The five questions EOR buyers ask first,answered in the open.

Bordero employs on owned entities in 140+ countries — not partner re-aggregation. That means the employer on the payslip is the same legal entity in the same jurisdiction the labor law is written in, with the in-country counsel already on retainer. The list excludes FATF-grey and comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions (the same exclusions every compliant EOR provider maintains), plus a small set of markets we are still opening on owned entities but can quote through a sister in-region during onboarding. If your target country is on the gap list, route a coverage request through /contact and we come back with a dated answer — owned-entity go-live, sister-region bridge, or a candid “not this year.”

Every quote on /pricing breaks down the same three layers on one invoice: a flat platform fee per active employee, the country-specific EOR charge for that market, and the statutory employer contributions the country requires (pension, social security, local taxes) shown as a pass-through. FX is locked at contract signing for the term, withholding is calculated by the in-country payroll team — never by a third-party calculator — and there are no onboarding fees, RSU admin fees, or per-document fees. The only line that varies is the gross salary you set. Pilots start on a single-country Free tier; multi-country EOR and uncapped Enterprise map onto Pro and Enterprise.

On owned entities in the standard 140+-country set, the median is 24 hours from a countersigned order form to a country-specific employment contract ready for signature, and 48 hours from there to first local payroll, tax ID, and statutorily-required benefits enrollment. Immigration-heavy markets — work permits, dependent visas, social-security registrations that take the regulator weeks, not days — are quoted up front on /contact before you sign so nobody is surprised. The clock is measured per hire, not per batch: adding a fifth hire on the same ledger does not re-set the timer for the first four.

The conversion is a contract repaper, not a termination and rehire. We map the existing scope of work onto the country-specific employment contract Bordero maintains as the legal employer in that market — same role, same deliverables, same compensation adjusted for the employee cost the country now requires the employer to carry (statutory contributions, paid leave, severance accrual). We take over invoicing and withholding on the first day of the country’s payroll cycle, the contractor stops invoicing you, and the prior 1099/MSA is closed with a transition letter that preserves their start date for benefits vesting. Misclassification exposure collapses the day the local contract is signed. Time-to-completion is a 30-minute scoping call and a 5-day contract cycle on most markets.

Bordero runs the employment relationship on its own in-country entities — not partner brokers that re-paper onto a provider you never signed with. Each market has dedicated in-country counsel reviewing the 40+ contract templates on the ledger before they ship, the labor-law amendments whenever the legislator moves, and every new hire’s classification against the country’s worker-vs-contractor test. GDPR DPA and the data-transfer addendum are countersigned during onboarding, before any personal data moves. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 evidence, plus the per-country statutory contribution filings, are available to your security and finance teams under NDA — not after a sales escalation. The audit trail lives on the same ledger as the payslip.