CLT onboarding through an EOR, from signed offer to final settlement

CLT onboarding through an EOR begins when you and the candidate agree the offer and the employer of record turns it into a CLT contract. Through Employer of Record Brazil, we are the employer whose name goes on the contract, and we need a short set of inputs from you before anything is filed.

• Job title, duties and the city where the person will work, which affect the convenção coletiva de trabalho (CCT) that is checked for pay floors and benefits.
• Monthly salary in reais, tested against the 2026 national minimum of R$ 1.621,00 and any piso salarial (sector floor) in the CCT.
• Start date, weekly hours within the 44-hour limit, and whether the role is office-based, hybrid or teletrabalho.
• Any extras you want to offer, such as a health plan or a meal allowance above what the CCT requires.

The employer of record then prepares the contract. Most CLT contracts are indefinite and open with a contrato de experiência (trial period) of up to 90 days (CLT art. 445). If the job is remote, the individual contract has to say so in terms, and responsibility for equipment and home-office costs needs a written agreement. Getting these points right on day one avoids an amendment in month two.

The CCT question deserves time before the offer is signed. Collective agreements are negotiated by sector and territory, and the one that governs a job turns on the employer’s classification and the place of work. Get the employer of record to name the agreement it believes covers the role and to tell you its pay floor, annual raise and meal voucher terms, because those three items can change the offer you are able to make.

If you have not yet decided whether the role should be CLT at all, start with hiring a CLT employee step by step, which covers the earlier choices. Our full scope of work, from contract drafting to monthly reporting, is listed on our EOR Brazil services page.

The new employee provides the personal and tax identifiers the employer of record needs to build the eSocial admission record. The most important is the Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPF), the individual tax number, which also identifies the worker in the digital carteira de trabalho.

Beyond the CPF, the employer of record will ask for bank details so salary can be paid, details of any dependants for income tax purposes, and whether the employee wants vale-transporte (the transport voucher). Vale-transporte is mandatory only on request; once it is requested, the employee contributes up to 6% of basic salary and the employer funds the rest of the commute (Lei 7.418/1985). Some higher earners decline it because the 6% deduction exceeds what they spend on travel.

For a foreign national, the documents depend on the immigration route. A foreign hire first needs the MJSP to approve residence for salaried work under CNIg RN 2/2017, and the start date follows that approval rather than the other way round.

The employer of record registers the hire by sending eSocial event S-2200, the admission record, before the employee starts work. That single event feeds the digital CTPS, so the employee can see the admission date, salary and contract type on their own record.

CLT art. 29 sets its own limit: the CTPS has to show when the contract began, what it pays and any special conditions within 5 business days of hiring. In practice the S-2200 goes in first because the payroll, FGTS and social security systems all read from it. eSocial is the one federal system through which employers report labour, pension and tax data, and it replaced a cluster of older returns.

Skipping registration is expensive. CLT art. 47 sets an administrative fine of R$ 3.000,00 per unregistered employee (R$ 800,00 where the employer is a micro or small business), and the amount doubles for a second offence. An unregistered worker is also the classic starting point for a labour claim, which is one reason the employer of record will not let anyone start until the admission event has been accepted.

For you, the practical consequence is a firm cut-off. If the signed contract, the CPF and the start date reach the employer of record late, the start date moves; it cannot be backdated once the person has begun working. Build a few working days of margin into your plan between the signed offer and day one, and tell the candidate the date is subject to registration.

In the first payroll month the employer of record calculates pay, withholds tax and social security, and reports the month to eSocial. Under CLT art. 459 pay for any month is due by business day five of the month after, so a person who starts on 1 March receives March’s salary in early April.

Employee INSS in 2026 is progressive by band: 7.5% up to R$ 1.621,00, then 9%, 12% and 14%, with a monthly ceiling of R$ 8.475,55 and a maximum contribution of R$ 988,09. Income tax (IRRF) follows the 2026 monthly table up to 27.5%, and Lei 15.270/2025 now reduces the tax to zero on taxable monthly income up to R$ 5.000,00, phasing the relief out by R$ 7.350,00.

The monthly events are S-1200 for remuneration, S-1210 for payments and S-1299 to close the period. Closing feeds DCTFWeb, which generates the DARF for employer INSS, RAT and terceiros, payable on or before the 20th. Since period 01/2025 the DIRF return no longer exists, with eSocial and EFD-Reinf supplying that information instead, so what the employer of record files each month is also what the employee’s annual tax statement relies on.

