Standing · Wave 1
Know where every contractor actually stands.
Standing is a planned contractor management platform: onboarding, timesheets, approvals and invoicing for a freelance workforce — with the record of how each person was genuinely engaged building underneath it.
- Onboard
- Work
- Approve
- Pay
- Evidence
- Stage
- Planned
- Portfolio bay
- Bay 10
- Focus area
- Quality & Assurance Lab
- Part of
- The Collective Foundry
The problem
Why Standing exists.
Whether someone is genuinely a contractor turns on how much control a business exercises over how, when and where they work. That evidence sits in timesheets and approvals, and it is almost never kept as a record. The question usually arrives during an audit or a dispute, when the answer has to be reconstructed from old emails and invoices.
Who it's for
Agencies, studios, consultancies and operators running a contractor workforce too large for a spreadsheet and too small for an enterprise contractor platform.
The opportunity
The market Standing is built for.
Contractor management splits into two groups that barely overlap. Global platforms such as Deel, Remote, Worksome and YunoJuno handle contracts, onboarding and international payments, and treat engagement status as a check performed once at onboarding. Staffing-agency systems such as JobDiva and Avionét handle timesheets and approvals in depth, including edit traceability and retained approval history, but do not address status at all. A business running its own contractors needs both halves and currently buys neither.
Why now
The timing behind it.
- 01
Contractor workforces have grown faster than the administrative tooling around them, and spreadsheets are still doing most of the work.
- 02
Enforcement of engagement status has sharpened in several markets, and the questions arrive with less notice than they used to.
- 03
The evidence that matters is already captured by timesheet and approval systems. It is simply discarded rather than kept.
What it does
The capabilities inside Standing.
The weekly mechanics
Onboarding, timesheets, approvals and invoicing for a contractor workforce, in one place rather than four.
An engagement record
How each person was actually worked, captured as it happens and retained rather than reconstructed.
Indicators, not verdicts
Patterns that bear on engagement status surfaced as they emerge, so a business can act early. It reports; it does not advise.
An evidence pack on request
Everything relevant to one engagement, assembled and dated, for the moment somebody asks for it.
Where we start
The smallest valuable first step.
- Who it is for first
- Agencies, studios and operators running 20 to 300 contractors
- The first thing it does
- Timesheets and approvals for a contractor workforce, with the engagement record building underneath from day one.
- Likely commercial model
- Free for the smallest teams, then metered on active contractors
- What has to be proven
- That a business which has never been audited will still pay to be ready for one.
What makes it innovative
Why Standing is different.
The record is the product
Most platforms treat engagement status as a form filled in at the start. Here it is a history that accrues every week.
Earned through the weekly work
Nobody buys software for an audit that may never come. They buy it for the timesheets, and the record arrives with it.
Evidence, not opinion
The output is what happened and when, assembled and dated. Interpretation stays with the people qualified to give it.
The usual way
Timesheets in one system, contracts in another, and the question of how someone was actually engaged answered from memory months later.
The foundry way
One system for the weekly work, keeping the record that answers the question before it is asked.
How it compares
Standing against the contractor platforms and staffing systems a business would otherwise buy both of.
