation and protests
- We document and protest eligible claims on time, aligning evidence to each state's requirements to reduce improper charges and protect your experience rating.
- Hearing preparation and representation
- We organize evidence and coach the witness — the supervisor who was in the separation conversation, not an HR generalist reading a summary into the record.
- SUTA rate monitoring
- We monitor rates across states, audit benefit charges for errors, and find opportunities to prevent increases before the rate cycle closes.
- Process design and controls
- Separation protocols and documentation standards, so the evidence file is built during the employment relationship rather than after a protest notice arrives.
- CFO reporting
- Monthly dashboards and executive reviews that tie claims activity, contest outcomes and SUTA trends to a number finance can forecast.
Claims management is only half of it.
Claims execution — respond on time, file the protest, attend the hearing — is necessary work, and it addresses individual separation events. It does not address how those outcomes accumulate into a tax rate.
Rates are calculated annually from several years of employer-specific data: taxable wages reported, taxes paid, benefit charges assigned. If the experience-rating inputs are never reviewed, you can be assigned a higher rate than your claims performance justifies, even when every claim was handled correctly and on time.
Total UCM runs both tracks. Claims management controls execution. UI tax consulting controls accumulation: rate forecasting before the notice lands, benefit charge audits across every state, SUTA strategy tuned to each state’s method, and compliance review during mergers and reorganizations where successorship reporting can trigger adjustments.
Two ways to buy it
Take it off your plate, or run it yourself with better tools.
Choose on team capacity, claim volume, and how much of this you want to own internally. Some employers run both.
Total UCM full-service TPA
Choose Total UCM if:
- You want unemployment management completely off your plate
- High claim volume or case complexity calls for specialist handling
- You do not have dedicated staff for day-to-day claims work
- Maximizing savings is the priority and you want experts doing the work
- Multi-state operations need consistent management and reliable SUTA reporting
What you get: full claims handling, benefit charge audits, hearing preparation and representation, and unemployment tax consulting.
Talk to the UCM teamClear UCM self-managed platform
Choose Clear UCM if:
- You have dedicated HR or payroll staff who can own claims management
- Your claim volume is manageable with internal resources
- You want control over every response and decision
- You prefer software-first, with support available when you want it
- Budget is a primary consideration and you can invest the time
What you get: live task dashboard, centralized claim tracking, proactive deadline management, documentation built for protests, benefit charge visibility, full SIDES integration, financial reporting, and secure agency communication.
See Clear UCM on hrlogics.comNot sure which? Tell us your headcount, your states, and roughly how many separations you run a year. We will tell you which model we would put you in, and why.
What you get
Results, with the qualifiers attached.
- SUTA rate reduction
- 0.15–1.5% Rate improvement in eligible scenarios
- Contest success
- 90%+ Share of unemployment claim protests won, supported through preparation and consultation
- Time to value
- 90 Days From engagement to active savings capture
Those qualifiers are not hedging — they are the honest shape of the work. Rate reduction depends on your state, your reserve position, and what the charge audit turns up. Contest success depends on the evidence file existing before the claim does. Both are things we build with you, not things we hand you.
Eight consecutive years of SIDES Outstanding Performance.
UCM by HRlogics received the State Information Data Exchange System (SIDES) Outstanding Performance Award for calendar year 2025 — the eighth consecutive year. SIDES is administered in partnership with state workforce agencies, and the award recognizes organizations that consistently deliver timely, accurate and complete responses. It is a measure of exchange discipline, not marketing.
This milestone reflects the consistency, precision, and dedication of our UCM team. Our focus has always been on helping clients navigate unemployment claims efficiently while minimizing risk and cost. Being recognized for eight consecutive years reinforces the value of a disciplined, service-oriented, and technology-enabled approach to Unemployment Cost Management.
Our UCM specialists average more than ten years in unemployment claims management. Joe Turner, who leads unemployment claims and hearings, has 25+ years in the discipline; Josh Kendall has 21+ years in unemployment tax.
Case study
How Workbox Staffing cut liability and improved SUTA performance.
Workbox Staffing, LLC · 2,000 employees · Grand Rapids, MI · Staffing · Three-year partnership with HRlogics, 2023–2025
Workbox was managing unemployment claims in-house and wanted to outsource to create internal efficiency. Evaluating options, they wanted a genuine partner who understood their business model and could scale as they grew — an alternative to the large credit agencies, which were treating unemployment cost management as a commodity rather than a service.
- Protestable claims won
- 95.9%
- Prevented in potential liability
- $5.5M
- Erroneous charges identified and credited
- $500,000+
- Total estimated tax savings, 2023–2025
- $104,565
HRlogics leverages technology to alleviate our administrative burden by responding to unemployment claims timely and accurately to ensure that we are compliant with the UI Integrity Act. Their process also audits and subsequently removes erroneous benefit charges assigned to our accounts, thus reducing our overall tax liability.
Who we help
Built for employers where separations are routine.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts annual turnover at 82% in hospitality, 60% in retail, and 352% in staffing. Every exit in those sectors is a chance to be charged for a claim you could have contested.
