Pay cycle (semi-monthly)

How it works

Most PH employers pay the 15th and the end of the month, or the 10th and 25th. Pick one and fund the EOR or the entity before the date. A founder who ‘pays on the first, U.S. style’ is late on the first cutoff every month. Night premiums and overtime belong on the cutoff that earned them, not in a quarterly dump. Philippine remote hiring makes this concrete because the worker is on a peso file while the manager sits in U.S. Slack. Write the rule into the contract and the payroll calendar before the first cutoff. Do not invent a U.S. substitute and hope DOLE never reads the payslip. Loaded cost moves when this line moves. The local employer, not the founder’s inbox, has to run the actual remittance or the actual notice.

Example: work 1-15 March. Pay on 15 March or the next banking day under policy, not on 1 April. A 16-day gap is the statutory worry, not your accounting software’s default.

How it differs

Final pay has its own 30-day clock. 13th month has 24 December. Do not merge all clocks into ‘payroll someday.’

Common errors

Paying once a month because Stripe invoices monthly. Holding week two pay until a U.S. client pays you.

In practice

Treat Pay cycle (semi-monthly) as a week-one operating object. Look at the next peso payslip and the next remittance file. If this word does not show up there, the quote from the sales call is incomplete. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have pay cycle (semi-monthly) yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.