Product Release Notes, March 2023: New invoice timelines and so much more...

Design is fundamental to the way we’re building Remote. From day one, we’ve focused on making complex things really simple — from contractor agreements to payroll and taxes.

But keeping things simple is very hard over a long period of time, especially as you add more complexity. We spend a lot of time and effort on the design of our product in the way it works and the way it looks.

Today, we’re launching a significant step: a new design system that will form the foundation of our platform going forward. It’s lighter, brighter, and optimized to help you accomplish your most important tasks in seconds.

We’re also launching a number of improvements that offer easy answers to the most pressing questions, like “What am I paying for?” or “Where is my money?” as well as “How much more am I earning?"

We’re excited to see more organizations all around the world adopting Remote to pay their large contractor workforces, and we’ll be making many more improvements to better support these use cases over the coming months.

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.

What’s new on the platform?

A fresh new look and feel ✨

We're excited to unveil the fresh new look of the Remote platform! Our goal with this redesign is to provide you with the best user experience possible to streamline your global employment workflow.

Here are the key changes we've made:

• Quick Search is now located in the top right corner, making it easier to find what you need. Simply type the name of a user to access their profile or a keyword like "expense" to get to that part of the platform.

• Our new question box is also located in the top right corner and provides you with instant access to service-related items. You can now access the full Remote Help Center, support chat that will pop up immediately in the platform, and the Remote Status page with insights into Remote service metrics over time.

With these new changes, you’ll find the Remote platform easier, more efficient, and more delightful to use.

Transparent invoice timelines and payout dates for employers and independent contractors

Until now, contractor payments via any platform have been opaque and confusing. This month, we’ve made it super simple to understand where your payments are, enabling employers and contractors to track contractor payment timelines and payout dates in one centralized location.

You can:

• View a detailed timeline for each contractor invoice

• Track progress, from issuing to approval and processing for payment

• See expected payout dates, giving you transparency on when funds will land in a bank account

Access detailed invoice breakdowns for maximum transparency

We’ve introduced a more detailed monthly reconciliation invoice breakdown report for all Remote customers to help you gain a better understanding of your employment costs.

With this new feature, you can now see employment costs broken down into the following categories per employee:

• Salary

• Contributions

• Benefits

• Expenses

• Incentives

• Off-payslip costs

The breakdown also includes any variance between the amount in the report and the amount on the invoice. For more information on possible variance reasons, check out our support article.

Owners and admins of your Remote's company profile can download this report starting from the January 2023 reconciliation invoice. You will see a new button in the invoice section of the platform, along with a link for direct download in your next reconciliation invoice notification.

We hope this new feature will provide a more transparent and accurate billing experience, and we’d love to hear your feedback!

Save effort with bulk invitations for independent contractors and direct employees

You can now batch invite direct employees and contractors to get your team up and running in Remote in no time.

Just download a CSV template and complete offline or using data stored in other systems, then upload back into Remote, and you’re done! Your team automatically gets invitations to complete their profiles, and you can move on to the next thing on your to-do list.

Edit recurring incentives for employees with ease

Incentives are a great way to reward your team, offer additional benefits, or pay bonuses. We’ve made it super simple to edit one payment or adjust all future recurrences.

Direct employees can now request time off in the platform

We're pleased to announce that you can now accept, approve, and track paid time off requests for direct employees within the Remote platform. This is the next stage of our mission to help you manage all your global employment needs in one platform, by allowing you to onboard and manage employees hired through your own entities.

It’s simple to get started:

1. Onboard employees hired through your own entities to Remote.

2. Ensure the direct employee has a number of paid days off added to their record on the contract details section of their profile.

3. Ensure the direct employee has a people manager assigned to them, who will view and approve or decline their time off requests.

Your direct employees will be able to request time off in seconds with ease, and your people managers can approve or decline time off requests within the admin platform, plus track PTO usage.

We've created a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process. Additionally, check out this demo video to learn more about how to manage direct employees in Remote.

Bringing more clarity and context to termination requests

Parting ways with a teammate can be complex for many reasons. Even the smallest details can have major impacts on the process to ensure compliance and protect everyone’s interests.

To help us understand the situation and provide the best course of action when it’s time to terminate an employee, you can now provide as much additional information as you need on the termination request form. Our global HR experts will review your submission and suggest appropriate next steps in line with local regulations.

Continuing to automate health checks around the world

Health checks are required in many countries around the world, ensuring employees are fit to perform their job duties and preventing health risks in the workplace. As the legal employer of your teammates, we take our compliance requirements very seriously to protect everyone involved.

Working with local partners in each country, we’re automating health check requirements as much as possible to provide a speedier and more efficient process for your team. Checks are automated for over 14 countries, and more coming soon.

In Hungary:

• New employees will be required to schedule a health check as part of their onboarding.

• Existing Remote EOR employees have been asked to schedule a health check at a time that’s convenient to them and will need to upload the completed health check certificate to their profile.

You can find out more about Hungary’s health check requirements in our help center.

In Romania and Portugal:

• Existing Remote EOR employees have been asked to schedule a health check at a time that’s convenient to them and will need to upload the completed health check certificate to their profile.

Demystifying currency conversions for salary amendments

Figuring out currencies can be difficult. To help, we’ve added a currency conversion when you’re requesting amendments to your employee’s salaries.

Input a salary in your employee’s currency and see an estimated amount in your company’s selected currency, or vice versa.

Webhooks for key events in Remote

Webhooks make it easy to connect all your systems together to automate workflows, and trigger actions in other systems based on events that occur in Remote. We’re really excited to see how you use webhooks to automate common tasks!

With this update, you can subscribe to webhooks that alert you to key events:

• When a new employee has completed an onboarding task

• When a new employee’s onboarding is completed

• When a new employee payslip is available

For example, your developer team can use the employment.onboarding.completed webhook to trigger a welcome email, celebrate with a success message in Slack, create a Google account, and much more. The possibilities are endless!

To learn more about using webhooks, take a look at our Working with Webhooks guide.

What’s coming next on the platform? ⏭️

Guaranteed contractor payment amounts

Making sure your contractors get paid as much as possible is important to us. We’re removing fees for same-currency invoices when the currency of the employer is the same as the currency of the contractor, ensuring the contractor gets the exact amount they invoice for, with no payment transaction fees taken off the final amount.

Bulk invitations for EOR and global payroll employees

We’ll be extending our new bulk invitation feature to help you scale your team through our EOR and Global Payroll services. You’ll be able to invite any type of employee, individually or in bulk — saving you time and effort.

Generate invoices in bulk for your contractors

Building on top of last month’s release allowing you 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.

Track time and generate timesheets on Remote platform

Remote customers and employees will soon be able to track the hours worked on the Remote platform for countries where time tracking is mandatory. This brings an additional offline step into Remote, improving compliance and reducing manual effort for employers and employees.

Self-service probation passed letters 

Soon, you’ll be able to generate and share probation passed letters for any EOR employee that has completed their probation period, helping you celebrate your new employee’s success faster without waiting for our team to provide a letter.

Create custom user roles and permissions

Companies will soon be able to customize access levels for their admins by creating new roles, choosing the permissions each role should have, and assigning roles to users.

This will unlock many possibilities, such as:

• Create a role for users who should only have access to your payroll and payment information

• Create a new role for your people managers that has additional permissions, like enabling each manager to pay the contractors they oversee

• Create a role for admins who need to view the status of employee and contractor onboarding

Thanks for reading! We look forward to sharing more about our new features in next month's update. If you are not yet a Remote customer and would like to see how Remote works, sign up for free today to explore the Remote platform yourself!