Pento

Pento built cloud-based software that automates the payroll process end to end and in real time, positioning itself as an alternative to outsourcing payroll to accountants and bureaus or running it on legacy desktop software. Its feature set covered tax calculations and reporting, pension reporting, payslip generation, payouts to employees and tax authorities, bookkeeping, and UK statutory documents such as P45s, P60s, P32s and P11Ds, with automation of PAYE, National Insurance Contributions and salary payments plus direct filing to HMRC. The product removed traditional payroll cut-off dates and included real-time calculators for employer liabilities, along with online and telephone support.

The company deliberately limited its scope to payroll rather than adding HR or accounting modules, instead integrating with accounting systems, HR products (BambooHR, HiBob, Personio, Humaans) and pension providers. It also developed an open payroll API, in beta from 2021, intended to let customers automate adjacent workflows such as time-tracking and shift planning and to let employees share pay and compensation data with third-party financial and HR services. Pento claimed its customers reduced payroll effort by up to 80%, running pay cycles in minutes rather than days or weeks.

Originally a Danish company, Pento moved its base to London and focused on the UK and Europe. Following the February 2024 acquisition, Pento's technology was folded into HiBob's Bob platform to provide embedded UK payroll; the pento.io domain now presents HiBob's all-in-one HR, payroll and finance platform.

Founding story

Pento was founded by Jonas Bøgh Larsen (CEO) and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen (CTO) in Denmark, after the pair encountered payroll problems first-hand while growing a business. They found dedicated payroll software was designed for accountants and specialists and therefore hard to learn, while outsourcing still required them to manage spreadsheets, bank transfers, emails and PDFs and exposed sensitive employee data to a third party. They built Pento to automate the process in-house. Sources give the founding year variously as 2016 (TechCrunch, 2019) and 2017 (TechCrunch and the Evening Standard, 2021).

Business model

Software-as-a-service sold on a set monthly subscription based on the customer's employee headcount, replacing outsourced payroll bureaus. In 2019 published pricing was GBP 3 per employee per month for a basic plan and GBP 7 per employee per month for a plan with more features and support. Alongside the core product, Pento offered infrastructure through partnerships and integrations with accounting software, HR products and pension providers, plus an open payroll API.

Recurring monthly subscription fees charged per employee, described as a set, transparent monthly fee rather than per-payroll-run or outsourced service billing.

Traction

Over 400 Danish customers by September 2019; more than 700 companies supported by May 2021, with consecutive record-breaking months since the start of that year and a stated path to five-fold customer and revenue growth for 2021. Revenue grew 10x in the year to December 2021, when headcount reached 70, up from 20 twelve months earlier. At acquisition in February 2024, Pento reported more than 400 UK customers.

Latest developments

HiBob announced on 13 February 2024 that it had agreed to acquire Pento, subject to closing conditions, to embed UK payroll into its Bob HR platform; Deutsche Bank advised HiBob and Menalto Advisors advised Pento. The pento.io domain now hosts HiBob's platform, which markets combined HR, talent, payroll, compensation and finance modules and cites 5,000+ customer companies and about 1.23 million users.