Frequently asked questions

Flamingo is one platform to hire, manage and pay people across borders. You can send contracts, approve invoices and pay contractors in 119 countries, employ full-time staff in the Philippines and Colombia through our Employer of Record service, and keep your own entity's employees alongside them. Productivity monitoring, time tracking and time off are built in.

An Employer of Record legally employs someone on your behalf in their country. With Flamingo's EOR, Flamingo becomes the legal employer and runs compliant local payroll, statutory contributions, benefits and leave, while the person works for your team day to day. It lets you hire a permanent employee where you don't have your own legal entity.

Choose the model that matches how the person will actually work. Contractors are independent, invoice you and handle their own taxes, which suits flexible or project-based work. EOR employees are employed by Flamingo with local payroll and benefits, which suits long-term roles in a country where you have no entity. Direct employees are employed by your own company, which runs their payroll while Flamingo keeps their HR records.

Yes, in the Philippines and Colombia. In those countries Flamingo acts as the legal employer, so you don't need an entity of your own. Elsewhere you can engage people as contractors in 119 countries, or add employees of an entity you already have as direct employees.

Yes. You add contractors, EOR employees and direct employees from the same place, Talents, Create Talent, New hire, and pick the type on the Add a person screen. They're then managed in one workspace, with their contracts, documents, time off and onboarding status side by side.

Contract Management is $29 per contractor per month, billed only for active contractors. Employer of Record is $599 per employee per month, in the Philippines and Colombia. Flamingo HR is $5 per employee per month, and Managed Services is $49 per employee per month in the Philippines and Colombia, with payroll, remittances and benefits run by Flamingo. All plans are billed monthly in US dollars.

Only for Employer of Record hires. Each EOR employee needs a refundable deposit, shown on the quote and paid before employment starts, and it's returned at the end of employment. If you later change terms that raise the employment cost, the difference is billed as a separate deposit invoice. Contractors need no deposit or prepaid balance: you pay each invoice when you choose to pay it.

When you pay contractors, a processing fee applies based on your payment method, and currency conversion and payout fees apply where relevant, such as for international payouts. Every fee is itemized in the payment breakdown before you confirm, and fees are added on top, so contractors always receive their full amount. For EOR, the quote also shows the employer statutory contributions and any mandatory payments for the country.

You pay only for contractors with an active contract, and a contractor with two active contracts still counts as one. Someone added mid-month appears as a prorated line on your next monthly invoice, and when you offboard a contractor the fee stops after the current month. Plans are billed monthly; contact sales if you need custom terms.

No. Timesheets, activity tracking and screenshots are included in every plan, for contractors, EOR employees and direct employees alike.

Flamingo typically onboards an international employee in 2 to 5 business days, compared with the months it can take to set up your own entity. The pace mostly depends on the new hire: they accept the invite, complete their profile, verify their identity and sign their contract. For an EOR hire, the deposit also has to settle, so make sure onboarding is finished before the first payroll cut-off.

Your company signs a Master Service Agreement with Flamingo once, and Flamingo countersigns it. For each hire you then review the quote, accept it and pay the refundable deposit by card, bank account or wire. Once the deposit settles, the employment contract is generated and signed by Flamingo, and the employee is invited to onboard.

Yes. For contractors you can use Flamingo's standard agreement, a custom template with your own terms and branding, or upload an agreement you've already signed. Standard and custom agreements are e-signed in Flamingo, your signatory first and then the contractor. Direct employees always use your own employment agreement.

Yes. Add a contractor with "Use your own agreement" to attach a contract you've already signed, so nothing needs re-signing, or add many at once from a spreadsheet with bulk upload, which generates new contracts for signing. Each contractor then gets an invite and completes their profile, identity check and bank details in their own account. See the Help Center article Add multiple contractors with bulk upload.

Every contractor contract can be checked with an AI misclassification analysis. You answer optional questions about how the work is directed, the hours, tools and other clients, and get a risk level with the reasoning behind it. It's guidance rather than legal advice. Contract Management Plus, coming soon, adds $100K indemnity coverage for misclassification penalties and monitoring that flags when risk rises.

If a contractor works like an employee, you can move them to employment. End their contractor contract with Offboard, then hire them as an EOR employee in the Philippines or Colombia, or as a direct employee of your own entity. Running the misclassification check on the contract first shows how strong the case is.

Yes. Contractors sign up from your invite with email, Google or Microsoft, and use their own account to sign their contract and tax form, add bank accounts, log time, submit invoices with expenses and follow every payout. They can also download their contract, invoices and signed tax form at any time.

