What is a Contractor of Record?

A Contractor of Record (CoR) is the legal counterparty for a transaction. When you use Ruul as your Contractor of Record, Ruul takes responsibility for invoicing, payments, and transaction-side tax compliance (think VAT/GST), and issues the invoice to your client in its own name - so you can focus on the work instead of the paperwork. Your own income tax stays with you, as it always does.

In practice, this is what lets a freelancer without a registered company invoice a client with a real, compliant document, and what lets a business pay a contractor abroad without taking on the compliance risk itself.

How it works

1. Authorization. You authorize Ruul as your Contractor of Record - whether you’re an independent professional invoicing clients or a business paying contractors. From that point, Ruul is the legal counterparty for the transactions you run through it and handles invoicing, payments, and transaction-side tax compliance.

2. The work gets invoiced. A freelancer creates an invoice for a service (or adds services as items to sell); a business creates a payment for a contractor’s work.

3. Invoicing and checkout. Ruul issues its own compliant invoice and collects the payment through a smooth checkout. Technically, the payer is paying Ruul.

4. Payout. Once the payment is complete, Ruul deducts its commission and releases the payout to the freelancer or contractor - quickly and securely, in their chosen currency or even in crypto.

What this means for each side

Freelancers

You can invoice clients globally without your own company - the basis of invoicing without a company. You stay responsible for your own income tax in your country of residence, but Ruul handles all buyer-side compliance (VAT/GST, invoicing rules, and the like).

Businesses

Because Ruul is the counterparty in each engagement, your contractor payments stay compliant and your exposure to worker-misclassification risk is reduced. You get clean documentation for every payment, without having to set up local entities to work with contractors abroad.

Good to know

• Your client or contractor doesn’t need a Ruul account to be paid or to pay - a bank transfer or card is enough.
• Ruul handles buyer-side compliance; you remain responsible for your own personal/business taxes.

Want the bigger picture first? See how Ruul works end to end.