StateHandbook Builds State-Specific Employee Handbooks for Employers in 13 States for a One-Time $149

StateHandbook, a website of Archieboy Holdings, LLC of Marlborough, Massachusetts, builds state-specific employee handbooks for employers in 13 states plus federal law, according to its site at https://www.statehandbook.com. For a one-time $149, an employer answers eleven questions and receives an employee handbook, a compliance summary that cites the statute or regulation behind every required policy, and an acknowledgment form, in editable Word and PDF. Its coverage includes Illinois's annual sexual harassment prevention training requirement, California Pregnancy Disability Leave and, for Massachusetts employers with 50 or more employees, domestic violence leave.

Employee handbook obligations differ from state to state. The site notes that California requires harassment training at five employees, that New York's sick-leave entitlement changes at five employees and again at one hundred, and that Texas requires comparatively little. A generic template gives every business the same policies regardless of where it operates, how many people it employs or how it pays them.

StateHandbook is built around that difference. The 13 covered states are California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Washington, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Colorado. Federal law is covered in every build. The questionnaire asks which states the employer has employees in, the industry, headcount, who handles HR, how employees are paid and how time off works. Most questions take one line to answer. Those answers determine which policies appear in the finished document, and the company says a state's policies are added only when they apply, so a five-person Texas business does not receive California's policies.

The handbook runs through ten sections: welcome and at-will employment, employment basics, equal opportunity and harassment, pay and hours, leave, benefits, conduct, safety, technology, and separation. The site publishes a sample, a 19-page handbook generated for a two-state coffee roaster with 18 employees, along with its compliance summary and acknowledgment form. Employers can read it before buying. The state layer is where the documents differ most. For California, that can include paid sick leave, meal and rest periods, lactation accommodation, expense reimbursement under Labor Code 2802, CFRA leave and Pregnancy Disability Leave, and final pay due immediately on discharge.

The compliance summary lists every policy in the handbook and states whether the law requires it or it is a recommended practice. It gives the statute or regulation behind each policy and the published sources the text was written from. A separate completion checklist covers what a handbook cannot do for the employer. Examples include naming a second person to receive complaints, booking California's harassment training, writing New York's separate lactation policy and producing California's site-specific workplace violence plan. Items only the employer can answer are marked [EMPLOYER TO COMPLETE] in the Word file and repeated on the checklist, so the document does not fill in facts on the employer's behalf.

StateHandbook says it assembles handbooks rather than generating them. Every policy comes from a curated bank in which each entry carries a published citation and a link to the source it was written from. No language model writes the policies. The words in a finished handbook are either bank text or text the employer typed in, and the company says a check on every build refuses to publish anything else. An owner who wants to confirm why a policy exists can follow the citation in the compliance summary to the underlying law.

"Small employers shouldn't need a retainer to learn what their state requires. Every policy points to the law behind it, so the owner can check our work," said Bo Bennett, Spokesperson, StateHandbook.

The pricing model also differs from the usual alternatives. According to the company, handbook builders sold by HR platforms are annual subscriptions, and services that write a handbook for an employer bill monthly. StateHandbook charges $149 once, with no subscription and nothing to cancel. The price covers the handbook, the compliance summary and the acknowledgment form in both file formats. Buyers can correct their answers and rebuild the handbook up to ten times at no additional cost.

The state-specific items are concrete. An Illinois employer of any size owes every employee sexual harassment prevention training each year. A California handbook includes Pregnancy Disability Leave, which is separate from CFRA leave and has no service or hours requirement. A Massachusetts employer with 50 or more employees owes up to 15 days of domestic violence leave in a 12-month period. A New York employer's sick-leave entitlement is 40 or 56 hours a year depending on its size, and New York employers must also provide 20 hours of paid prenatal leave on top of it. The builder includes these items when the employer's answers make them relevant, and cites the source for each.

An employer with workers in more than one state ticks every state, and the handbook includes each state's policies, labelled with the state they apply to, as in the two-state sample. Employers who operate in Texas get a short state layer, which the company describes as the Payday Law and jury service protection, and says so plainly rather than padding the document. An office manager can hand the Word file to an owner for edits, circulate the PDF, and collect signed acknowledgment forms from employees.

StateHandbook states the limits of the product directly. It is document preparation, not legal advice, and nothing about the purchase creates an attorney-client relationship. The policy bank is researched and cited but has not been reviewed by an attorney, and the company recommends that employers have counsel review the handbook before issuing it. The company also says no document can make an employer compliant on its own, which is why obligations that need an action, such as training or a worksite-specific plan, appear on the completion checklist. Employment law changes, so each policy shows the source it was written from, and every document carries the date the policy bank took effect.

The handbook is available now at https://www.statehandbook.com. The employer answers the eleven questions, pays $149 once and downloads the Word and PDF files, with the compliance summary and acknowledgment form included. The company advises employers whose state is not among the 13 not to buy. Those employers can tell the company which state they need, and StateHandbook says it will let them know when that state is added.

StateHandbook is a website of Archieboy Holdings, LLC, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, at https://www.statehandbook.com. Its builder produces a state-specific employee handbook, a compliance summary citing the statute or regulation behind every required policy, and an acknowledgment form, in Word and PDF. The service covers 13 states plus federal law and costs $149 one time. StateHandbook provides document preparation and does not provide legal advice. Bo Bennett is the company's spokesperson.