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Global payroll is the set of services, software, and operational processes that calculate, pay, withhold, and report compensation for employees across multiple countries. It covers gross-to-net calculations, statutory tax and social-security withholding, deposits to local authorities, payslip delivery, and statutory reporting in every country an employer operates, in every local currency, under every set of local rules.
The Seven Things Global Payroll Has To Do, Every Cycle, Every Country
Most “global payroll” pages on the internet are vendor pitches. They describe what a particular product does, not what global payroll is. Strip the marketing away and the work breaks into seven recurring tasks that every multi-country employer needs to perform every cycle, in every country.
- Collect inputs. Hires, leavers, pay changes, bonuses, benefit elections, expense reimbursements, statutory leave taken. These flow from the HRIS, time-tracking, expense management, and benefits enrolment systems.
- Calculate gross-to-net. Apply local tax bands, social-security charges, mandatory pension contributions, and statutory benefits to compute the employee’s net pay and the employer’s total cost.
- Withhold and remit taxes. Income tax, social-security contributions, mandatory pension, and other levies must be withheld and remitted to the right local authority on the right date.
- Process net pay. Move money from a corporate funding bank account to local payroll bank accounts, often through an FX leg, then disburse to employee bank accounts in local currency.
- Issue compliant payslips. Country-specific payslip formats and languages. France requires French; Germany requires very specific line-item detail; some Latin American countries require digital signatures.
- File statutory reports. Monthly, quarterly, and annual filings to tax, social-security, and labour authorities, often in country-specific XML or PDF formats.
- Reconcile to the GL and book accruals. Bonus, severance, vacation, and 13th-month accruals on the balance sheet, payroll cost on the P&L, and reconciliation against bank statements and tax authority confirmations.
A serious global payroll function does all seven across every in-scope country, every cycle, with low error rates and no missed deposits. The hard part is doing it consistently across 5, 10, or 30 countries with different rules, calendars, languages, and banking systems.
Four Delivery Models, Four Trade-Off Curves
Buyers see four distinct delivery models in the market. Each has trade-offs, and the right model depends on country count, headcount per country, whether the client has local entities, and how much consolidated reporting matters.
1
Single Global Engine: One Platform, Every Country
One software platform calculates payroll natively in every country it supports. Examples: Dayforce (Ceridian), ADP GlobalView, Workday Payroll. The vendor builds, maintains, and updates the country-specific calculation engine in-house. Strong for consistency, unified reporting, and integration with the rest of the HCM stack. Weak in long-tail countries where the engine has not been built natively, or where it has been built but is not actively maintained.
Best fit for enterprise multinationals with concentrated headcount in 5-10 well-supported countries (US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia) and a need for tight unified reporting.
2
Payroll Aggregator: One Portal, Many Local Bureaus
A single vendor stitches together in-country payroll providers behind one client interface. The client sees one platform; behind the scenes, local payroll bureaus do the calculations in each country. Examples: CloudPay, Papaya Global, Safeguard Global, Immedis, CXC Global. Strong for breadth (often 100+ countries) and for one-vendor accountability. Weak when the underlying partner network varies in quality, or when the aggregator’s data layer cannot fully harmonise country-specific edge cases.
Best fit for mid-market to enterprise multinationals with employees in 15+ countries, including long-tail markets where a single engine has no native coverage.
3
EOR-Managed Payroll: Skip The Entity, Ship The Hire
The employer of record (EOR) is the legal employer in each country and runs payroll under its own local employer ID. The client pays the EOR a per-employee per-month fee that bundles legal employment, payroll, statutory benefits, and compliance. Examples: RemotePeople, Remote.com, Deel, Multiplier, Globalization Partners (G-P), Velocity Global, Oyster. Strong when the client has no local entity. Weak when the headcount in a country grows past 15-20 employees and the per-employee fees outweigh the cost of running an in-country entity.
Best fit for companies hiring across 5-30 countries without local entities, especially during early international expansion or to fill long-tail one-or-two-employee countries.
4
Multi-Vendor In-Country: One Bureau Per Market, Stitched In-House
The client contracts a different local payroll provider in each country and stitches them together internally. Common in legacy enterprises with established country teams. Strong control and country-specific expertise. Weak on consolidated reporting, on vendor management overhead, and on data consistency across countries.
Best fit for large multinationals with mature country teams that prioritise local-expert relationships over global consolidation, or organisations transitioning from this model toward an aggregator or EOR-managed setup.
