Questions I take into an employer of record demo

Key takeaways

Ask who the legal employer is, on the contract, not in the slide title.
Ask which country is in this quote, and whether the entity is owned or a partner's.
Ask for the monthly price in that country. Remote publishes a starting rate. The others do not.
Ask how termination and equity work, because the pages name both and leave the country rules open.

Employer of record demos wander into visas, equipment shipping, and a contractor wallet. I keep four questions on the table. They match the employer of record guide: the legal employer, the country, who owns the entity, and the price.

Who is the legal employer

Legal employerNamed on the contract
CountryThe one on the offer
EntityOwned, or a partner
PriceThis country, this month

I ask the seller to say who employs the person. For Deel I expect the FAQ's account: the person is on Deel's payroll, and they still work for the company. For Remote I expect an entity Remote owns. For Oyster I expect the same employment relationship the page describes for distributed teams. If the answer is “you stay the employer,” I am no longer in this demo.

Owned entity or a third party

Remote's page says the entities are owned and that there are no third parties. Deel's page says it owns entities and a payroll engine in 130+ countries. I ask the seller to name the entity for this country and to say whether that entity is theirs. A partner entity can still be a lawful hire. It is not the sentence those pages led with, so I do not let the quote pretend it is.

The price in this country

Remote publishes a starting price of $599 per employee per month. I ask whether this country is that starting rate or a higher one, and whether equity at the separate fee the page describes is in the quote. Deel and Oyster do not print a price. I ask for the monthly figure in writing before I compare them with Remote. I do not fill the gap with a number from a blog.

Termination and equity, still open

Deel's FAQ says it manages termination and severance under local law, and that equity depends on the country. Remote's page says it leads termination and that equity processing is a separate monthly fee. I ask for the notice period and the equity path in the country on this hire. Those answers are not on the homepage in a form I can copy into a contract. More on keeping the job straight is in which buying job this quote is for.