Introducing Rippling’s Global Contractor Hub

Rippling helps customers pay contractors in 185+ countries and 50+ currencies. Today, we’re making those contractor payments even simpler by introducing Contractor Hub, a new natively-built app that will help you streamline financial operations for global contractors with three contractor-facing features: Invoicing, Balance, and Contractor Support.

Many organizations rely on contractors to help them nimbly respond to business needs. But there’s no denying that working with contractors—especially internationally—can be complicated and time-consuming. You not only need to navigate the sensitivity of pay details, misclassification risk, and compliance in different jurisdictions but also field the same questions over and over again: Has my invoice been approved? When am I getting paid?

We built Contractor Hub to pull every step of the contractor lifecycle—from hiring to invoices to payments to reporting—into one place for HR, managers, and contractors so that the right people have greater visibility and control at every touch point. 

Let’s jump into Invoicing, Balance, and Contractor Support and how they can make your contractor management experience easier than ever before.

1. Invoicing removes the manual work from invoice submissions and approvals

Invoicing lets contractors submit invoices (or auto-generates them) for you to review, approve, and push to payroll.

Contractors need timely approval of their invoices and visibility into their upcoming payments. Managers, HR, and finance need a faster, less manual way to review, approve, and pay invoices.

With Rippling, you can seamlessly link every contractor payment to an invoice with unmatched clarity. Enable contractors to generate invoices, streamline approvals, and enhance visibility for all parties—perfect for tracking payments owed to contractors, regardless of whether they are paid by the project, hour, or a fixed rate.

Key benefits of Invoicing:

• Faster invoice submissions and approvals. With Invoicing, invoice generation is seamless and approvals can be automated, helping your organization manage and pay contractors faster and with less manual work—while maintaining accuracy and compliance. Project-based contractors can generate their own invoices. Or Invoicing can auto-generate invoices for contractors on regular payment structures (either hourly or fixed rates) and auto-approve them based on approved timecards or contract terms.
• Visibility into the status of invoice approvals. Invoicing provides all stakeholders, from managers to finance teams to contractors, with real-time visibility into payment statuses across diverse contractor payment agreements. And giving contractors visibility into approval statuses means they need to ask fewer one-off questions.
• A paper trail without extra work. Invoicing makes it clear which services have been paid for and which services are still outstanding by automatically linking an invoice to every contractor payment.

2. Balance gives contractors visibility and control over their earnings

Balance lets contractors view the balance of their earnings in Rippling and withdraw to personal accounts.

Contractor funds have typically moved similarly to employee direct deposits. But this process lacks transparency about how money is being moved, which often results in contractors asking more questions, like exactly when payments will arrive in their accounts or what FX rate will be applied to their payment. 

These questions would all get routed to your team, even if the contractor ultimately needs to contact their own bank for an answer. The result? Contractors often don’t get the answers they need quickly, and the time HR spends fielding the same questions over and over detracts from strategic, value-adding work. Balance increases transparency in the payment process, meaning less friction for contractors and time back for HR.

When you pay global contractors in Contractor Hub, payments are deposited in Balance so they can see the real-time status of their earnings.

Key benefits of Balance:

• Contractors get visibility into the status of their funds sooner. And if there are any issues with their withdrawal, they can handle it directly with Rippling and their bank, instead of asking you to act as a middleman. No need for contractors to ask for status updates!
• Contractors have greater control over when and how they move their money out of Balance. Contractors who receive several small payments might want to batch transfers to their bank account. This may be to limit the impact of per-transaction fees or track the timing of their currency conversion—especially for those living in countries with volatile currencies.

3. Contractor Support means contractors can solve issues independently

Contractor Support lets contractors live-chat Rippling directly with questions about payments or account verification.

Contractor Hub improves the quality of life for both admins and contractors. In addition to all the features to improve contractor visibility, they can chat with Contractor Support directly if they still have questions. They can also get help with KYC account verification or payment status on their own instead of you asking on their behalf. This empowers your contractors with more information and takes you out of the middle of a telephone game for invoicing and payment questions—a win-win for everyone involved.

Key benefits of Support:

• Contractors can resolve issues more quickly. They can go straight to the source, Rippling, to get the troubleshooting help they need, when they need it—instead of playing a telephone game trying to track down answers.
• Admins don’t have to waste time acting as a go-between. Admins are freed from being the middleman between their contractors and customer support, which takes one more thing off your to-do list.

Rippling: Everything you need for a better contractor experience

While Contractor Hub—including Invoicing, Balance, and Support—is our newest addition, that’s not all our Global Contractors solution has to offer. 

With Rippling, it’s never been easier to hire, pay, and manage contractors. You can:

• Hire contractors anywhere quickly. Hire in 185+ countries and pay contractors in 50+ currencies, in days instead of weeks.
• Access contractor agreement templates. Rippling has a library of ready-to-use, locally compliant contractor agreements for dozens of countries.
• Automate approvals. Create policies that will auto-route approvals (or auto-approve) based on parameters about the contractor, invoice, and beyond so you can save time on recurring approval tasks.
• Seamlessly transition contractors to employees. With other solutions, this typically requires firing and rehiring them from scratch. But with Rippling, you can transition workers between employment models in one system so their documents, time tracking, expenses, and more all remain accessible.
• Have one source of truth for your entire workforce. Manage all of your contractors’ tools—like time off, time tracking, or license provisioning—from the same place you manage the rest of your workforce.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.