Introducing Remote Global Payroll, new benefits flexibility, and more: Product release notes for April 2023

Just as no two countries are alike, neither are any two HR teams.

At Remote, our goal has always been to create a global hiring solution that is not only practical, but flexible enough to accommodate the unique needs of our customers.

Being able to hire a software engineer in Cambodia is great, but your business needs more than that.

You need to run payroll for all the employees hired by your owned entity in the U.K.

You need to quickly onboard 12 contractors to take on a new project — and pay them biweekly.

You need to offer excellent local benefits to your Canadian team members, all while meeting the needs and creating an equitable experience for those in other countries, without blowing your People budget.

Creating a product experience that is flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of our customers isn’t easy, but that’s what we’re striving for. And we’re proud to share that with our new product releases (global payroll, anyone?!), benefits plan options, and other features and improvements, we are getting a lot closer to that goal.

Read on to see what’s new on the Remote platform. If you have any questions or suggestions, please continue to share with us.

What’s new at Remote?

Remote Global Payroll

Are you looking for a better solution for running payroll in countries where you own your own entities?

This month, we launched our Global Payroll product to help you do just that. Now you can begin onboarding and processing payroll for entities in the U.K., France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, and Singapore. 

Remote Global Payroll is for you if you don’t need an EOR in a country (because you already have an entity there) but are looking for a more streamlined way to manage payroll along with your other global employees. Reach out to our team to get started!

Key features include:

• Manage your entities and global payroll teams in the platform.

• Easily review your monthly payroll inputs in one place before submitting to Remote.

• Review and approve your payroll calculations.

• Receive all necessary documents to pay your team members and perform financial reporting.

Benefits

This has been an exciting month for global benefits with several new releases and a lot still to come!

Expanded benefits renewals offerings and lower pricing

Remote’s benefits keep getting better!

Earlier this year, we unveiled more comprehensive benefits plans with more flexibility in the US and Canada. 

As we approach a new policy year (May 2023 - April 2024) for many countries, we are again updating benefits offerings with expanded coverage and lower pricing. Note that Remote does not add a markup to any benefits premiums!

If you have employees in these countries, you will be prompted to review their plans and make selections for the new policy year when you login to your Remote dashboard.

We have also been rolling out further improvements to the benefits selection experience, allowing you to make all your benefits decisions directly within the product without needing to reach out to anyone on our team.

Global benefits insights all in one place

Our Benefits Directory provides:

• A high-level understanding of what our benefits options and practices are in each country.

• Easily searchable/scannable interface to find the countries you’re interested in.

• A link to get a more detailed view.

• Remote’s proprietary benefits research and more information about our benefits practices and how benefits work when hiring through an EOR.

If you would like access to the Benefits Directory, you can ask your account manager. We are also working to add it to the Remote platform for easy access.

For employees: More benefits transparency

Do your team members want more information about using their benefits? We are currently piloting an Employee Benefits Hub in select markets, including Portugal and Canada. This will roll out to everyone in the coming months.

The Employee Benefits Hub is a handy alternative to receiving (and having to refer back to) one-off PDFs with plan details.

The Employee Benefits Hub will enable team members employed through Remote to:

• View a benefits guide specific to your plans.

• Review benefit tax implications.

• Easily access links to all relevant benefit providers and platforms.

• Get more details on how your benefits work.

Adding employees

This month, we’ve released several significant updates to the experience of adding employees in the Remote platform.

Add new hires with fewer questions

With our redesigned “Add new hire” workflow, we’re providing more clarity about employment types and payroll management so our customers can more easily and intuitively add new employees without needing support from Remote administrators. We give you the control so that you can move more quickly, but don’t worry — if you have questions, we are always here to help!

Add direct employees in bulk

You can now add direct employees to the Remote platform in bulk instead of one at a time. Direct employees are employees you hire through your own entity but want to manage using Remote.