- Staffing
- The hardest UI profile there is. Between-assignment weeks, job refusals, and multiple claims inside one benefit year. We flag in-between weeks, bundle related claims, and protest non-chargeable ones. Integrates with Avionté, Bullhorn, TrackerRMS and leading VMS platforms.
- Retail and restaurants
- Part-time, seasonal and short-term hires drive claim volume up. We bundle claims by job type and location, flag ineligible weeks, and separate genuine separations from no-shows. Dashboards report by store, district or state.
- PEOs
- Multiple EINs, each with its own rate and deadlines. A dashboard per EIN with a master roll-up. Many PEOs lower client UI rates 20–30 % in the first renewal cycle, and most are live in 4–6 weeks. Connects to PrismHR, isolved and Vensure.
- Multi-state employers
- Construction, healthcare, manufacturing, franchise and distributed operations. Different states, different rate methods, different deadlines. We standardize the response process across every jurisdiction.
How it connects
All six SIDES exchanges, and the systems you already run.
SIDES is the State Information Data Exchange System, operated by NASWA on behalf of state workforce agencies. It lets employers receive and respond to claim notices electronically across most states, cutting turnaround time and creating a timestamped record of what you sent and when.
If your team is still receiving claim notices by mail across multiple EINs, you are losing winnable cases on timing alone.
- Claim notices arrive electronically in near real time, with no mail cycle to wait on
- Daily monitoring for mismatches, duplicates, and claims filed against active employees
- Real-time fraud alerts escalated to a resolution team, with direct agency collaboration
Systems we connect to
UCM runs alongside the systems you already have. It does not replace your HRIS or payroll.
- HRIS
- ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, Paylocity, Rippling
- Payroll
- Paychex, Paycom, UKG, Ceridian, QuickBooks Payroll
- ATS and VMS
- Greenhouse, iCIMS, JazzHR, Lever, Workable; Avionté, Bullhorn, TrackerRMS
- PEO platforms
- PrismHR, isolved, Vensure
- SSO
- Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace
Open API and secure file transfer are available for custom systems. For most standard connections we handle setup without pulling in your IT team.
Your data
We do not sell data. Ever.
Unemployment claim files contain names, wage histories, separation reasons and tax records. That is not data to be repurposed.
- SOC 2 Type II. Independently audited controls for security, confidentiality and availability.
- Least privilege. Employees access only the minimum data their job requires.
- U.S. data residency. Stored in secure AWS data centers in the United States.
- Full audit trails. Every action logged and traceable — which is also what makes hearing prep and state audits straightforward.
- No resale, no monetization. You and your employees may request access, correction or deletion; records we are legally required to retain are excluded.
Questions we get
Frequently asked
What is unemployment cost management, and why does it matter?
It is the practice of reducing UI tax rates by minimizing improper benefit payouts and handling claims accurately. Unemployment tax is experience-rated, which makes it one of the few employer taxes you can directly influence. We deliver it either as a fully outsourced service or as claims software you run yourself.
What is the difference between Total UCM and Clear UCM?
Total UCM is a fully managed service — our team handles claims, protests, hearings, charge audits and tax consulting. Clear UCM is self-service software that centralizes claim management for your own team. You can use one or both.
How can better claims management actually lower our SUTA rate?
By auditing every claim, challenging improper charges, and responding inside the deadline. Each directly affects the benefit charges assigned to your account, and those charges are the main input to your experience rating.
What does “integrated with all six SIDES exchanges” mean?
The State Information Data Exchange System is how employers and state agencies exchange claim information electronically. There are six exchanges. We are connected to all of them, which means near-real-time receipt of agency requests and faster responses.
How quickly do you respond to claims?
Claims arrive through SIDES onto a real-time task dashboard, so they are received in near real time and reviewed well before the state's deadline. That matters: California and Virginia allow 10 days, Texas 14.
How do unemployment hearings work with Total UCM?
Our hearing specialists handle preparation, coaching and support. We identify the right witness — normally the supervisor present at the separation — and walk them through the final incident, prior warnings, whether policy was applied consistently, and whether the employee had a chance to respond. We provide representation for qualifying cases.
Can I track the status of each claim?
Yes. The live task dashboard shows real-time status for every claim, including due dates, pending actions and communication history with state agencies.
Does UCM replace our HRIS or payroll system?
No. It runs alongside them. UCM focuses on unemployment claims and cost management; you keep the systems you already rely on.
How long until we see value?
Time to value is roughly 90 days from engagement to active savings capture.
Is Clear UCM secure?
Yes. It is SOC 2 Type II certified and aligned with CCPA, PCI DSS and GDPR. Data is stored in U.S. AWS data centers.
Who is HRlogics now?
Sheakley announced its acquisition of HRlogics UCM on August 18, 2026. Sheakley is a family-owned risk management firm that has operated out of Cincinnati since 1963, and the brand line is “HRlogics, a Sheakley company.” HRlogics UCM continues to serve employers nationwide with unemployment claims management, supported by specialized expertise, compliance-focused technology, and personalized client service.
Next step
Find out what your current process is costing you.
Bring us your headcount, the states you employ in, and a rough separation count. We will walk you through where the exposure usually sits, which delivery model fits, and what a charge audit would likely turn up. A first claim review takes about 30 minutes.
Prefer to explore the product first? See UCM on hrlogics.com