Leaving Remote without losing the record

Leaving Remote is two projects wearing one name, and confusing them is the expensive mistake. One is a data export, which is small: the employee records, the payroll history, the documents and the balances come out while the account is live. The other, if your people are employed through Remote as their employer of record, is a transfer of employment, which is large: those people are legally employed by Remote entities, and moving off means moving the employment itself, onto your own entity or onto another provider, with notice, new contracts and continuity of service to handle under local law. Do the data export first, so you hold the history whatever the employment decision turns out to be, and treat the employment transfer as the real project.

One note on sourcing. What follows about Remote’s own product is our reading of their public material, read in September 2026, and gathered through search because direct access to their help sites is blocked from where this was written. Their documentation is the authority, and you should confirm the current article before planning around a menu path. Everything else here is about your obligations and your data, which do not move when a vendor ships a redesign.

First, separate the data from the employment

Before anything, decide which problem you are solving:

• If you are only moving the HR system, and the people stay employed through Remote, this is a data export and nothing more. Rare, but clean.
• If you are moving the people off the employer of record, the data export is the easy half. The hard half is the employment transfer, and it is a legal and HR project, not a migration. You will need, in each country, your own entity or a new provider, fresh contracts, the right notice, and a plan for continuity of service, accrued leave and any benefits. Take local advice per country. A software guide cannot stand in for it, and this one does not try.

Everything below covers the data. The employment transfer is yours and your advisers’, and it sets the timeline.

What you are actually moving (the data)

• The directory, who works where, on what terms, in which country, as your master index.
• Payroll history, the pay records and payslips Remote produced for every closed month, per country.
• Statutory records, whatever filings and year-end documents the arrangement produced, held per country.
• Documents, contracts, identity papers, policy acknowledgements, anything on a profile. Note that under an employer of record, the employment contracts are between the person and the provider entity, so keep copies of what you will need to reconstruct the relationship.
• Leave balances and policies, the numbers and the rules that produced them, which matter enormously because accrued leave usually transfers with the person.
• Benefits and entitlements recorded against each person, which you will need to replicate or replace.
• The year-to-date position, per person, the running totals that carry through each country tax year.

The export checklist, in order

Do all of this while the account is active and paid.

1. Directory first, full master with every field, as your index.
2. Payroll history, registers and payslips per closed month, per country, filed by month.
3. Statutory and year-end records, whatever the arrangement produced, each paired with its reference.
4. Documents, including copies of the employment contracts and any benefit documentation, tested on one profile before you size the job.
5. Leave balances, exported, with the accrual rules written out, because accrued leave usually moves with the person on transfer.
6. Benefits and entitlements, recorded per person so you can replicate or replace them.
7. The year-to-date pack, one spreadsheet per country, one row per person, reconciled before you accept it, because whoever runs payroll after the transfer continues the year rather than restarting it.

Timing: the employment transfer sets it, not the renewal

Because the real project is the transfer of employment, the timing is set by notice periods, contract requirements and local rules on continuity of service, country by country, and often by the date your own entity is actually operational. The software renewal is almost never the binding constraint. Where you can align each country transfer with that country tax-year boundary, do, because it keeps the year-to-date arithmetic clean, but the legal requirements come first.

Whatever the sequence, take the data export up front and independently of the employment decision. The history is yours to hold regardless of what happens next, and holding it removes the pressure to rush the transfer to beat a data-access deadline.

Where Capstan fits, and where it does not

Be clear-eyed about this, because it is the whole decision. Capstan is a system of record for people you employ in your own entity. It is not an employer of record and never becomes the legal employer of anyone, so it cannot take on the employment Remote currently holds. If you still need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is an employer of record, and you should keep or replace that service.

Where Capstan earns its place is after the transfer, for the people you now employ directly. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and workflows, with all fourteen modules on every plan including the free one, and it hands payroll to your partner: it compiles the inputs, receives the computed results back onto each record, and holds no statutory rate, slab or formula in any country. Employer of record, explained sets out the difference in full, and hiring employees internationally covers what changes when you employ directly across borders.

Where it tends to be hard

The employment transfer, not the data, is the project. Budget accordingly. The export is an afternoon; standing up entities or new contracts and transferring people correctly is months.

Accrued leave and continuity of service travel with the person. Get the balances and service dates out precisely, because they feed obligations that move with the employee.

Contracts belong to the provider entity. Under an employer of record the contract is between the person and the provider, so you are reconstructing the relationship rather than inheriting a document. Keep everything you can.

Access ends on a schedule. Read your contract for the retrieval window, diarise it, and finish the data export well before it, independent of the employment timeline.

What you have to keep, whoever you buy from

Employment and tax records carry retention obligations that differ by country, and some follow you even though the employer of record held the relationship. Keep your own dated archive outside any vendor, per country and tax year, sub-foldered by month. Confirm the periods and your own obligations with local advisers rather than with any vendor, including us.

Standing up the replacement

For the people you now employ directly, use the implementation checklist for the general order and read this as the overlay. Validate the export, then load the new system in parallel. With Capstan that is a spreadsheet import with a dry run that previews every row and fails bad rows individually; documents load per person, opening leave balances are entered as adjustments with a reason, and effective-dated history is not imported, so your export stays your archive of it. What imports and what does not is written out in full. Hand your payroll partner a past month of inputs per country and compare before you rely on the new arrangement.

Who should stay where they are

Be fair to the arrangement you are leaving. If you still need a legal employer in countries where you hold no entity, an employer of record is doing a job a system of record cannot, and leaving it before you have your own entities in place is the wrong order. Move off an employer of record when you have decided to own the employment directly, in your own entity, and want a portable record and a payroll partner for it. That is where this shape earns its place. The Remote comparison sets the two published models side by side, including where Capstan is the wrong tool, and it says plainly that Capstan offers no employer of record at any price.

Where to go next

Whatever you buy, start your shortlist with the export is the habit worth keeping. If part of your move is deciding where to set up entities, hiring employees internationally is the map, and read how to read an HR pricing page before you compare totals. Capstan’s figures are on one public pricing page.