Running payroll · 4 min read · Updated October 2026
Running payroll for your clients: one platform for your whole book
For firms running payroll for clients of their own: how each client is kept apart, how compliance shows across your book, how fees, margin and invoices are worked out, and what each client sees.
How can a firm run payroll for clients of its own on one platform?
With Client Book, a firm running payroll for clients of its own keeps its whole book on one platform. Each client is kept separate, with its own engagements and people. Compliance shows across the book. Each client's fees and your margin are worked out from the month's payroll. Its invoice is raised from the same figures. Each client has a portal showing its own people, requests and invoices.
Check that your book is what this is built for
This guide is for firms that run payroll for clients of their own. That includes BPOs, EOR providers, payroll companies, accountancy firms carrying payroll books and recruitment agencies.
The test is structural, not a matter of size or sector. Do you serve end clients of your own, who deal with you rather than with us? If you do, Client Book is built for you.
Many firms are both. They pay their own staff, and they run payroll for a book of clients as well.
Client Book is not for a company running payroll only for its own workforce. That company uses the platform without it.
Recognise when the book has outgrown the way it is run
A book of twenty clients is twenty month-ends. Each has its own cut-off, its own countries, its own files and its own invoice.
When each client lives in a system or spreadsheet of its own, nothing shows the book as a whole. A visa renewal for one client's employee sits in somebody's calendar. A client's headcount means opening that client's file. Your margin on the month is known only after the invoices are out. Each invoice is rebuilt by hand from the payroll.
The risk grows with the book. One client's figures in another client's file is a mistake no firm can afford.
Keep every client apart, on one platform
On Client Book, each client holds its own engagements. Within a client, each engagement carries its own countries, people, fees, delivery model and legal entities.
Access is scoped to the client. One client's login never reaches another client's people, requests or invoices.
You see the whole book. Each client shows its headcount, its monthly cost of employment and what you bill it.
See compliance across the whole book
Compliance is shown for the book as a whole, country by country, rather than client by client.
Where you stand on employing Saudi and Emirati nationals, under Saudization and Emiratisation, shows on one screen. So do the visa and contract renewals coming due over the next three months.
A renewal that would have waited in one client's spreadsheet shows up while there is still time to act on it.
Work out each client's fees and invoice from the payroll
For each client, the platform shows the payroll cost passed through, your markup and fees, and the total you bill. Across the book, it shows what you billed and how much of it was your own markup and fees.
Each month, an invoice for each engagement is raised from the approved payroll run. It carries your own invoice number. It is produced as a PDF. Your client sees it in its portal, with its status.
Nothing is rebuilt by hand, so the invoice starts from the same figures as the payroll.
Give each client a view of its own
Each client has a portal of its own. It shows that client's engagements, people, invoices and requests, and nothing else.
Its people are listed by name, role, location and start date. Their pay, their identity documents and your margin are never shown.
From the portal, a client can ask you to hire someone new, end an engagement or change someone's pay. Each request comes to you to action.
Turn a won deal into a client in your book
The CRM holds your pipeline, from first contact to a signed engagement. When a deal is won, you convert it into an engagement in one step.
The client then appears in your book, in onboarding, billing and compliance, without being set up a second time.
Know who does what each month
We run the gross-to-net calculation for each client's payroll every month. We produce its files. You approve each month's outputs before they are delivered.
The employing entity submits the files and pays the people. Where your client employs its people, that is your client's entity. Where you employ them, it is yours. Wages and contributions never pass through us.
Moving your book's payroll onto the platform follows the same steps as any payroll move. The data is captured by CSV. We run two months alongside the payroll you run today. Payroll goes live in month three. That timeline covers payroll only.
Common questions.
Who submits each client's files?
Can a client ask for changes itself?
Is Client Book for a company paying only its own people?
See how a payroll month runs with us.
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