We’ve recently won some EU grant funding , and I could really use some advice! We’re a globally distributed open-source tech startup with team members from Germany (where I’m based), two other EU countries, and one non-EU, and Africa. I have individual contract agreements with each employee, but now we need to figure out how to handle payroll and stay compliant in all these different countries regulations.
Here are some of the challenges we’re facing:
How do we pay employees in different countries while staying compliant with local labor laws, tax regulations, and EU requirements? Should we look into options like PEO services, local entities, or stick to contractor models?
What are the best practices for managing EU grants with a fully remote, international team? Any specific rules we need to follow, or tips for managing this across multiple countries?
As a full-time employee in Germany, my employer knows about my side project, but how can I structure my payments from the grant without conflicting with German labor laws? Could I pay myself through another country since I hold both EU and non-EU citizenships?
Would love to hear your thoughts, experiences, or any advice you have on this!
I’ve worked on reporting for several grant projects (Horizon 2020, Archimedes, EAS), so I understand the challenges of ensuring eligibility for funding and keeping financial records accurate. Unfortunately almost none of the requirements are exactly the same, so it would require a little more information about the grant. While I haven’t dealt with international teams in similar situations, I’d recommend starting by carefully reviewing the specific eligibility criteria and requirements for your specific grant.
If the grant is intended to cover “payroll costs,” contractor expenses may not be eligible. However, you could check if it’s possible to reallocate the budget toward “subcontracted services” based on the grant guidelines and have contractor agreements in place.
If only payroll costs are eligible, then I would check if PEO/EOR is acceptable by the grant rules, because for PEO/EOR you are not the direct employer of the employee, but the EOR company is and you are the client of the EOR company.
I hope this helped and best of luck with the project!
I ran your post by our team. Although I’m still investigating point 2 and 3 this is what I got on point 1:
In contrast to cooperating with independent freelancers across the globe, your Estonian company cannot hire anybody working outside Estonia on a permanent basis as an official employee on your company’s payroll. This triggers the need to register the company as a non-resident employer in their location and comply with local rules and regulations. To shortly answer your question, yes, you should continue as you are doing now, i.e. you can hire them as a contractor. More information can be found here.
I’ll get back to you as soon as I have more insights on the following two points
Thanks a lot.
The support is an action grant, and includes the following categories:
a) personnel cost (employees, natural persons under direct contract and seconded persons), and SME owners and natural person beneficiaries
b) subcontracting costs
c) purchase costs (travel, equipment and other goods, services)
d) other cost categories (financial support to third parties, internally invoiced goods and services)
e) indirect costs.
Thanks a lot. I was not aware that we can manage and signature request via Xolo. I was always doing this manually and via our internal signature request tool.
This is awesome. Thanks a lot for helping out, highly appreciated, indeed!
Hi @jurs.annika_1 and @cirkeline any more info and insides to share with me?
Your help is highly appreciated, as the project kick-off is coming in a few days.
Thanks in advance, and keen on hearing back from you.
Hi @predrag , thanks for following up. I’ve investigated with my team if we can be of any further assistance but as we unfortunately don’t have any EU grant nor Germany specific professionals on the team we would be advising on something that’s outside of our jurisdiction.
I hope you can find the answers you’re looking for elsewhere and when you do, please share them back here in the thread so someone in your shoes at a later point can benefit from your learnings.
Wishing you all the best of luck on the grant application
, and I could really use some advice! We’re a globally distributed open-source tech startup with team members from Germany (where I’m based), two other EU countries, and one non-EU, and Africa. I have individual contract agreements with each employee, but now we need to figure out how to handle payroll and stay compliant in all these different countries 
regulations.