Global Payroll, Domestic Payroll, EOR, PEO: Which One Are You Actually Buying?
| Global payroll | Domestic payroll | EOR | PEO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geography | Multi-country (typically 5-180+) | One country | Multi-country | US-only typically |
| Legal employer | Client’s entity in each country | Client’s entity | EOR is the legal employer | Joint employer (client + PEO) |
| Includes employment compliance | No (payroll only) | No (payroll only) | Yes (full employment compliance) | Yes (US co-employment compliance) |
| Typical pricing | $10-$50 per payslip + platform fee | $5-$20 per payslip | $400-$800 PEPM all-in | 2-12% of payroll or $50-$150 PEPM |
| Best for | Multi-country employers with local entities | Single-country employers | Hiring without local entities | US-only operations under 150 staff |
| Reporting | Consolidated multi-country | Single-country | Consolidated, but EOR data only | US-only |
Need to put hires on local payroll without setting up a subsidiary? Our employer of record service covers legal employment, payroll, and statutory compliance in 150+ countries from one contract.
What You Actually Pay: Six Layers, One $10M Worked Example
Global payroll pricing is rarely transparent. Vendors quote “$10 per payslip” but the all-in cost depends on six layers, and the difference between the headline price and the all-in cost is often 3-5x.
| Cost element | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Per-employee per-cycle fee | $10-$50 | Higher in long-tail countries; lower in major markets |
| Annual platform fee | $5,000-$50,000 | Fixed regardless of headcount; covers software access |
| Implementation | $10,000-$100,000+ | Depends on country count and integration complexity |
| Statutory employer charges | 15-70% of gross salary | Pass-through to local authorities; varies by country |
| Banking and FX | 0.5-2% on cross-border remittance | Sometimes hidden in the FX rate; ask for spread in writing |
| Country-specific add-ons | $50-$500 per employee per year | 13th-month pay processing, severance fund accruals, year-end forms |
The Math On 100 Employees Across 8 Countries
A 100-employee multinational with 20 in the US, 15 in the UK, 15 in Germany, 10 in France, 10 in India, 10 in Brazil, 10 in Singapore, and 10 in Australia, on monthly payroll, looks like this on a flat-fee aggregator.
| Cost element | Annual cost |
|---|---|
| Per-employee per-cycle fees (100 emp × 12 months × $25 avg) | $30,000 |
| Platform fee (annual) | $25,000 |
| Implementation (amortized over 3 years) | $15,000 |
| Country-specific add-ons (Brazil 13th-month, India PF, Italy TFR, etc.) | $20,000 |
| Banking and FX (1% on $10M total payroll) | $100,000 |
| Total payroll-services cost | $190,000 |
| Statutory employer charges (avg 30% on $10M gross) | $3,000,000 |
| Total all-in cost | $3,190,000 |
The $190,000 in service fees is the number to compare across providers. The $3M in statutory charges is the number to budget for as employer cost. Most buyers focus on the wrong number; the operational savings vs running 8 in-country bureaus are worth at least $100,000 a year in finance and HR time, not in the per-cycle fee.
The Country Quirks That Wreck The First Year
The headline pricing of a global payroll deal rarely tells the full story. Country-specific rules drive most of the surprises in the first 12 months. Below is a non-exhaustive list of the quirks new global payroll buyers usually do not see coming.
| Country | Quirk | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 13th-month pay (December) + FGTS severance fund (8% monthly accrual) | Adds ~10-12% to total employer cost; needs balance-sheet accrual |
| Italy | 13th and 14th-month pay + TFR (severance) accrual | Adds ~14% to total employer cost; TFR sits on balance sheet |
| India | Provident Fund (12% employer + 12% employee) + ESI for low-income workers | Adds ~14-16% to employer cost; cap rules change frequently |
| UK | April-March fiscal year + monthly RTI submissions to HMRC | Calendar misalignment with US year-end close; auto-enrolment pension required |
| France | Bulletin de paie in French + 50+ statutory contribution lines + DSN monthly | Generic English payslips fail audit; payroll provider must speak French local tax rules |
| Germany | Detailed payslip line-item requirements + DEÜV / SV-Meldung statutory reports | Local provider expertise required; works councils may have payslip-format rights |
| Mexico | Aguinaldo (Christmas bonus, ~15 days), profit-sharing (PTU) | Adds ~6-8%; PTU is a profit-share calc that catches new entrants |
| Argentina | 13th-month pay + heavy social charges (~30% employer) + currency controls | FX risk on remittances; statutory severance significant |
| Singapore | CPF contributions + Annual Wage Supplement common contractually | Adds 17% employer; AWS often expected even when not statutory |
| Japan | Health and pension contributions + summer/winter bonuses contractual | Bonuses often 4-6 months of base salary; required by market norm |
This list is illustrative, not exhaustive. A serious global payroll provider has seen the year-end run in each in-scope country and can hand you the country-specific calendar of statutory events. A provider that has not seen the year-end run in a country has not really delivered service in that country yet.
