FAQ

Federal FMLA is the primary workflow. State leave routing covers California CFRA, California PDL (pregnancy disability), and New York Paid Family Leave (NY PFL). Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) accommodation triggers are detected and routed to the ADA interactive process when FMLA exhausts.

California (CFRA + PDL), New York (PFL), and federal FMLA everywhere. Other state add-ons ship as the customer base warrants. If your workforce concentrates in another state with its own leave statute, name it on the demo call and we will tell you exactly where it sits in the queue.

25 to 300 employees is the ideal fit — typically a single HR leader (or one of two) handling 2 to 10 leave cases a year across one site plus a few remote workers. Above 500 employees we recommend a custom-quoted enterprise contract rather than the per-employee tiers.

Yes — when an FMLA case nears exhaustion or a doctor-noted return date exceeds the legal window, Sentinel transitions the case into the ADA interactive process and generates the accompaniment letter that bridges the two. Standalone ADA cases (no FMLA) can be opened directly.

Per employee per year. Standard is $54/employee/year. Decoy (FMLA-only tracker) is $18/employee/year. Founding Partner (first 10 customers) is $54/employee/year locked for the life of the account. See /pricing for the full breakdown.

No. Sentinel is annual upfront — one charge a year, one year of access. Monthly billing trains customers to half-attend to renewals; annual is a clearer contract for both sides.

One year. No 6-month or 3-month options. The compliance value of the platform compounds across cases — a partial year does not give either side a fair read on whether it works.

No. We never charge a card without you saying yes again. Renewal reminders go out by email and SMS at 60, 14, 1 days before the term ends. If you do not opt in, the account closes and your data is archived per the retention policy below.

Check the live count on the pricing page. There are 10 total. When the tenth is taken, the rate closes permanently and existing Founding Partners keep $54/employee/year forever, including all future modules at no upcharge.

Yes — 10% off list price for HRCI members. Visit /pricing?via=hrci to see member pricing. The discount applies to all current and future tiers.

At 60 days out, you get an email and SMS with a renewal portal link. Same at 14 days. Final reminder at 1 day. You opt in by clicking through and confirming payment. Standard cohort customers see the then-current price (which may have moved if new modules have shipped); Founding Partners always see $54.

Runs the FMLA compliance workflow. You enter the employee and the qualifying event; the system determines eligibility, sets the right deadlines, generates WH-380/381/382 with dates pre-filled, fires alerts before each deadline, tracks the cure window when a certification comes back incomplete, and maintains a timestamped audit trail from open to close.

Plain-English draft emails for each step of the case — leave acknowledgement, designation notice, certification request, cure notice, return-to-work confirmation. Each draft pulls the employee name, dates, and case context automatically and links to the controlling 29 CFR Part 825 citation. Every draft is reviewed by a human before sending.

A risk review on every open case. It flags the exposure points a plaintiff\'s attorney would look for — incomplete cure cycles, missed designation deadlines, retaliation-window terminations, certification gaps — and suggests a next action with the controlling citation. Findings are visible inside the case file.

Yes. WH-380-E, WH-380-F, WH-381, and WH-382 are generated with employee data and deadlines pre-filled. You review, sign (via DocuSign or paper), and send. The audit trail records when each form was generated, sent, returned, and acted on.

DocuSign integration is built in. Envelopes are tracked from send through completion, with each webhook event written to the case audit log. Every signature lives in the document vault with chain-of-custody intact.

In the document vault, organized per employee and per case. Medical certifications, fitness-for-duty notes, accommodation letters, signed WH forms, and any uploaded supporting documents are all attached to the originating case for the life of the account.

No. Sentinel is software-assisted compliance guidance — it helps an HR team administer leave correctly under federal and state regulations, but it is not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney. Every AI-generated output carries a disclaimer to that effect, and the full language lives in the Terms of Service. For specific legal questions, consult qualified employment counsel.

Supabase, hosted in the US-East region. Postgres database with row-level security, plus object storage for uploaded documents. All data is encrypted at rest and in transit.

Inside your account: only the users you invite, scoped to their role. From Sentinel\'s side: a small named operations team for support and incident response. Access is logged. Sentinel does not use customer data to train any model.

By default, 7 years — matching the FMLA records retention requirement under 29 CFR 825.500. The hard floor is 3 years (the FMLA minimum). After the account closes, data moves to archival storage for the remainder of the retention window and is then permanently deleted.

Yes. Case files, audit trails, and document vault contents export to Excel and PDF. A full DOL audit export packages every case with its timestamped action log into a single ready-to-submit workbook.

Most teams are running their first active case in under 60 minutes on the onboarding call. Employee roster upload, company-handbook configuration, and first-case setup happen together. Founding Partners do this with the founder personally; Standard customers do it with the onboarding team.

Yes. The onboarding call walks you through the workflow with your own first case as the example. After that, every screen has inline help text and the model card explains how the AI features work. We also publish a series of breakdowns on the blog covering the trickier FMLA edge cases.

Email support for all paid accounts. Founding Partners also get a direct Slack channel with the founder for the first 90 days and a standing monthly check-in for the life of the account. All support requests are tracked and logged.

Inside the 30-day satisfaction window (Standard tier, with the four conditions met), full refund. After that, the term runs to its end and we do not charge again unless you opt in. Your data exports follow you out — you keep your audit trail regardless of whether you renew.