We provide a simple spreadsheet template where you can add employees' details, export as a CSV file, and upload it to the Remote platform. It’s that simple!

Once added, your direct employees will be invited by email to create a Remote account and complete the onboarding process.

Calculate an employee’s net salary in our Cost Calculator

Remote’s Cost Calculator is one of our most-loved features — and it’s getting even better.

This in-product calculator, exclusive to Remote users, will now include a section for an employee’s estimated annual net salary. We are currently piloting this feature in select countries (see below).

This calculation demonstrates how much money the employee will take home after things like local taxes, pension, benefits, and other contributions are subtracted from their gross annual salary.

Net salary provides employers with important insights, including how far salaries go in various countries and how much they should offer when converting contractors to employees.

Supported countries for this release include:

🇭🇰 Hong Kong

🇮🇳 India

🇮🇪 Ireland

🇩🇪 Germany

🇵🇹 Portugal

🇸🇬 Singapore

🇿🇦 South Africa

🇪🇸 Spain

🇬🇧 UK

We will continue adding this feature to more countries over the coming weeks and months!

Easily review and approve time off and expenses for payroll

You will now be able to more easily review and approve payroll inputs like time off and expenses. This work is part of a larger initiative to ensure you have a seamless experience, no matter which Remote product you have.

To use this feature, navigate to the “Payroll approvals” tab to see what needs to be approved and the cutoff date in order to include it in the next payroll run.

Automations for EOR employee management

Automatically amend an employee’s salary

Is one of your employees up for a pay raise?

Instead of going to Remote’s Lifecycle team every time an employee’s salary needs to be amended, we have automated this process within our platform. It’s now easy for Remote customers to create an amendment document and send it immediately to the employee. For more information, see our Help Center article.

Generate and send automated probation completion letters

Has your employee finished their probation period? You no longer have to stress about sending the right documentation on time!

Remote now helps customers automatically generate probation completion letters for team members employed through Remote. Previously, customers would have to request these letters from Remote and wait for a Remote lifecycle specialist to create and share them. Today, the process happens automatically, saving time and safeguarding compliance.

Sync employee incentive payments with the Remote API

Do you track commissions and bonuses (and other employee incentives) in another application? Then it’s time to streamline your workflows!

You can now use the Remote API to build your own data integration that syncs these details to Remote so they can be added to payroll.

Need to pull incentive payment details from Remote to your accounting application? No problem! Use the new List Incentives endpoint to fetch the incentive type, amount, status, and more. To learn more about the Incentives API, take a look at the Remote API documentation here.

Improved contractor invoicing

Bulk contractor invoicing improvements

Want more flexibility when paying your contractors? We’ve added to the ability to schedule contractor invoicing in bulk via a CSV template.

You will now be able to enter in each contractor’s rate in the bulk invoicing CSV template. Your contractors can enter a unit of measure (such as number of hours or number of projects completed) to multiply against that rate to generate invoice totals each month. Contractors will not be able to store their own rate on our platform, ensuring your company never receives a surprise bill.

Semi-monthly contractor invoicing

We are also introducing semi-monthly contractor invoicing. Previously, we only offered monthly or one-off contractor invoicing frequencies. Semi-monthly invoicing is only available for scheduled invoices (raised by the employer) at this time, but we plan to add it for recurring contractor invoices as well.

What’s coming next?

Integration with a new HRIS platform!

Are you looking to streamline more of your HR workflows?

In May, we will be launching a new integration with a leading HRIS platform, helping you unify your global team data across platforms and automate onboarding processes for international employees in just a few clicks. All while ensuring compliance in every country.

Pair Remote with more of your favorite business tools

We will soon be joining an automation marketplace that will enable you to connect Remote with over 5,000 supported apps. With this launch, you’ll be able to build workflows that can sync data and automate tasks across Remote and many other business tools, all within minutes. Stay tuned for more updates on this game-changing integration coming in May!

Have feedback or questions? Let us know on social media, or reach out directly to our team!