Pento provides payroll automation SaaS that automates tax calculations, payments and reporting to replace spreadsheets, PDFs and manual processes, claiming to cut payroll time by up to 80%. The company serves hundreds of SMEs and mid-market customers (30–500 employees) and is increasingly working with larger enterprises (~2,000 employees). Pento charges customers a set monthly fee and says its revenue climbed 10x over the past year, with consecutive record-breaking months of growth since its Series A. The product strategy is integrations-first, with partners such as Personio, Hibob and BambooHR and customers including Starling Bank, Pleo, Cuvva, Honest Burgers and Beauty Pie. Pento has developed an open payroll API (in beta) to enable custom integrations and employee pay-data sharing with third-party services. The company has grown headcount to about 70 employees, up from 20 a year earlier, and plans to use new capital for European expansion, product and service development, partner integrations and hiring. Pento focuses exclusively on automating payroll processes for businesses, replacing spreadsheets and outsourced payroll services with a cloud-native platform. Its product offers real-time calculations, tax and reporting automation, payments, integrations with other HR products, and online and telephone support. The company says about 700 companies use its platform, including Pleo, Cuvva, Honest Burgers, Lacoste and Beauty Pie. Pento was founded by Jonas Bøgh Larsen and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen and is positioned to hone in on the specific pain point of payroll automation rather than broader HR suites. The startup raised a Series A in the financing reported here and has attracted both institutional backers and prominent angels. Its go-to-market emphasizes ease of use, transparency, flexibility and security for HR and finance teams. Pento offers a payroll-focused SaaS that automates manual payroll tasks and provides employees with easy access to pay history and personal payroll data. Its feature set includes tax and pension reporting, payslip generation, payouts to employees and tax authorities, and bookkeeping, enabling payroll admins to complete payroll in minutes rather than hours. The company charges a per-seat monthly subscription—£3 per employee for the basic plan and £7 per employee for higher-support plans. Pento is live in Denmark with over 400 customers and says a U.K. launch is happening soon. Founded in 2016 by Jonas Bøgh Larsen (CEO) and Emil Hagbarth (CTO), the startup positions itself as a pure payroll specialist that integrates with other HR and accounting products. Competitors mentioned include traditional payroll outsourcing, older payroll software like Sage and Brightpay, and newer SaaS players such as Payfit, Xero Payroll and Staffology Payroll.

Total raised

$53M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Dec 2021