When you work with someone abroad through a platform, who signs with them and who carries the risk?

Summary

With contractor management, you approve and pay the contractor's invoices and the platform handles the flow of money. With a contractor of record, the provider engages and pays the contractor itself and says it takes the liability if that person turns out to be an employee. An EOR is not a contractor arrangement at all; it employs the person. The price gap between the three tracks who holds the contract and who holds the risk.

Contractor management

Remote charges $29 per contractor per month, and only for contractors you actively work with. Deel charges $49. At Remote, the contractor submits an invoice, your company admin approves and pays it, and Remote pays the contractor once your payment arrives. The standard plans at both companies come with classification safeguards built into onboarding, but no stated indemnity.

Remote sells a middle option, Contractor Management Plus, at $99 per contractor per month "regardless of contractor activity in the platform." It adds indemnity coverage of up to $100,000 per contractor for misclassification, up to $1 million in total.

Contractor of record

Here the provider is the one engaging the worker. Remote's product page says it "directly engages and pays contractors," prices the service from $325 per contractor per month, and advertises "uncapped indemnity." Once you approve a contractor's invoice, Remote bills you, and it starts the contractor's payment four business days after your money arrives. Deel lists COR at $325 and says, "Deel legally hires the contractor on your behalf."

There are conditions. Deel requires a deposit of one month of the contractor's payment on each COR contract. It reviews whether the worker should be a contractor or an employee, and if the relationship does not qualify, it suggests EOR instead. A COR contract cannot be turned back into a standard contractor contract, and in Singapore Deel does not offer COR for foreign nationals. Neither provider's pricing page spells out what falls outside its indemnity; that is left to the terms of service.

Turning a contractor into an employee

Moving a contractor onto an EOR payroll means ending one contract and signing another. At Remote, the contractor submits a final invoice, you deactivate the contractor profile once it is paid, and Remote onboards the person and drafts the employment agreement for signature. Deel calls it a contract transition: the worker signs the new agreement, and the old contractor record is marked inactive.

What makes a working relationship employment in the first place, and what misclassification costs when it is found, are covered in SeatBill's guides to hiring abroad without an entity and to contractor-versus-employee costs.

Sources

• https://remote.com/pricing
• https://remote.com/global-hr/contractor-management
• https://support.remote.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410700827021
• https://remote.com/global-hr/contractor-management-plus
• https://support.remote.com/hc/en-us/articles/22412673152013-What-is-Contractor-Management-Plus
• https://remote.com/global-hr/contractor-of-record
• https://support.remote.com/hc/en-us/articles/33804591083021
• https://support.remote.com/hc/en-us/articles/4411581967501
• https://www.deel.com/pricing/
• https://www.deel.com/solutions/payroll/contractors/
• https://www.deel.com/payroll/contractor-of-record/
• https://help.letsdeel.com/hc/en-gb/articles/9898022419473
• https://help.letsdeel.com/hc/en-gb/articles/11938073860497
• https://help.letsdeel.com/hc/en-gb/articles/28723437369489

Related on this site

• Contractor or employee: the decision nobody prices correctly
• How do you get someone working for you in a country where your company has no entity?
• What an employer of record charges
• What does an employer of record actually take off your hands?