I'm curious about your reasoning to provide an API to potentially other companies that could offer payroll service. Do you see this as financially better than providing the service directly yourselves?
Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#22There's quite a few modern HR platforms floating around, like CharlieHR, and it seems (as an outsider) that these platforms have explicitly decided not to enter payroll because it's such a nightmare. From my own experience, payroll is very hands-on because of edge-cases: make one mistake with one employee and you're sixty emails deep with a payroll administrator trying to clear things up (I've been on the receiving e…
1. We're still figuring that one out. From an HR software's point of view, we think they ideally want the payroll API to be white-labelled, so that their customers don't have to think about another product. We're not yet experts on the legal relationship here, but I imagine disclosure can be covered in a privacy policy and we're the "data processor" for them under GDPR. As far as a separate brand for the API, it's a…
> It's not done per month, but based on the amount you've paid so far this year.
Does this mean you get paid more at the beginning of the year than the end?
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. We're still figuring that one out. From an HR software's point of view, we think they ideally want the payroll API to be white-labelled, so that their customers don't have to think about another product. We're not yet experts on the legal relationship here, but I imagine disclosure can be covered in a privacy policy and we're the "data processor" for them under GDPR. As far as a separate brand for the API, it's a…
> It's not done per month, but based on the amount you've paid so far this year. Does this mean you get paid more at the beginning of the year than the end?
Not a payroll human but someone who lives in the UK.
It does not, we have various brackets that you fall into as your income rises.
- No income tax is paid on the first £12,500 of your earnings - 20% on everything between £12,500 and £50,000 - 40% on anything between £50,000 and £150,000 - 45% on anything over £150,000
The way that HMRC likes to figure it out is that you take the salary of the person in question, and then you take into account all of the above bracketing plus more little gotchas. And spread their tax over the course of the whole year as evenly as possible.
This gets more complex when you change jobs or get a new salary midway through the tax year and then payroll software has to account for that and try and even out all the payments for the rest of the year.
Hopefully that makes some sense!
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#24From someone who spent 10 years in the UK Payroll industry, good luck! I’ve spent many hours thinking about doing this myself.
One question that’s not clear from your website, what part of the market are you targeting? Payroll for a 10-person company is vastly different from a 10,000-person company (As I’m sure you are aware).
Regarding the API, personally I wouldn’t say the payroll processing API is a feature I’ve seen requested, but I like concept. The most common API requests are for employee data. No matter how good your integrations are, somebody is going to want names and addresses they can extract on demand.
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. We're still figuring that one out. From an HR software's point of view, we think they ideally want the payroll API to be white-labelled, so that their customers don't have to think about another product. We're not yet experts on the legal relationship here, but I imagine disclosure can be covered in a privacy policy and we're the "data processor" for them under GDPR. As far as a separate brand for the API, it's a…
> It's not done per month, but based on the amount you've paid so far this year. Does this mean you get paid more at the beginning of the year than the end?
It's quite complicated. Income Tax is spread over the year as the first £12k or so is not taxed, so they try to use that balance across the 12 months. We also have something called National Insurance through which eligibility for a state pension is calculated and that's calculated weekly/monthly. There are also student loan repayments, and depending on when you studied at University it changes the threshold you repay at.
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#26LOVE the website design. Fresh, FAST and easy to understand. Kudos on the launch.
Aw thanks - hearing that makes me disproportionately happy :D
Was inspired by https://pry.co/, so props to them!
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#27> “butt” is a feature in payroll land Cloud-to-butt extension? :D Great initiative; UK payroll systems are indeed a mess. Wishing you the best of luck - you clearly have the skills and experience to make a success of this clear gap in the market. I’m familiar with Monzo’s engineering and cultural standards, and hope you carry those to this startup too.
No way, and now I can't edit it haha
I really should turn that off...
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#28Looks really cool. I am the CFO for a post series A company with 25 employees in the UK and last month migrated to Pento, who I guess you would consider a competitor? I love the new employee experience. Now payslips get synced straight into our HR system (HiBob) and everyone can delete the horrible MyEPayWindow website from their bookmarks. More importantly for me, the payroll administration side is significantly sli…
I really like the product Pento are building, interested to hear how robust the HR syncing proves to be. Sounds like it's going well for you?
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#29One of my previous stints was with a small team that was building a cloud-based payroll and HR platform for the Australian market (potentially going abroad as well). It definitely opened my eyes to how complicated award rules can be. I also remember testing being a challenge, particularly when things like multiple backpays, accruals, or one off adjustments were involved. There was also an integration API, but I didn'…
Interesting to hear your experience, thanks!
Re: Launch HN: Onfolk (YC S21) – Modern HR and Payroll in One Place (For the UK)
#30I'm curious about your reasoning to provide an API to potentially other companies that could offer payroll service. Do you see this as financially better than providing the service directly yourselves?
The API is something we're exploring alongside the all-in-one HR & payroll product.
With the API you get much higher volumes for a lower price. It's mice vs. whales! See here for what I'm on about: http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2019/04/five-years-later-f...
As far as how well financially one model turns out to be vs the other, I think a lot of that depends on market size. I do wonder how big the market is for a payroll API. Though we've come across some interesting applications (employer of record companies, accounting firms, hr products etc).
The cool thing that I've always liked about API businesses, is that it's like building really fertile ground for new things to arise that don't even exist yet.
Interesting to think about what new modals could bloom over a fully-featured payroll API