Mixed payroll: paying employees and contractors in one cycle

An SMB with forty employees and fifteen recurring contractors pays everyone on the thirtieth. The payroll team calculates salaries, computes contributions and files electronic payroll. The team that hired the contractors receives invoices or fee notes, checks they are complete and approves them. Both flows land in the same payment batch, but they arrive through different paths, with different documents and different withholdings. Treating that batch as a single thing is the mistake that complicates an audit later.

At Soulbit Academy we cover this because most companies with a mixed workforce end up solving payment day in a spreadsheet that blends two different logics. Soulbit is a stablecoin payments and treasury rail for businesses: it disburses money to both groups in the same batch, but it does not replace the calculating, withholding and documenting that happens before that batch is uploaded.

What mixed payroll means and why it complicates the cycle

Mixed payroll is a recurring payment cycle in which a company disburses funds to two legally different groups on the same date: employees under an employment contract and contractors under a services agreement. We already covered where that line sits in contractor vs employee in Latin America; here the classification is settled, and what remains is running the payment itself.

The complication is not the transfer; it is everything upstream of it. A salary is calculated from attendance records, leave and overtime. An invoice is checked against a contract and a deliverable. A salary is withheld under one table; a service fee under another. A salary is supported by electronic payroll; a service fee by an invoice or an equivalent document. When a company merges both flows into one file without separating them, it carries that mess all the way to disbursement.

Syncing the calendar for payroll and contractor invoices

A mixed payroll calendar works with one shared disbursement date and two separate internal calendars that converge on it. For employees, the internal calendar closes with the period's payroll data: absences, sick leave, overtime and any variation that changes the net amount owed. For contractors, it closes with the submission and approval of the invoice or fee note tied to the delivered service.

Some companies offload part of this complexity by hiring a specialised third party to run payroll for one country; we compare that option against hiring directly in employer of record vs contractor in Latin America.

Should employees and contractors be paid on exactly the same day of the month?

It is not required, but it helps with control: it cuts the number of times treasury touches the account and simplifies monthly reconciliation. To make that work without rushing anyone's paperwork, companies typically set two earlier cutoff dates (one to close payroll data, another, usually a few days before, for contractor invoices) and a single disbursement date after both. The full payroll calculation procedure for Colombia is in how to run payroll in Colombia.

The supporting document is not interchangeable

Which document backs a payment depends on the nature of the relationship, not on the rail used to move the money. In Colombia, an employee's payment is supported by the electronic payroll document required under DIAN Resolution 000013 of 2021, which must be filed within the first ten days of the month following the payment. A contractor's payment, instead, is supported by an electronic invoice or an equivalent document under the invoicing system developed by DIAN Resolution 000165 of 2023.

Mexico follows the same logic under a different name. An employee's payment is supported by a CFDI de nómina that includes the payroll complement required under article 29-A of the Federal Fiscal Code, as detailed in the SAT's payroll receipt filing guide. A contractor's payment is supported by a CFDI for fees or business activity, without that complement. The document's name changes from country to country; the underlying principle does not.

Country	Document backing employee pay	Document backing contractor pay	Timing detail
Colombia	Electronic payroll document filed with the DIAN	Electronic invoice or equivalent document under the invoicing system	Electronic payroll must be filed within the first ten days of the following month
Mexico	CFDI de nómina with its payroll complement	CFDI for fees or business activity, without the payroll complement	The CFDI de nómina is usually stamped no later than the next business day after payment
General rule across the region	The document follows the employment relationship	The document follows the contractor's tax regime	Changing the payment rail does not change the document that must be issued

The approval flow before disbursement

Each group reaches the payment batch through its own approval chain, and merging the payment does not mean merging who signs off on it. For employees, the payroll or HR team approves the final calculation: it checks the period's data, computes the net amount and confirms it matches what was actually worked. For contractors, the team that hired the service approves that the work was delivered as agreed and that the invoice or fee note matches the active contract.

Who gives the final sign-off before the money leaves?

Usually treasury or finance, and its job is not to recalculate what payroll and the hiring team already approved, but to verify that every line in the batch carries its matching supporting document. An employee without an approved calculation, or a contractor without a current invoice, should not enter the disbursement file no matter how tight the calendar is. The full operational guide for the second group is in paying freelancers in Colombia as a foreign company.

Withholdings: who withholds what, and when

The withholding that applies to an employee and the one that applies to a contractor are not the same table and are not calculated the same way, even when the same company pays both. A salary carries payroll income tax withholding, computed period by period under the current table, almost always by the payroll software. A contractor's fee carries withholding for services or professional fees, with its own rates that depend on the type of service and the payer's tax regime.

Both withholdings must be applied before the net amount enters the disbursement file: Soulbit Salaries receives and pays the figure the company already calculated; it does not compute the withholding itself. Mixing up the two tables, or applying a salary withholding to a contractor's fee, is not a minor slip: it distorts both the net payment and the report the company later files with its tax authority.

Disbursing mixed payroll in a single payment batch

Mixed payroll is disbursed in a single file with net amounts and recipient data, with no need to distinguish employees from contractors, once the calculation is approved, invoices are validated and withholdings are applied. Soulbit Salaries lets a company upload that file and run batch disbursement to multiple recipients in stablecoins on the same day, with an on-chain identifier per transfer that helps with later reconciliation. The file format and the upload steps are explained in batch payroll: from file to disbursement.

In Colombia there is also a local banking rail to move those funds into pesos when a recipient needs national currency in their account. Outside Colombia, V1 does not offer that same local rail, so the recipient gets the balance in stablecoin or in the available fiat currencies.

Step in the cycle	Employee group	Contractor group
Source of the amount to pay	Calculation from the payroll software or accountant	Fee note or invoice approved by the hiring team
Withholding applied before upload	Payroll income tax withholding, under the current table	Withholding for services or professional fees
Document the company keeps on file	Electronic payroll filed with the DIAN	Electronic invoice or fee note with its supporting records
Typical frequency	Fixed recurring date, usually monthly or biweekly	On delivery, milestone or periodic invoice
What Soulbit Salaries automates	Uploading the file and executing same-day stablecoin payment	Uploading the file and executing same-day stablecoin payment
What Soulbit Salaries does not automate	Calculating payroll or filing electronic payroll	Calculating the withholding or validating the invoice's tax standing

What Soulbit V1 delivers and what it does not

Soulbit Salaries disburses batch payments in stablecoins, USDC and USDT, to whichever recipients a company loads in its mixed payroll file, regardless of each one's legal status. The local banking rail for converting to national currency exists only in Colombia; elsewhere in the region the payment arrives in stablecoin or in the available fiat currencies.

What V1 does not do matters just as much for this cycle. It does not calculate employee payroll or contractor withholdings. It does not generate or file electronic payroll with the DIAN, and it does not validate a contractor's electronic invoice with any authority: those duties stay with the company's payroll software or its accountant. There is also no API or SDK integration with a company's ERP today, so the disbursement file is prepared and uploaded manually. Converting crypto to fiat, when needed, happens by quote on request, not automatically inside the payroll cycle.