Six Months, Two Parallel Runs, One Cutover
Multi-country global payroll implementations take 3-6 months in healthy state. Anything below 3 months should raise a flag. Below is the month-by-month pattern we see in mid-market rollouts.
| Month | Phase | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Month 0 | Contracting | MSA, country addenda, pricing schedule, data-protection terms agreed |
| Month 1 | Country scoping | Country-by-country setup, employer registration confirmation, statutory calendars |
| Month 2 | Data migration | Employee master data, YTD payroll history, accruals, statutory references migrated |
| Month 3 | Configuration + parallel-run #1 | Pay components configured; first parallel run against legacy payroll for variance check |
| Month 4 | Parallel-run #2 + sign-off | Second parallel run; tolerance threshold (typically <0.5% variance) met; finance signs off |
| Month 5 | Cutover | First live cycle on new platform; legacy decommissioned; close monitoring |
| Month 6 | Stabilisation | Year-end events tested; HRIS-payroll integration steady-state |
The biggest implementation failure mode is skipping the second parallel run. The first run almost always surfaces 5-15% variance. The second run, after fixes, should drop variance below 0.5%. Cutting over after one run almost always produces a bad first live cycle and a credibility hit with finance and employees.
How It Talks To Your HRIS: Native, API, or SFTP
The HRIS-to-payroll boundary is where most multi-country payroll rollouts struggle. Three integration patterns work in practice, and the choice drives long-term cost of ownership more than per-cycle fees do.
- Native connector. The global payroll provider has a productised connector to the HRIS (Workday, Rippling, BambooHR, HiBob, Personio). Hire/leaver/pay-change events flow automatically. Fastest implementation; cleanest data lineage; best fit for most buyers.
- API-driven middleware. The client builds its own integration to the payroll provider’s API, often via Workato, Zapier, Boomi, or a custom integration layer. More flexible but adds engineering overhead and ongoing maintenance.
- SFTP file exchange. Hires and pay changes are exported from the HRIS and dropped to an SFTP location each cycle. Cheapest to set up; brittle when payroll cycles or schemas change; high error rate in long-tail countries.
Native connector is almost always worth paying for. The implementation savings alone usually cover any premium in the per-employee fee, and the ongoing data quality is materially better.
The 2026 Global Payroll Vendor Scorecard
Below is a vendor scorecard for the most-evaluated global payroll providers in 2026, organised by delivery model. Vendor counts and feature sets shift quarterly; verify country lists at the time of RFP.
| Provider | Model | Country count | Best fit | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ADP Celergo / GlobalView | Single engine + aggregator hybrid | 140+ | Enterprise scale, deep heritage, strong managed service | Older UX in some modules; pricing opaque |
| Dayforce / Ceridian | Single global engine | 50+ native | Modern UX, unified employee record | Country coverage thinner than aggregators |
| Workday Payroll | Single global engine | 5 native (US/UK/CA/FR/AU) | Tight HRIS integration for Workday HCM customers | Outside the 5 native countries you need partners |
| CloudPay | Aggregator | 130+ | Strong consolidated reporting, single client portal | Quality varies by underlying partner |
| Papaya Global | Aggregator + EOR | 160+ | Modern platform, breadth, payment automation | Mid-tier providers report uneven service depth in long-tail countries |
| Safeguard Global | Aggregator + EOR managed services | 165+ | Enterprise-grade managed payroll, complex multinationals | Premium pricing; long contracts |
| Immedis (3i Infotech) | Aggregator | 160+ | iConnect platform, real-time data integration | Newer ownership; product roadmap evolving |
| RemotePeople | EOR + global payroll | 150+ | Owned entities in 60+ countries, transparent flat pricing, broker-grade benefits, native global payroll for entity-owning clients | Confirm country coverage tier (owned vs partner) for your top hiring markets at RFP |
| Remote.com | EOR-managed payroll | 180+ | Strong product UX, large country footprint, AI workflows | EOR-only model |
| Deel | EOR-managed payroll + global payroll product | 150+ (EOR), 100+ (payroll) | Self-serve platform, strong contractor + EOR product | Global-payroll product newer than EOR product |
| CXC Global | Aggregator + EOR | 100+ | Contractor-management heritage, resources/oil & gas/engineering | Verticalised. Best for project-based industries |
| Multiplier | EOR-managed payroll | 150+ | Modern platform, competitive pricing, strong APAC coverage | Smaller vendor. Verify SLA before signing |
Eight Questions Every Global Payroll RFP Needs
- Country coverage: which countries are you operating in via owned operations vs partner-mediated? Get the country-by-country list. This is the single biggest predictor of service quality.
