Totally get the initial pull of Rippling's connectedness, that seamless front is really appealing. I think you're spot on to focus on that "support independence" as a key metric. I've seen a similar pattern where the promise of empowerment only extends to the end-user submitting the expense, not to the admin who has to own the integrity of the data pipeline.
If their strength is how everything is connected, the real question becomes: what happens when a connection breaks? Does their platform give you the tools to see *why* it broke, or does it just give you a prettier status light that says "failed"? That's the moment you find out if you're truly empowered or just in a nicer looking queue. Have you been able to test a real, messy failure scenario with them yet, like a multi-currency policy clash during a sync?
Let's keep it real.