To see how the numbers land, take the salary from our São Paulo worked example: R$ 15.000,00 a month, no dependants. Employee INSS is capped at R$ 988,09, IRRF comes to R$ 2.944,55 after the legal INSS deduction, and net pay in a normal month is R$ 11.067,36. On the employer side, 35.8% on top of the R$ 15.000,00 comes to R$ 5.370,00 for that month. Over a full year, those figures add up to an employer cost of R$ 271.600,00 before benefits.

FGTS deposits are made monthly by the employer at 8% of pay into an FGTS account held for the employee, and are never taken from salary. Payment falls due on the 20th following each pay period (Lei 8.036/1990 art. 15, with the FGTS Digital deadline set by Lei 14.438/2022).

Since 1 March 2024 the deposits run through FGTS Digital, which replaced the older SEFIP and GRRF systems. The platform reads the eSocial payroll data, issues the GFD payment guide and takes payment by Pix. A correction to an S-1200 event therefore changes the FGTS amount too, which is why the employer of record reconciles the two before the 20th.

FGTS matters most at the end of employment. If the employer dismisses without cause, it owes a further 40% of every deposit made during the contract, so the running balance is also a running measure of the exit cost you will fund. Employees often ask how their balance is building, and the employer of record can answer those questions directly.

After onboarding, three items recur in every Brazilian employment year and should be in your budget calendar. The first is the 13º salário, a thirteenth salary paid on top of the twelve monthly ones, which carries the same employer charges as normal pay.

The second is férias. After each 12-month acquisition period the employee is entitled to 30 calendar days of leave, paid with an extra one-third. In our São Paulo worked example for a R$ 15.000,00 salary, the leave month pays R$ 20.000,00 gross, and the employer charges rise with it.

The third is the CCT’s annual raise date, the data-base, when collective agreements commonly lift salaries and pay floors. Collective agreements can also fix meal vouchers, profit-sharing and health plans, and on listed matters can prevail over statute (CLT art. 611-A). The employer of record applies these changes through payroll; you approve any increase above what the agreement requires.

Family leave can also arrive in the first year. Licença-maternidade is 120 days, paid by the employer as salário-maternidade and offset against INSS contributions, while licença-paternidade is 5 days in 2026 and goes up to 10 days on 1 January 2027 (Lei 15.371/2026). Tell the employer of record early about any planned leave so payroll and eSocial events are ready when it starts.

An exit works through notice, a final settlement and an eSocial termination event, with the employer of record running each step once you confirm the decision. Brazilian law lets an employer end the contract sem justa causa (without cause) as long as it pays what the statute sets.

The aviso prévio (notice) is 30 days in the first year, then grows by 3 days per complete year of service until it reaches 90 (Lei 12.506/2011). The final settlement, the verbas rescisórias, covers the salary balance, proportional 13º salário, accrued and proportional férias with the one-third, and notice; CLT art. 477 allows 10 days from termination to pay it. The 40% FGTS fine is added on top, and the employer of record reports the end of employment with event S-2299.

An exit by mutual agreement under CLT art. 484-A halves the notice period, reduces the FGTS penalty to 20% and releases 80% of the fund to the worker, but gives no right to seguro-desemprego (unemployment insurance). Whatever the route, claims remain possible for 2 years after the contract ends and can reach back 5 years. See aviso prévio and dismissal in Brazil for the detail, and our explainer on the EOR model for who carries which duty.

Timing an exit needs care around leave. Starting in January 2027, Lei 15.371/2026 shields a father from dismissal while he is on paternity leave and for the month after he returns, and other protected situations can apply to individual employees. Raise any planned exit with the employer of record before you speak to the employee, so notice, dates and the settlement are worked out in advance and the eSocial record matches what was agreed.

Q01Can the employee start before the S-2200 event is accepted?+

A.No. The employer of record registers the hire in eSocial first, because that record feeds the CTPS, payroll and FGTS, and working unregistered exposes the employer to a CLT art. 47 fine.

Q02When is the first salary paid?+

A.CLT art. 459 sets the fifth business day of the following month as the latest pay date, which puts March wages into early April.

Q03Is a trial period normal on a CLT contract?+

A.Yes. Most indefinite contracts begin with a contrato de experiência of up to 90 days, set out in CLT art. 445.

Q04Does FGTS come out of the employee’s pay?+

A.No. The 8% is an employer cost paid on top of salary into the employee’s FGTS account via FGTS Digital, with the 20th of the following month as the due date.

Q05What documents will the new hire need?+

A.At minimum a CPF, bank details, dependant information for income tax and a choice on vale-transporte. Foreign nationals also need a residence authorisation for work.