- Implementation timeline: what is your standard implementation timeline for a 100-employee, 8-country setup? 3-6 months is typical; below 3 months should raise a flag.
- Reporting and analytics: sample your standard consolidated multi-country reports. Are they board-ready, or does the client team have to rebuild them in BI tools?
- HRIS integration: do you have a native connector to my HRIS (Workday, Rippling, BambooHR, HiBob, Personio)? If not, what is the API-integration timeline?
- SLA and accuracy: what are your contractual payroll error rates, missed-deposit penalties, and indemnification scope?
- Pricing model: fixed PEPM is cleaner than variable. What are the tier-gated features? What is your FX policy and spread on cross-border remittance?
- Year-end events: walk me through how your team handled the most recent year-end cycle in my top three countries. Specific operational examples beat generic capability claims.
- Customer references: two or three live customers in my top hiring countries, similar size and industry. Direct calls beat case studies.
Eight Ways Global Payroll Programs Blow Up
- Confusing global payroll with EOR. Global payroll runs payroll under your entity. EOR puts the worker on the EOR’s entity. Different models, different pricing, different compliance posture.
- Underestimating implementation. 3-6 months is normal for multi-country rollouts. Skipping the second parallel run is the most common cause of bad first live cycles.
- Ignoring statutory deposit cadence. Late tax deposits trigger automatic penalties in most countries. The provider’s deposit SLA is more important than the calculation engine.
- Hidden FX spread. 1-2% spread on a $10M cross-border remittance is $100,000-$200,000 a year. Always ask for FX policy and spread in writing.
- Treating coverage claims as fact. Claimed 180-country coverage often means 60 owned + 120 partners. Quality varies sharply between owned and partner countries.
- Missing the year-end accrual. 13th-month pay, FGTS, TFR, and similar accruals require monthly P&L entries. Catching them only in December creates a year-end mess.
- Skipping data-protection clauses. Employee data crosses borders. GDPR and local equivalents apply. Contract should specify processor / sub-processor list, data residency, and breach notification timelines.
- Underspecified termination terms. What happens if you want to leave the provider in 18 months? Cooperation in transition, data export, and TUPE-style transfers should be priced in the contract from day one.
Software-Only or Managed: Who Actually Runs The Cycle?
The split between global payroll software and managed global payroll services trips up many buyers. The two are not interchangeable, and the difference materially affects how you staff your payroll function.
Global payroll software is a platform that calculates payroll in supported countries and produces files for tax filing and bank payment. The client (or its in-country accountants) operates the software, owns the configuration, and signs off the calculations each cycle. Workday Payroll, Dayforce, ADP GlobalView, and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll all lean toward this model. Software-only deployments depend on the client having internal global-payroll capability or country-specific accountants who can review the calculations.
Managed global payroll services add an operational layer on top: a vendor team takes inputs from the client, runs the calculations, prepares filings, manages deposits, and resolves issues with local authorities. The client receives a finished payroll each cycle and signs off, rather than configuring rules. CloudPay, Papaya Global, ADP Celergo managed, Safeguard Global, and Immedis sit closer to this model. Managed services are typically 30-60% more expensive on a per-employee basis but reduce the in-house headcount needed to run multi-country payroll.
The decision usually comes down to internal capacity. If the client has a global payroll team that can operate the software in three or more countries, software-only is cheaper. If the client wants to keep the in-house headcount low, managed services pay for themselves on a per-employee basis once you account for fully loaded payroll-analyst cost (typically $80-$140k per year per FTE in major markets). Most companies under 500 global headcount go managed; most enterprises with mature payroll teams go software-only or hybrid.
