Remote product release notes for February

We’ve been building Remote for about four years now and have spent about 95% of that time working on things invisible to you. That resulted in some great things: It’s now possible to legally hire someone in a given country within a day or so through Remote, something that still takes weeks through any other means. You can easily, automatically pay out contractors nearly anywhere. And we make sure you’re compliant everywhere.

But this year is going to be different. Leaning into our commitment to transparency, we will publish release notes every month, near the last day of the month.

As we’re now heading into a new season — spring in some places, autumn in others — we have some exciting updates and new features that we can't wait to share with you. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring these updates to life, and we think you'll love what we have in store.

We're committed to making Remote the best platform for managing your global team, and we're excited to continue improving our product with your feedback and support. Thank you for being a part of our journey, and we can't wait to see what we'll accomplish together in the months and years to come.

New features for employers

Here are some of the new features we have released for employers in February.

Introducing direct employees in Remote

We know that many of our customers are growing their teams, but managing employees across multiple platforms can be a struggle. Using spreadsheets and subpar software only adds further headaches.

We’re excited to announce a foundational feature that will allow customers to manage workers employed through your own entity.

Adding your direct employee in Remote is simple. In just a few clicks, you can invite an employee to self-onboard. You can then view, edit, and manage the profile — and in the near future, you’ll be able to do much more.

Create and automate invoices on behalf of your contractors

When you’re working with multiple contractors, managing invoicing and payments can mean a lot of manual, time-consuming work. That can lead to payment delays, potentially harming your relationships with contractors.

We’re excited to share a new improvement, enabling employers to compliantly generate contractor invoices on behalf of their contractors. This means you can:

• Pay contractors the same amount every month with an auto-generated invoice

• Create one-off invoices for your contractor with custom line items and varying amounts

• Reward your contractors by creating invoices with incentives for great performance

You can put recurring invoices on autopilot from day one when adding a new contractor or create recurring invoices for existing team members to streamline the whole process. Plus, combine with automatic invoice payments and you’ll never need to worry about paying your contractor team on time again.

New API and developer tools to build your own automated data sync

We understand how important it is for you to have streamlined and automated workflows across your entire HR stack. We’re excited to announce our newest capabilities in the Remote API that allow you to connect Remote to the HR tools you already use.

With the new time off endpoints, you can automate your time off approval flows and sync your time off across different applications, ensuring your employees' time off is approved and recorded across multiple platforms.

And with the new expense endpoints, you can sync your employee expenses, ensuring you’re always up to date with their expenses and reimbursing them quickly.

These new capabilities will help you break down silos and make your workflows more efficient, so you can focus on what really matters — growing your business. To learn more about Remote's API, check out our developer docs today!

Updates to our terms of service

We’re dedicated to protecting our employers' intellectual property and ensuring compliance for all your global hiring needs. We also recognize that legal jargon and complex terminology can make it difficult to fully comprehend terms of service.

We updated our terms of service to clarify language and obligations, providing clearer IP terms and updated local terms for specific jurisdictions, ensuring that you are fully compliant with regulations in all the countries we support. To learn more about these changes, please read our updated terms of service here.

What is coming next on Remote?

Here are the new features we are working to bring to you next.

Understand how your budget will stretch across countries

Knowing how much you should (and could) offer in salary compensation is a big challenge, especially in a budget-conscious hiring environment.

We already have a number of tools to help you understand global compensation, including:

• Compensation Explorer — See salary ranges for job titles in a particular country, based on the latest salary data

• Cost Calculator — Understand the total cost of employment across countries, including mandatory employer costs, taxes, and benefits

Coming soon, you’ll be able to enter in an annual budget amount. The employee’s salary will be calculated automatically to ensure the total cost of employment, including mandatory costs and benefits, is within the budgeted amount.

This will speed up the time it takes to compare global estimates. In just a few clicks, you’ll see how far your budget will go around the world — and how much you can offer to hire top talent.

Generate invoices in bulk for your contractors

Building on top of our new feature to create and automate invoices for contractors, we’re enabling employers to create several invoices at once using a simple CSV template to upload to Remote.

This will be especially beneficial for larger employers that may generate hundreds or even thousands of invoices with differing amounts each month, simplifying the invoicing process and improving efficiency.

Simplify contractor onboarding with bulk invitations

Adding multiple contractors to your Remote account can be time consuming. To help you be even more efficient with minimum effort, soon you will be able to start the onboarding process for multiple contractors simultaneously. You will be able to download and edit our simple CSV file to complete your contractor’s information and email address, then upload back into Remote and we’ll start the onboarding process for them.

Beta testing new PTO balance calculations

We’re piloting a new PTO balance calculation across many countries. This will allow employers and employees to see the most accurate information to plan their time off and work schedules. Over the coming weeks, we’ll work on making these calculations more accurate using our in-house compliance data, ensuring minimum PTO regulations are adhered to in each country. If you see any issues with accuracy as we roll this out, please get in touch to provide your feedback!

Breakdown for invoices

We have received feedback that you want a better way to understand the costs included in invoices for your Remote services to avoid friction and improve transparency. Remote remains committed to our Fair Price Guarantee and providing the best billing experience for global employment services.

We are working hard on this. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be introducing breakdown reports that are easily available from your reconciliation invoice email. These will help you understand the different costs and categories of costs that apply to each employee hired through Remote.

Sneak preview: New look and feel coming soon!

We’re bringing even more capabilities and a fresh new look to the Remote platform. Can you guess what’s coming next?

Share your thoughts

Love the new features? Have something you would love to see us work on next? Get in touch and let us know!