ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Rippling and Deel are paid because they file. Tax tables, garnishments, and the penalty for a wrong filing are the product. ERPNext is GPL-3.0 and can store pay inputs. OrangeHRM is GPL-3.0 and can store the employee. Neither is a filing service, and we will not describe them as one.
What can still be owned?
Who works here, what they are paid, and the export the payroll vendor needs. That record should not be trapped in the same subscription that files the taxes, because leaving the filer should not mean losing the history.
What stays rented on purpose?
The filing. A company that needs deposits made to a revenue authority needs a filer who will do that, under their own licence to do it. Open source does not confer that licence.
When would we build around payroll?
When the pain is the handoff into the filer: timesheets, commissions, contractor invoices. That handoff can be owned. The filing stays where the filing is legal.
What do we hand over?
We select the system, deploy it on infrastructure you control, connect it to the tools you keep, and write the runbook so your own team can operate it. Support after handover is optional. The rest of the map is in software you can stop renting; the engagement behind it is open-source business systems.
Name one process that still needs a person. We will tell you what a one-time build takes.
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