Run HR admin without an HR department

The problem

Below about twenty people, HR is somebody's side task, usually a founder's. Employment contracts sit in a drive folder, holiday balances live in a spreadsheet that one person maintains, and onboarding is whatever the last person remembered to do. It works because the numbers are small and someone holds it in their head.

The cracks show in specific places. Two people book the same week off because nobody could see the calendar. A new hire spends their first day waiting for accounts nobody set up. A holiday balance is disputed and there is no authoritative answer. Someone leaves and their documents are scattered across three systems.

Hiring internationally adds a harder version: paying a contractor in another currency, or employing someone in a country where you have no legal entity, is not an admin problem but a legal one.

What AI can actually do here

Almost all of the value here is a system of record, and it is worth saying plainly that this category is not really about AI.

An HR system holds employee records, documents and time off in one place, with an approval flow so requests go to the right manager and balances update themselves. Onboarding becomes a checklist that runs the same way every time, which is what stops the first-day chaos. Performance reviews, compensation data and compliance training sit on higher tiers.

For international work, the platform takes on something you genuinely cannot do yourself: acting as employer of record so a person can be legally employed in a country where you have no entity, plus payroll, tax filings and benefits in that jurisdiction.

The thing no tool resolves is classification. Whether someone is a contractor or an employee is determined by how you actually work with them, not by which contract you send, and getting it wrong is expensive. A platform makes the paperwork correct for whichever relationship you declare; it does not make the declaration true.

How the tools differ

BambooHR is the system of record: employee data, documents, time off, onboarding and an applicant tracking system, with performance from Pro. Core is $10 per employee per month, and companies with 25 or fewer employees pay a flat rate starting at $250 per month. Payroll and benefits are add-ons rather than included.

Deel covers the cross-border case: contractors at $49 per contractor per month, employer of record at $599 per EOR employee per month, US PEO at $125, with payments in more than 120 currencies and legal employment in more than 130 countries.

Workable covers hiring specifically, at $299 per month, and is the right addition only if recruiting is continuous. See hire without losing track of candidates if that is the pressing problem.

When you don't need a tool

Under about ten people in one country, a shared calendar for holidays, a folder with a naming convention, and a written onboarding checklist cover most of this at no cost. The discipline is the product; the software only enforces it.

If your pain is payroll rather than records, solve payroll first with a local provider or accountant, since that is a country-specific problem and a general HR platform charges extra for it anyway.

And do not buy an international platform for a single freelancer abroad. A simple contract and a normal bank transfer handle one contractor. The moment you have several, or you want to employ rather than contract, the calculation changes.