The problem
In July 2024, we started thinking seriously about contractor management. At Tarkle we were working with designers, developers, writers, and specialized studios across multiple countries. The tools available made no sense for what we were actually doing.
Contractors are not employees. They have their own bank accounts: Wise, PayPal, Payoneer. They manage their own taxes. They work for multiple clients simultaneously. They do not need payroll processing, benefits administration, or local entity setup.
But the tools in the market were built for exactly that. EOR platforms like Deel, Remote, Oyster, and Rippling charge $49 to $325 per contractor per month. For ten contractors, that is $490 to $3,250 a month. You are paying for employment infrastructure you do not need and will never use.
The alternative was manual management. Spreadsheets. Invoice emails scattered across threads. Payment details copied into bank transfers one by one. Screenshots sent back as proof of payment. Tax forms somewhere in a folder. Accountants piecing it together at year end.
There was no middle ground: professional contractor management without the employee baggage.
The real problems we kept running into
Invoice chaos. Contractors send invoices via email. You see them, mean to pay, forget. They follow up. You search, copy payment details, send proof, forget to log it. At 10 minutes per invoice cycle, a small team wastes 3 to 8 hours a month just moving money around.
Compliance anxiety. Every new contractor hire raises the same questions: am I doing this right, do I need a contract, what about tax forms? You Google templates, ask for W-9s, put them somewhere. At tax time you are searching through emails from eight months ago.
Payment delays. 71% of freelancers report late payments. Most businesses are not intentionally late. Invoices get lost, you forget who got paid, you sent money but forgot to tell them. Trust erodes.
The spreadsheet mess. Names, payment methods, rates, schedules, last payment dates, total paid this year. Someone sorts one column wrong. You have three versions. None of them are correct.
These are not payroll problems. They are coordination and documentation problems. No platform was solving that specifically.
What we're building and what makes it different
You use your own payment accounts. We are not your bank. You already have bank accounts, Wise, PayPal, Payoneer and they are good at moving money. Kontrable organizes who to pay, tracks that you paid them, and keeps records for accounting. Your money stays in your account until you send it.
Built for contractors only. No payroll processing. No benefits administration. No local entity setup. Contractors verify identity, add payout details, you create invoices and approve them, then pay from your own accounts. Everything is tracked and documented automatically.
Contractors are yours, not ours. On Deel, contractors get a Deel account and their data lives in Deel. With Kontrable, contractors access a portal on your domain with your branding. They are not Kontrable users. They are your users. You own that relationship. If you cancel, you export everything.
Human contractors and AI agent operators. As businesses increasingly work with AI agents deployed by human operators, we are building contractor infrastructure for both. An agent operator is a human or business running an AI agent to deliver defined work. Your contract is with the operator. Kontrable handles both types on the same platform with the same compliance and payment tracking.
What Kontrable replaces
Kontrable replaces the combination of EOR platforms you do not need, spreadsheets that do not scale, and invoice threads that create compliance risk. One flat monthly fee, regardless of how many payments you process or which payment method you use.
Where we are now
We decided to build Kontrable in July 2024, based on our own experience managing contractors across Tarkle. We built Sharebrand and Bripes first, which gave us the product foundation and the infrastructure to move quickly on Kontrable.
We are now in open beta. The platform is available and we are onboarding teams that need contractor management without EOR overhead: agencies, startups, and consulting firms managing 5 to 30 contractors. We are iterating actively based on real usage and collecting feedback to shape the product roadmap.
If you are managing contractors and tired of overpaying for employee infrastructure or drowning in spreadsheets, Kontrable is built for exactly your situation.
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