Compliance Is Where The Unforgiving Deadlines Live
Global payroll compliance is where the unforgiving deadlines live. Most country payroll authorities run on automatic penalty regimes. Miss a filing or a deposit and the penalty hits the next cycle without negotiation. The most common compliance failure modes split into five categories.
- Statutory deposit timing. The deposit calendar is country-specific and rarely aligns with the payroll cycle. The US has IRS Form 941 quarterly schedules and monthly or semi-weekly deposit obligations depending on lookback period. The UK has monthly RTI submissions to HMRC. Brazil requires GPS, GFIP, and FGTS deposits on different dates. India requires PF and ESI deposits by the 15th and 21st respectively. A serious global payroll provider tracks all of this in a country-specific compliance calendar.
- Year-end statutory forms. Each country has its own year-end statutory forms: US W-2, UK P60, Germany Lohnsteuerbescheinigung, France DSN annual, India Form 16, Brazil DIRF and RAIS. Year-end is a 6-12 week production cycle, not a single event, and the failure modes show up months later when employees notice errors on their tax filings.
- Statutory contribution caps and rate changes. Most countries adjust contribution caps and rate brackets at least annually. Singapore CPF wage ceiling, India PF cap, US Social Security wage base, UK National Insurance thresholds. A payroll provider that does not push rate-change updates within 30 days of publication is operationally weak.
- Cross-border worker compliance. Workers who travel, who are tax-resident in one country but work for an employer registered in another, or who hold dual residency, create payroll-compliance edge cases. Posted-worker rules in the EU, A1 certificates, US-state nexus rules, and UK NT codes all live here.
- Data-protection and privacy compliance. Payroll data is among the most sensitive employee data. GDPR (EU), UK GDPR, LGPD (Brazil), PIPEDA (Canada), POPIA (South Africa), and PDPA (Singapore) all impose specific obligations on payroll processors. The contract should specify processor / sub-processor lists, data-residency commitments, breach-notification timelines, and audit rights.
Compliance maturity is the single biggest difference between top-quartile and bottom-quartile providers. The headline calculation engine is rarely the failure point; the failure point is the deposit calendar and the rate-update cadence.
Three Buyers, Three Different Right Answers
Three buyer profiles show up almost every quarter when companies start shopping for global payroll. The right model is different for each, and the cost of getting the model wrong is typically 3-5x the per-cycle fee in operational waste.
The fast-growing scale-up. 80-300 employees, hiring across 6-15 countries, mostly without local entities. Pre-IPO or growth-stage. Finance team is small (under 5 people). Reporting needs are CFO-level rather than detailed country breakouts. The right model here is usually EOR-managed payroll with a modern platform (Remote.com, RemotePeople, Deel, Multiplier). The single contract collapses the legal-employer problem and the payroll problem at once. The wrong move is buying a single global engine and trying to set up entities in 6 countries in parallel; we have seen this kill three months of finance bandwidth at companies that needed to be raising their next round, not registering employer IDs.
The mid-market multinational. 500-2,000 employees, in 15-30 countries, with local entities in 5-10 of them and EOR-employed staff in the rest. Mature finance team. Reporting needs are board-ready and country-specific. The right model here is a hybrid: payroll aggregator (CloudPay, Papaya, Safeguard) for the entity-owning countries, plus an EOR for the long-tail. Single global engines (Workday Payroll, Dayforce) work for the major markets but rarely cover the long-tail cleanly. The wrong move is forcing every country onto the same engine; in practice, you end up with offline spreadsheets covering the gaps, which is the worst of both worlds.
The enterprise consolidator. 5,000+ employees, in 30-60 countries, with local entities in most of them and a legacy multi-vendor in-country setup. Mature payroll team but high vendor-management overhead. Reporting needs are detailed and audit-grade. The right model here is typically a payroll aggregator or a single global engine plus aggregator hybrid. ADP GlobalView, Safeguard Global, CloudPay, and Workday Payroll plus a partner network all play here. The decision is usually not which model but how aggressively to consolidate from the legacy stack. We have seen the strongest enterprise consolidations sequence countries by tax year-end, which keeps the migration risk inside one cycle per country.
Build vs Buys: When Does Insourcing Actually Pay?
Most companies buy. The decision to insource is driven by two factors.
- Headcount per country. Below 50 employees per country, outsourcing dominates. Above 500-1,000 per country, insourced payroll becomes economic on a per-employee basis.
