Paylocity MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that connects Claude Desktop to the Paylocity API. Sensitive data like SSNs and bank account numbers are automatically redacted before reaching Claude.

Setup

1. Install

git clone <this-repo>
cd payolocity-mcp
npm install
npm run build

2. Get your Paylocity API credentials

You'll need two sets of API keys from your Paylocity admin:

WebLink API Key (Client ID + Client Secret) — used for employee details, pay statements, and write operations
NextGen API Key (Client ID + Client Secret) — used for the employee directory search

Both come as password-protected zip files from Paylocity. Ask your Paylocity admin or implementation contact for access.

You'll also need your Company ID — the numeric ID Paylocity assigned to your company (e.g. 348353).

3. Configure Claude Desktop

Open your Claude Desktop config file:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the paylocity server to mcpServers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paylocity": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/full/path/to/payolocity-mcp/dist/server.js"],
      "env": {
        "PAYLOCITY_CLIENT_ID": "your-weblink-client-id",
        "PAYLOCITY_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-weblink-client-secret",
        "PAYLOCITY_ENV": "production",
        "PAYLOCITY_COMPANY_ID": "your-company-id",
        "PAYLOCITY_NEXTGEN_CLIENT_ID": "your-nextgen-client-id",
        "PAYLOCITY_NEXTGEN_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-nextgen-client-secret"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace the placeholder values with your actual credentials and the full path to where you cloned the repo.

4. Restart Claude Desktop

Quit and reopen Claude Desktop. The Paylocity tools will appear automatically.

What you can do

Once connected, you can ask Claude things like:

"Find Sean Canton in Paylocity"
"What's Jeremy Allen's job title and department?"
"Show me the company headcount by department"
"Pull pay statements for employee 76 for 2025"
"What are the direct deposit accounts for employee 1?"

Available tools

Tool	Description
search_employees	Find employees by name, title, email, or ID
get_employee	Full employee detail (pay, benefits, tax, addresses, contacts)
get_pay_statements	Pay history with summary and line-item details
get_direct_deposit	Bank account info (numbers redacted)
get_company_summary	Headcount and department breakdown
update_employee	Change address, title, department, pay rate, status
add_earnings	Add a bonus, commission, or other one-time pay
add_employee	Create a new employee record (skips onboarding workflow)
add_onboarding_employee	Start a new hire through the self-service onboarding workflow
get_employee_custom_fields	Pull custom profile fields (t-shirt size, etc.) added during onboarding
get_tshirt_size	Shortcut: pull just the t-shirt size for swag/uniform requests

Not yet supported

These were requested but aren't (currently) reachable via Paylocity's public Open API:

Capability	Status	Notes
Documents library	Separate API	Paylocity exposes documents through a distinct "Document Partner API" with its own credentials. Needs separate WebLink key with document scopes; not part of the v2 surface we use here.
Onboarding events / workflow steps	Limited	We can start onboarding (above), but creating arbitrary events on an in-flight workflow isn't exposed.
Performance reviews	Not in public API	The Performance module's review scores are not exposed via the Open API. Available only through Paylocity's UI exports / Data Exchange reports.
Surveys	Not in public API	Survey build and response data isn't a public API resource. Same path as Performance — UI / Data Exchange only.

If your Paylocity contract includes Data Exchange (scheduled report exports to S3/SFTP), pulling Performance and Survey data is doable that way — but it lives outside this MCP server.

Data protection

All API responses are scrubbed before reaching Claude:

SSNs show only the last 4 digits (***-**-1234)
Bank account numbers are masked
Routing numbers are fully redacted
Company FEIN is masked

This happens at the server level — Claude never sees the raw data.

Credentials

WebLink API secrets expire after 365 days
NextGen API secrets expire after 365 days
Check the expiration dates in the zip file names from Paylocity