Q&A With Deel on the Use Cases and Benefits of Global Payroll
By embracing global hiring, companies can access high-quality talent amidst labor shortages, reach new markets, and save on hiring costs. But before you can onboard an international employee, you need to find an easy and compliant way to pay them. This task becomes more complex as a team grows in size and location, which is why many consider using a global payroll system.
SourceForge recently sat down with Fernanda Viña, Global Payroll Implementation Team Lead at Deel, an all-in-one HR platform for global teams. In this Q&A, Fernanda shares her insights into how teams can use a global payroll solution.
Global Payroll Implementation Team Lead at Deel
Let’s start off easy: What is global payroll?
Global payroll is a system or platform that enables you to run payroll for multiple entities and countries while accounting for different settings and benefits. It summarizes the entire client experience under one roof, so a team can run payroll regardless of the locations or complexities involved.
Oftentimes, clients are just starting to expand and only have one entity. But eventually, they start wanting to differentiate their workforce and give different benefits to different populations. One of the coolest parts of Deel’s global payroll is that you can differentiate payroll details on an entity level and manage it all in the same system without skipping a beat.
What kind of tasks and responsibilities can you hand off?
The scope of work can significantly change per country. Generally, a global payroll provider manages the statutory requirements for payroll, including:
- Payroll processing and tax reporting
- Basic pay calculations
- Gross-to-net calculations based on tax and statutory legislation
- Monthly processing, including any calculations for taxable pay elements, new employee setup, holiday, back pay, stock plans, crypto, pensions, statutory severance, sick pay, maternity pay, and per-month submissions to the competent authority
- New starters administration
- End of service administration
- Submissions to authorities
- Main point of contact for authorities
- Mandatory pension administration
- All standard reports required by applicable local laws, rules, and regulations
There are other country-specific tasks, such as registering employers for payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, and more.
Does it replace the need for a payroll team? Or how do they work together?
It’s very client-specific. If a company has in-house payroll, they already have payroll teams completing all the activities we just covered. So this means a global payroll provider like Deel won’t entirely replace their HR team—instead, we’ll act as their payroll managers.
For example, our main point of contact during implementation and management is usually someone on the people operations team or an HR business partner. They typically own the information regarding new hires, onboarding, bonus cycles, compensation, and salary increases.
With a global payroll provider, those teams don’t have to be payroll experts—that’s the whole point. They can rely on us to manage anything related to compliance and very technical local expertise. But since all the inputs for payroll have to come from somewhere, we still need to work together with those teams and we support them as needed.
What types of companies benefit most from using a global payroll system?
The ones that really benefit are large, mature companies that have operations and entities in multiple locations and need to centralize everything under one vendor—that’s often their biggest pain point. You can see our case study on Change.org as an example of this.
Doing payroll with local providers or accounting firms means companies have to adapt to many different processes, platforms, loggings, and timelines. Plus, they need teams to engage with those providers. But global payroll is just one platform and one process they need to learn.
One use case that’s becoming more and more frequent—and that I like the most, personally—is when you get to see the entire growth cycle of the company: From hiring a few contractors after their first round of investment, to hiring employees through our employer of record (EOR), to creating their own entities and moving the EORs to global payroll.
How do companies determine if they should use local or global payroll?
It depends on the company’s volume and plans for expansion. For example, a small to mid-size business focuses on very specific regions like South America or North America. They might feel more comfortable working with a local system, but to be honest, it’s very client specific.
A company in the US that only has employees in US and Canada may not think to expand anywhere else, so global payroll might not be that appealing to them because they won’t be doing payroll in another continent. But if they don’t have local HR teams that can support their operations within Canada and the US, that’s going to be an issue. Deel can provide that necessary support.
What should a company look for in a payroll system?
Streamlined payroll submission: You want a system with easy setup, maintenance, automation, and a good user experience. For example, with Deel’s bulk edit function, you can quickly update bonuses for hundreds of employees at once (and set bonus deductions, benefits-in-kind, or recurring allowances).
Payroll package deliverables: You’ll want access to customizable payroll outputs that can be tailored to clients or countries. Gross-to-net reports, liability reports, accounting reports, payslips—anything you may need to review and approve payroll.
Integrations: Deel integrates with three of the main HR information systems and has an accounting integration with Netsuite, with more to come. With these integrations, our clients don’t have to change their entire tech stack to do payroll or run reports manually to integrate with other systems. It saves a lot of time when you can streamline and automate those processes.
Direct support for clients and employees: Usually, the clients are the middlemen between the provider and the employee, but with Deel, the client doesn’t have to be involved. The employees can reach out directly to Deel for support, and the person who does their payroll will be the person answering their questions. It’s not just an agent saying, ‘Let me get back to you and check.
Integrated payments (bonus feature): If permitted by their country’s compliance regulations, clients can use Deel’s integrated payment system to make payments in just two clicks, saving their finance team hours of work. They can pay from a local entity, HQ entity, or bank account, with the freedom to process payments according to whichever corporate structure and supported currency fits best.
About Deel
Deel is the all-in-one HR platform for global teams. We simplify every aspect of managing an international workforce, from culture and onboarding to local payroll and compliance. Our clients are supported by in-house teams of local payroll managers, country finance managers, legal counsel, and additional services.
Learn more about Deel’s Global Payroll today.
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