Every competitor cell below is drawn from that vendor's own official site on the date shown. Where a capability was not documented there, it is marked Not publicly verified rather than Not available — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
| Capability | Standing Not built — scoped for Wave 1 | Deel Contractor management, priced per contractor per month | Remote Contractor management, per contractor | Worksome Freelancer management platform | JobDiva / Avionté Staffing platform, per seat or per placement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The work every week Timesheets, approvals and audit trail The work a business does every week, and the reason it would open the software at all. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Parity, not leadership. Staffing systems have spent two decades on approval depth and we would be matching them, not beating them. | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 Timesheets and approvals exist; the depth sits below the staffing systems | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 Timesheets and invoices submitted by the freelancer, with automated approval and payment | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 The deepest here: edit traceability showing who changed what and when, separate agency and client approval, history retained for labour compliance audits |
| The work every week Onboarding, contracts and right to work The first hour of any engagement, and the point at which most platforms stop paying attention to it. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 3/5 Conceded. Deel and Worksome do contracts and right-to-work checks across dozens of jurisdictions; matching that is neither realistic nor necessary. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Contracts, onboarding and right-to-work across a very large jurisdiction set | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Built around placement rather than around engaging a contractor directly |
| The work every week Invoicing and payment of contractors Whether approval and payment are one motion or two systems reconciled by hand. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 4/5 Approval and invoice as one motion rather than two systems, which is the practical reason a business would move its weekly work across. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 Invoicing and payment are the core of the platform | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 Payment follows an approved timesheet rather than a separate run | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 |
| The record underneath it Engagement status re-tested from working patterns The legal question turns on control — how, when and where someone works. That evidence is already in the timesheet. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 The one row targeted at leadership, and the whole reason the venture exists. Everything else here is table stakes bought for a different reason. | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 Classification engines and audit trails are documented at onboarding; continuous re-testing against working patterns is not described | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Its own guidance names control — how, when and where someone works — as the determining factor, but describes assessment rather than continuous monitoring | Limited Shipped Depth 1/5 Classification is part of onboarding; ongoing scoring from working patterns is not documented | Not publicly verified Depth 0/5 Not addressed in the documented scope. These systems hold the richest evidence of control and make no use of it |
| The record underneath it Evidence pack for an audit or dispute What a business actually hands over when asked, and the thing it cannot assemble retrospectively. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 The output of the row above: what actually gets handed over, assembled and dated, rather than reconstructed from old email. | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 Indemnity is offered against misclassification, which is a different promise from producing the evidence | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 | Included Shipped Depth 3/5 Approval history is explicitly retained for labour compliance audits, which is most of the raw material |
| Who it is for Global payments and employer of record A licensed, capital-intensive business. Worth comparing precisely because it is the row to stay out of. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 1/5 Deliberately none. Employer of record is a licensed, capital-intensive business and entering it would be a different company. | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 The category reference point, and the whole company | Advanced Shipped Depth 5/5 | Included Shipped Depth 4/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 |
| Who it is for Priced and shaped for 20 to 300 contractors Too many for a spreadsheet, too few for an enterprise contract. The band this is aimed at. | Planned Depth 0/5 · target 5/5 Per-contractor pricing punishes exactly the businesses this is for. A free tier and a meter that starts small is the point of entry. | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Per-contractor pricing scales against a business whose contractor count is its cost base | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 | Limited Shipped Depth 3/5 Priced as a share of spend, which suits volume better than a small contractor base | Limited Shipped Depth 2/5 Enterprise agreements and per-seat pricing aimed at agencies rather than at a business engaging its own contractors |
Who each tool is actually best for
- Standing Not built — scoped for Wave 1
Not a buying option. Every row is target specification at an achieved depth of zero. The intended buyer runs its own contractor workforce and currently buys neither half of this market.
- Deel Contractor management, priced per contractor per month
Hiring across borders. Global payments and employer-of-record coverage are the product, and nothing here competes with that or should try to.
Source: Contractor management with misclassification protection , Enterprise-grade contractor management — classification engines and audit trails
- Remote Contractor management, per contractor
Teams wanting classification guidance alongside international hiring, with indemnity offered against the outcome.
- Worksome Freelancer management platform
Businesses whose first problem is finding and contracting freelancers at volume, with compliance checks folded into onboarding.
Source: Freelancer management — onboarding, compliance classification and payment in one workflow
- JobDiva / Avionté Staffing platform, per seat or per placement
Agencies placing contractors with clients. Timesheet approval depth is the best in this shortlist — edit traceability, separate agency and client approval, history retained for labour compliance audits.
