A ten-person team running BambooHR does not need a second HRIS. It needs a place where an agent can draft a comp adjustment, cite the policy it read, and wait for a named reviewer before payroll moves. BambooHR holds the employee record. Gusto holds the pay run. Dock holds the agent's interpretation of both, with attribution.
The architecture
BambooHR and Gusto stay the system of record for raw employee and payroll data. Dock is the system of record for what the agent interprets from that data. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the source record (bamboohr_employee_id or gusto_employee_id), the agent identity, the reviewer, the decision, and the timestamp. The agent re-fetches BambooHR and Gusto via fresh API reads when it needs current state, so Dock never drifts into a stale mirror. This is the same pattern as the people ops pillar and the HR overview.
The Dock surface: comp adjustment review
| dock_row_id | bamboohr_employee_id | proposal | policy_cited | drafted_by | reviewer | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| comp-014 | bhr-emp-2841 | +6% merit, IC3 to IC4 | comp-band-v3 §4 | agent:mei-hr | govind@ | approved |
| comp-015 | bhr-emp-3102 | +4% market adj | comp-band-v3 §2 | agent:mei-hr | govind@ | pending |
| comp-016 | bhr-emp-2755 | reclassify, no raise | policy-handbook §7 | agent:mei-hr | govind@ | sent to Gusto |
The row is the artifact. The BambooHR record stays clean until a human signs off.
The worked workflow
The HR agent runs its weekly pass. It reads current salary, tenure, and last-review-date from BambooHR. It reads the comp band doc and the handbook section the band cites. It drafts one row per proposed adjustment into the Dock comp-reviews table with the policy clause attached. The People lead reviews three proposals, approves two, rejects the third with a comment. On approval, the agent writes the new salary back to BambooHR and queues the change for the next Gusto pay run. The reviewer's name and timestamp travel with the row. The chain is queryable, which is what agent audit and compliance requires.
Why this matters for small teams
Small teams cannot afford a comp committee or a dedicated HRBP. What they can afford is a clear log: who proposed what, on what policy basis, who approved. Dock gives that log without forcing the team into a heavier HRIS. The same row shape works for handbook updates, PTO accrual exceptions, and benefits enrollment reviews.
It also keeps the agent honest. Because every proposal carries the clause it cited, a reviewer can spot the moment the agent reasons outside the documented band. That is the operational meaning of agent identity: the agent is named, its reads are logged, its writes are gated on a human. See the HR pillar for adjacent flows, and the audit walkthrough for what a SOC 2 evidence pull looks like.
BambooHR is HR management software with a dashboard for employee information, vacation tracking, and reports (Wikipedia). SHRM's Total Rewards guidance covers the compensation and policy structures small teams maintain (SHRM). Dock sits in front of both as a thin attributed layer.
Try the pattern
Connect BambooHR and Gusto, point the HR agent at your comp band, and let it draft the next review cycle into a Dock table. Approve the rows that hold up. Reject the rows that do not. The trail is yours.
FAQ
Does Dock replace BambooHR? No. BambooHR remains the employee record. Dock holds the agent's proposals and the reviewer's decisions, with pointers back to BambooHR.
What writes back to BambooHR? Only approved rows. The agent calls the BambooHR API after a named reviewer marks a Dock row approved, and the row records the write timestamp.
How does this work with Gusto? Approved salary changes are queued for the next Gusto pay run via the Gusto API. The Dock row tracks both the BambooHR write and the Gusto queue confirmation.
Can a small team really run this without an HRBP? Yes, because the row is the audit. A founder or office manager reviewing two proposals a week is the entire workflow, and the policy citations make each decision defensible later.
