How to Automate Deel

Deel holds the contract and the pay for every worker abroad

A company with a designer in Lisbon and two engineers in Buenos Aires has no entity in Portugal or Argentina, and pays all three through Deel. Contractors are paid on invoices. Full-time employees are hired through Deel's Employer of Record service, which employs them on its own local payroll so the company needs no entity of its own.

Each contract is created in Deel, and the worker is paid through it in their own currency, choosing from more than 15 payout options such as Wise or Revolut. Invoices, time off and payslips live there too. Deel's other products cover HR, benefits, visas through Deel Mobility, and laptops and app access through Deel IT.

The founder or people lead hires, and a finance person approves earnings before each payment run. Contractors submit timesheets and invoices in Deel and withdraw their pay. Managers mostly appear when something needs their approval, such as time off or a raise.

Payment day depends on hours logged somewhere else

A pay-as-you-go contractor logs hours in the team's time tracker, then types a weekly total into a Deel timesheet. The approver ought to compare the two. In a busy week, the approver takes the Deel figure as it stands. A contractor marks a milestone complete in Deel while its ticket is still open on the project board. The finance person keys in a bonus agreed in a Slack thread as an invoice adjustment, and a new rate agreed on a call has to reach Deel before the next invoice generates, or the old rate is paid.

The paperwork has gaps of its own. New contractors leave a contract unsigned or a tax form missing for weeks. Contracts reach their end date before anyone has decided whether to renew, move the person to an Employer of Record contract or let it lapse. Finance wants each month's contractor spend by project in its budget sheet, which Deel has never seen.

Invoices generate themselves, but only from work Deel was told about

A fixed-rate contract in Deel invoices automatically, while pay-as-you-go and milestone work invoices once the contractor submits it and someone approves it. Approved earnings and expenses then go out in a single bulk payment, in more than 120 currencies.

Deel Workflows start from events such as a new hire being added, a promotion or a change of location, and from dates such as the end of probation. They send welcome emails, reminders and contracts, post Slack messages about new joiners and create Jira tickets. Deel also checks contractor classification against local labour law and monitors rule changes for potential issues, and Deel AI gives insights from your people data and answers workers' questions about payslips and time off.

Every invoice still starts from something recorded in Deel, and it is only as right as the timesheet behind it. Unless an engineer has built a sync through Deel's Timesheets API, Deel has no view of the time tracker or the project board. A Workflows reminder can chase a missing signature; it cannot update the finance team's budget sheet or get a team lead to decide about a contract that ends next month.

Timesheets and milestones can be checked before the Deel payment run

Two days before each cycle, the approver knows which pay-as-you-go timesheets in Deel disagree with the time tracker, and by how much: eleven hours in the tracker, sixteen on the timesheet. The manager confirms any milestone Deel shows as complete while its ticket is still open on the project board.

The people lead sends a chase email to each contractor whose contract is still unsigned after a week or whose tax form is missing. Each manager gets the contracts ending next month and records a decision on each; a copy of every contract sits in the shared drive. Once a payment clears, finance has the month's spend by contractor and project in its own budget sheet.

When a contractor leaves, IT learns which tools outside Deel IT still show them as a user after the contract's end date.

The check runs before finance approves the Deel payment

The comparison has to happen between a contractor submitting and finance approving, since money sent to another country on a wrong timesheet is hard to recover.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. Two days before each cycle, the approver receives every mismatch between Deel's pending timesheets and milestones and the time tracker or project board, found by the agent working through each one.

Whoever approves earnings, sends the bulk payment and signs contracts in Deel today still does. The people lead sends each chase email from Gmail, where the agent leaves it as a draft, and the contractor document chase below posts its gaps to Microsoft Teams.