- Country count. Below 5 countries, a single payroll engine plus in-country specialists works. Above 25 countries, a payroll aggregator or EOR-managed model is typically necessary because no single engine has deep native coverage everywhere.
The middle ground is where most multi-country employers sit, and where the four delivery models compete most directly. Almost no companies under 1,000 global headcount run insourced multi-country payroll cleanly. The compliance and software-maintenance overhead is too large.
The Six Questions To Answer Before Signing
- Where is your headcount today and where will it grow over the next 24 months?
- Do you have local entities in those countries, or do you need an EOR-managed model?
- What is your reporting requirement? Consolidated multi-country payroll reporting in a single dashboard, or country-by-country reports good enough?
- What HRIS sits at the centre of your stack, and which providers integrate natively with it?
- What is your tolerance for parallel-run risk during implementation? Do you have finance bandwidth to run two parallel cycles?
- What is your FX exposure? Are you remitting from one funding currency or multiple?
Hiring across multiple countries without entities? Our employer of record service handles legal employment, payroll, and statutory compliance in 150+ countries from a single contract.
Frequently Asked Questions
Global payroll is the set of services, software, and operational processes that calculate, pay, withhold, and report compensation for employees across multiple countries. It covers gross-to-net calculations, statutory tax and social-security withholding, deposits to local authorities, payslip delivery, and statutory reporting in every country an employer operates.
Four models. A single global payroll engine that calculates payroll in every country natively (Dayforce, ADP GlobalView, Workday Payroll). A payroll aggregator that stitches together in-country providers (CloudPay, Papaya, Safeguard). EOR-managed payroll where the EOR is the legal employer (Remote, Deel, Multiplier). And multi-vendor in-country, where the client contracts a separate provider per country.
Global payroll runs payroll under your own legal entity in each country. An EOR is the legal employer of the worker and runs payroll under its own employer ID. Use global payroll when you have entities; use EOR when you don't, or when you want to outsource the legal-employer compliance burden entirely.
Per-employee per-cycle fees typically run $10 to $50, plus annual platform fees of $5,000 to $50,000. Implementation runs $10,000 to $100,000+ for multi-country rollouts. For a 100-employee operation across 8 countries, a mature global payroll setup usually costs $80,000 to $250,000 per year in fees alone, plus banking and FX charges.
Three to six months is typical for multi-country rollouts. Plan for two parallel-run cycles in each country before going live. Anything below three months should raise a flag about the depth of country coverage and configuration testing. The biggest implementation failure mode is skipping the second parallel run.
Eight things matter most: country coverage (owned vs partner-mediated), implementation timeline, consolidated reporting and analytics, native HRIS integration, SLA and accuracy commitments, pricing transparency including FX spread, year-end operational track record, and customer references in your top hiring countries.
The most recognised vendors include ADP Celergo and GlobalView, Dayforce, Workday Payroll, CloudPay, Papaya Global, Safeguard Global, Immedis, RemotePeople, Remote.com, Deel, CXC Global, and Multiplier. The right choice depends on country coverage, headcount per country, and integration with your HRIS.
Insourcing typically becomes economic above 500 to 1,000 employees per country. Below 50 employees per country, outsourcing dominates on cost and compliance. Most multi-country employers buy rather than build, even at significant scale, because the compliance and software-maintenance overhead is too large for in-house teams under 1,000 global headcount.
Five categories: statutory deposit timing (country-specific calendars), year-end statutory forms (W-2, P60, Lohnsteuerbescheinigung, DSN, Form 16, DIRF/RAIS), contribution caps and rate changes, cross-border worker compliance (posted workers, A1 certificates, dual residency), and data-protection rules (GDPR, LGPD, PIPEDA, POPIA, PDPA).
Software-only platforms (Workday Payroll, Dayforce, ADP GlobalView, SAP SuccessFactors) require the client to operate the system and own the configuration. Managed services (CloudPay, Papaya, Safeguard, ADP Celergo managed) add an operational layer where the vendor team runs cycles end-to-end. Managed services cost 30-60% more but reduce in-house headcount needs.
Andrew (Drew) joined the Remote People team in 2020 and is currently Director, Regulatory Affairs. For the past 13 years, he has been a trusted advisor to C-Suite executives and government ministers on international compliance and regulatory issues. Drew holds a law degree from the University of Otago, a PhD from the University of Sydney, and is an enrolled Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.
