Kelvaro research · survey version 2026.1

Contractor Payment Operations Benchmark survey

This research asks 15 structured questions about contractor onboarding, payment preparation, approvals, payout timing, exceptions, and reconciliation. Participation does not require using Kelvaro.

15 structured questions

No name, email, or company name requested

No free-text response fields

Kelvaro usage is not required

Data-minimization commitment

Do not provide your name, email, company name, contractor identities, bank or card data, tax identifiers, or exact contractor payment records. The questionnaire has no free-text response fields. Survey responses are stored privately and are not automatically published as benchmark statistics.

Review the research protocol and publication gates →

1. Which function is closest to your role in contractor operations?

2. Which type of business best describes your organization?

3. About how many independent contractors does your organization pay in a typical year?

Choose a range rather than an exact count.

4. In a typical job, event, project, or payment cycle, about how many contractors are paid?

5. What is the primary way your team manages contractor payment operations today?

6. For a typical contractor payment cycle, how much staff time is spent preparing the payments before they are released?

Include gathering amounts, checking contractor readiness, matching work/job context, resolving exceptions, and preparing approvals; exclude contractors’ working hours.

7. In a typical month, how much staff time is spent reconciling contractor payments after payment activity occurs?

8. After contractor work or an invoice is approved, how long does it usually take for the payment to be released?

This measures process timing, not bank settlement speed.

9. How often does missing contractor onboarding or tax documentation delay payment preparation?

10. How often does your team need manual follow-up after a contractor payment is prepared because something changed or failed?

11. Approximately what share of the contractors your organization pays are outside your home country?

13. Which parts of contractor payment operations consume the most time or create the most risk for your team?

If none apply, select only “None of these are a major issue.”

Collecting onboarding informationCollecting or tracking tax documentationConfirming rates / amounts owedConnecting payments to jobs, events, or projectsGetting payment approvalsPreparing large payment batchesPaying international contractorsHandling failed or changed paymentsReconciling payments afterwardTracking year-to-date contractor paymentsGetting clean records to accounting / financeNone of these are a major issue

Select up to 3.

14. How confident are you that your team can answer “who was paid, for what work, how much was approved, and whether the payment completed” without reconstructing information from multiple systems?

15. Over the next 12 months, how much of a priority is improving contractor payment operations for your organization?