Manual tax ops couldn’t keep up with Remote’s global expansion

In 2022, Remote, a global HR and payroll platform, set out to transform its tax operations. As a company enabling businesses to effortlessly hire, manage, and pay talent anywhere in the world, Remote needed a partner who could keep pace with its rapid growth and global complexity.

Kirsten Best, Head of VAT, was new to the finance team but highly experienced in tax. Quickly after joining Remote, she realized invoicing processes were manual, relying on local tax portals and fragmented compliance efforts.

Legacy vendors like Avalara, Edicom, and SAP lacked the flexibility and global reach Kristen needed at Remote. Building in-house wasn’t viable, as it would demand heavy developer investment and slow progress.

We’re a fast-growing business with constant change. I needed a way to save time, not build a full tax engine in-house.
—Kirsten Best, Head of VAT at Remote

The immediate need was automated tax determination and compliant invoicing to enable faster, compliant entrance into new markets. But as Remote launched digital services and entered new markets, it became clear they needed more: reliable, global tax ID validation that would integrate seamlessly into the rest of their stack.

One platform, total control from ID checks to tax logic

Remote first adopted Fonoa’s Tax Engine, Invoicing, and E-Invoicing solutions in 2022 to  centralize tax compliance and reduce manual work. 

Fonoa’s unified API and jurisdiction-specific rule management allowed Remote to move quickly and compliantly into new markets—without the burden of maintaining local tax logic internally.

If we can’t invoice it, we can’t launch it. So Fonoa speeds our time-to-market with compliant invoicing ready to go when we are.
—Michiel Biore, CFO at Remote

Then, in early 2024, as Remote’s digital services grew, Kristen expanded their Fonoa usage with the Lookup solution to validate tax IDs.

With Lookup, Remote now validates IDs once during customer onboarding and on a regular quarterly basis. This prevents invalid tax data from flowing into the system and causing downstream issues that would affect thousands of invoices a year, hindering collections efforts and impacting cash flow.

I think Fonoa’s Lookup is the best on the market. Now we can catch invalid VAT IDs before invoicing.
—Kirsten Best

100s VAT errors caught and 480 hours saved per year 

Since adopting Fonoa, Remote has transformed its tax operations into a truly global, automated system.

Using Fonoa as our single vendor across tax determination, validation, and invoicing has been a huge benefit. Having it all in one place just makes sense.
—Kirsten Best

In the last year alone, Fonoa’s coverage across nearly 100 countries enabled Remote to:

• Issue 170,000+ compliant invoices
• Complete 153,000+ tax calculations, with top usage in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Netherlands
• Run 50,000+ tax ID validations
• Launch real-time e-invoicing in 6 countries: Spain, India, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, and Hungary

More than volume, it’s the impact that matters. By automating formerly manual processes in a single, global platform, Remote has:

• Saved 480 hours per year across the team through automated invoicing alone
• Flagged 100s of invalid VAT IDs with regular, fully automized checks, preventing potential revenue loss from undercollected VAT
• Built a seamless flow of validated data from Lookup to Tax Engine to Invoicing, removing the need to reconcile or reprocess tax logic

Fonoa’s platform didn’t just replace manual work—it enabled Remote’s VAT team to scale compliance globally with minimal overhead, total confidence, and the ability to answer to tax authorities at any time.

Fonoa helps us be audit-ready. I can show authorities all kinds of tax data, like exactly when a VAT number was valid.
—Kirsten Best

Launch anywhere, stay compliant

Remote continues to expand into new regions, including U.S. state-level tax registrations and invoicing in emerging markets. Fonoa enables the team to move fast, with compliance built in.

We’re growing fast, and we need a partner that can grow with us. Fonoa’s solutions aren’t just saving us time, they’re helping us stay ahead of regulatory change, globally.
—Kirsten Best