Yes. For hourly and daily contracts, Flamingo builds each invoice from the timesheets you've approved for that period, and time tracked with the desktop agent syncs to timesheets automatically. Monthly contracts get a fixed invoice each cycle that's submitted for review automatically. You can also auto-approve invoices backed by approved timesheets, fixed monthly invoices, or invoices below an amount you set.

Each contract follows an invoicing policy that sets how often invoices are generated and when they're due: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly or monthly. Invoices arrive in Finance, Invoices, where you can approve up to 100 at once or reject specific lines with a reason. A rejected invoice is regenerated by the contractor as a corrected draft.

You pay in US dollars by card, US bank account (ACH) or wire transfer. Approving an invoice never charges you: you're charged only when you click Pay, and a due date is a deadline with reminders, not an automatic charge. There's no wallet to pre-fund, and card and bank payments are confirmed with a one-time code sent to your email.

By default, payouts are released the day your payment clears. Bank (ACH) payments typically take 1 to 3 business days to clear, and a wire clears when it arrives. After the payout is sent, the transfer takes a few more business days to reach the contractor's bank, and the app shows a funds-expected-by date. You can switch this off to pay on each contract's normal payout schedule instead.

You're charged in US dollars and each contractor is paid in the currency of their bank account. When the currencies differ, Flamingo converts at the mid-market rate plus a small spread and a buffer for rate movement, and both are itemized with the exchange rate before you pay. If the rate moves noticeably before you confirm, you're shown the new total first.

No fees are taken from the contractor's payout by Flamingo. Processing, currency conversion and payout fees are charged to your company and added on top, so the contractor receives their full agreed amount.

Payouts go by bank transfer to the contractor's bank account, in that account's currency. Contractors can keep several bank accounts and choose which one is the default. US accounts use a routing number, and accounts elsewhere use the bank's SWIFT or BIC code.

Your business passes a one-time verification before it can pay anyone, and every contractor verifies their identity before adding a bank account. New bank accounts and card or bank payments are confirmed with a code sent by email, and wires are matched to your payment by a unique reference. If a transfer to a contractor's bank fails, it's retried automatically and you can retry it yourself from the payroll run.

You can pay contractors in 119 countries with Contract Management. Employer of Record is available in the Philippines and Colombia, where Flamingo is the legal employer. Direct employees of your own entity can be added in any country.

Flamingo's Employer of Record covers only the Philippines and Colombia today, and the hire screen shows when EOR isn't available in a country. Elsewhere you can engage the person as a contractor, in any of the 119 payout countries, or add them as a direct employee if you have your own entity there.

For EOR employees, Flamingo runs statutory payroll and remittances: SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and BIR in the Philippines, and PILA and DIAN in Colombia. Contractors are responsible for their own taxes, and Flamingo doesn't withhold tax from their payouts. For employees of your own entity, Flamingo HR leaves payroll with you, and Managed Services has Flamingo run payroll and remittances for you in the Philippines and Colombia.

During onboarding, contractors sign an IRS Form W-9 if they're a US person, or a Form W-8BEN if they're not, inside Flamingo. Most of the form is pre-filled from their profile, and the signed PDF is saved to their documents. A W-8BEN expires at the end of the third year after signing and must be renewed. Flamingo doesn't issue 1099s.

EOR employees get the statutory benefits of their country, including 13th month pay in the Philippines, along with leave balances, payslips and final pay when they leave. When you hire, you also set their paid vacation days and choose healthcare where it's offered.

You can sign in with Google, Microsoft, your company's single sign-on (SSO), email and password, or a magic link. Two-factor authentication with an authenticator app adds a one-time code to every sign-in, with recovery codes in case you lose your phone. SSO works once your company's connection has been set up with Flamingo.

Rates and salaries are hidden by default across talent profiles and contracts, and every reveal is logged with who viewed it and when. Roles and permissions control which areas each person can open, and information access levels limit which people's records they can see. Identity checks run through our verification partner Persona, and contractors' tax IDs are stored encrypted.

The Flamingo desktop agent for macOS and Windows records time, the apps and sites used, an activity level and periodic screenshots, but only during a work session the person starts. Tracked time syncs to timesheets, and you see a productivity score, team trends and screenshots in Productivity Insights. Daily and weekly digest emails summarize the results.

The agent tracks only during sessions the worker starts and never logs keystrokes or reads files, messages or the clipboard. Screenshots are blurred on the worker's device at the level you choose before they're uploaded encrypted, and screenshots and raw activity data are deleted after 90 days. Workers can end a session at any time, and employees can see their own data. See the Help Center article What the desktop agent collects, and what it doesn't.

Yes. Workers log time or track it with the desktop agent, request time off against their leave types, and EOR employees can file overtime and schedule adjustments. You set work schedules and approval policies with multiple approval levels for timesheets, time off, overtime, invoices and more.