[gergles]

Eh. I don't think they (ADP) has a right to cut off access. If I am a customer of a financial company and I want to have my accountant deal with them and I give the accountant my password, that is a thing I should be able to do.

I think it is reasonable to disagree with that, but I don't see it as open-and-shut as you seem to.

[rpiguy99]

Probably depends on the "Terms of Service" that the client agreed to when they first logged into the system.

Most online backing systems have specific "Terms of Service" regarding account security that indemnifies them from responsibility if you share your username/password.

I expect that a payroll system's "Terms of Service" would be much more restrictive than that.

[morganvachon]

That's pretty much how I saw it (Zenefits is similar to a contractor working on behalf of an ADP customer), but there are some issues with that point of view. It could be argued that Zenefits is not only profiting off of their own customers, but also profiting off of ADP's hard work. Basically, ADP is only seeing one revenue stream (the client) whereas Zenefits is using ADP's data to generate income via the insurance policies and other HR services Zenefits resells. Whether that's improper or just sly business sense is a matter for the courts, of course.

The downside no matter what is that the innocent clients are the ones ultimately losing access to both services in this brawl.