Considered and excluded
- Timesheet-only tools (Replicon, QuickBooks Time, TrackingTime) — They offer approval workflows but do not address engagement status at all, which is the axis this comparison turns on. Including them would add columns that score zero on the only row that matters and tell a reader nothing. Check current status
How this comparison is made
- Comparative claims follow ACCC guidance: they must be accurate, fair and supportable on reasonable grounds, judged on the overall impression rather than line by line.
- A competitor capability is only marked as present where its official site or documentation describes it. Where it was not documented the status is “Not publicly verified” — not “Not available”. This is a desk review of published material, not a hands-on benchmark.
- No source states that continuous engagement-status monitoring is absent from these products. The scores on that row reflect what each vendor documents, and the gap is an inference from that material. It is a question for customer interviews, not a finding.
- Engagement status is decided by law and by the facts of a particular arrangement. Anything built here would report evidence and indicators. It would not determine status, and it would not substitute for professional advice.
- Depth scores (0–5) are our own analytical assessment of how deep a capability runs. They are not vendor-published figures, and they are separate from the evidence status beside them.
- Standing is not built. Every one of its cells shows delivery “Planned” and an achieved depth of zero. A target beside it is the specification being built toward, never a claim about today.
- Targets are published only for our own column and only with a stated reason. Two are deliberately low: onboarding at 3/5, where the global platforms are far ahead, and global payments at 1/5, which is a licensed business this deliberately stays out of.
The approach
How we build it.
Standing is a planned platform for businesses that run work through contractors rather than employees. It handles the weekly mechanics — onboarding, collecting and approving timesheets, raising invoices, paying people — for teams managing twenty to three hundred contractors.
Underneath that it keeps the record almost nobody keeps: how each contractor was actually engaged over time. Hours, schedules, who approved what, how exclusive the arrangement was, how long it ran. That evidence is produced as a matter of course rather than assembled under pressure later.
The outcome: the administrative work a business needs every week, and the record it needs on the one occasion somebody asks.
The outcome
What changes when it's in place.
- The weekly contractor admin stops living in spreadsheets.
- The record exists before anybody asks for it.
- A pattern that is drifting is visible while it can still be changed.
What could go wrong
The risks, named.
-
Engagement rules differ by country, and a wrong answer is worse than no answer.
One jurisdiction, validated with employment specialists, before any second. The product reports evidence and indicators; it does not give legal advice.
-
A business that has never been audited may not feel the exposure.
Lead with the timesheet and approval work they need weekly. The record accrues whether or not it is the reason they signed up.
-
Established contractor platforms could extend into continuous monitoring.
Those platforms are built around global payments and employer-of-record licensing, where their revenue is. The evidence trail is a different product sold to a different buyer.
The open questions
What would need to be true.
-
Working patterns are a usable signal of engagement status.
How we would know: Score a set of historical engagements and compare the result against outcomes the business already knows.
-
Businesses will keep the record before they need it.
How we would know: Measure how many complete an engagement review in a period with no audit, no dispute and no prompt.
-
The weekly work wins the account on its own.
How we would know: Track how many sign up for timesheets and approvals without mentioning compliance at all.
A scenario
What this could become.
$9M–$21M
at $3M ARR, on 3–7× ARR
A scenario, not a valuation, a forecast or an offer. It states what the venture might be worth IF it reached the revenue shown, at multiples other private SaaS businesses have transacted at. Nothing here has revenue today.
Published private-SaaS transaction benchmarks, checked 2026-10-13: private deals broadly transact at 2–7× ARR, with medians around 3–5×. These come from advisory firms and marketplaces rather than audited transaction data.
How it fits the foundry
A venture, not a department.
Standing moves through the whole foundry — discovery, design, engineering, quality and launch — like every venture we build. It's most visible in Quality & Assurance Lab, where its business purpose is sharpest.
- Discover
- Define
- Design
- Build
- Assure
- Launch
- Learn
- Scale