If this is your financial year-end, this is one of the busiest times of the year for your teams. HR is finalizing headcount for Q1. Payroll and Finance are racing to close the books. IT continues to keep up with security issues before the holiday freeze.

This month’s updates are designed to help you cross the finish line. We’ve rolled out smarter budgeting tools, integrated learning libraries, and real-time data syncs so you can clear your queue and step into the break with confidence.

Here is what’s new in December.

HR: Smarter Planning, Faster Answers!

Q1 planning is already underway. These updates give you clearer visibility into your workforce and remove manual admin from verification requests, onboarding, and follow-ups.

The Headlines (Main)

Salary Budgets 2.0: Planning compensation cycles is now more flexible, and far less manual. With Salary Budgets 2.0, you can configure budgets top-down to assign fixed pots to managers, or bottom-up to calculate totals based on worker data. The system handles the math automatically, eliminating spreadsheet errors and giving you a clear, real-time view of your Q1 spend.

Integrated Learning with OpenSesame: Level up your team’s skills without the administrative headache. You can now sync your OpenSesame library directly into Deel Engage, unlocking instant access to over 50,000 curated courses. From leadership training to compliance checks, employees can access world-class learning content right within their existing workflow.

Flexible Probation: Local labor laws don't always fit into neat monthly boxes. That’s why we’ve added more precision to contract creation for EOR. You can now define probation and notice periods in specific time units, like weeks or days, instead of just months. This ensures your contracts align perfectly with local policy requirements, keeping you compliant without requiring manual workarounds.

Mandatory Onboarding Gating: Stop chasing contractors for missing ID scans or certifications after they’ve already started. You can now configure workflows that lock contract signatures until all mandatory onboarding steps are 100% complete. This automated gatekeeping ensures every new file is compliant from Day 1, saving your team hours of follow-up emails.

AI Employment Letters: Free your HR team from the repetitive task of writing proof-of-employment letters. Deel EOR employees can now self-serve compliant, personalized Verification Letters (EVLs) instantly from their dashboard. Whether they need it for a lease or a loan, they get the documents they need immediately, and you get time back in your day.

Other Notable Enhancements

• Smarter AI Experience: We’ve upgraded the Deel AI ecosystem with a refined "Build Your Own Agent" workflow, a polished Agent interface, and a new context-aware Assistant that offers prompts based on the page you are viewing.
• Customizable Org Chart Cards: You can now customize exactly which fields (like location, job title, or department) appear on employee cards in your Org Chart, keeping the view clean and relevant.
• Last Day of Work Trigger: Trigger offboarding workflows based on the actual last day of work, rather than just the contract end date.
• Automated Re-Hiring: The system now automatically triggers a re-hire event when your HRIS sends an "Active" status for a previously terminated worker.
• See Workflow Creators: Admins can now filter the Workflow Builder by "Creator" to easily audit who set up which automation.
• Redesigned Documents Tab: A cleaner, tabular interface for managing employee documents makes files easier to find and organize.

Finance & Payroll: Precision and Speed for Year-End

Closing the year requires precision. We’ve added tools to automate tax compliance and sync data to your ledger more quickly, so you don’t have to wait for the next cycle to gain clarity.

The Headlines (Main)

Real-Time Invoice Sync: Speed up your month-end close and get better visibility into your cash flow. You can now sync invoices to NetSuite, Xero, or SAP the moment they are created, rather than waiting for the payment cycle to finalize. This gives your Finance team immediate insight into upcoming liabilities, allowing for faster reconciliation and smarter cash management.

Automated Talent Invoicing: We’ve removed the manual math from hiring via Deel Talent. The system now automates invoicing calculations for every new hire, ensuring your billing is accurate and timely. This minimizes the risk of human error during data entry and streamlines your accounts payable process, so you can focus on talent strategy instead of spreadsheet corrections.

Other Notable Enhancements

• Streamlined NetSuite Setup: Add new entities to your NetSuite integration without needing to re-authenticate the entire connection.
• Equity Compliance Flags: The Workers Overview now automatically flags "Compliance Risk" for externally imported equity grants so you can take timely action.
• AI Expense Compliance: AI now offers real-time feedback during expense submission to catch policy issues before they reach the approver.
• Bulk VAT Upload: Upload tax info for multiple contractors via CSV to streamline invoicing setup.
• Instant Withdrawals (Colombia): Cash flow matters to your contractors. We’ve integrated with the Bre-B payment system to offer instant withdrawals for contractors in Colombia.

IT & Platform: High-Stakes Alerts

As your security perimeter grows, you need faster signals. This month, we added real-time SMS alerts for critical events, helping you stay ahead of security risks even when you’re away from your desk.

The Headlines (Main)

SMS Notifications: When security is at risk, email isn't fast enough. You can now enable SMS Notifications for high-stakes events like security alerts, payout failures, or fraud warnings. This ensures you and your employees receive critical information instantly, even when away from a desk, allowing for faster reaction times when it matters most.

SSO for Extended Leave: Improve your security hygiene without burdening your admins. You can now configure specific Single Sign-On (SSO) rules for users on long-term leave. This allows you to automatically restrict or modify access for employees who are away, ensuring your perimeter stays secure while maintaining a smooth re-entry process when they return.

Child Org Feature Management: Managing complex corporate structures just got easier. Parent organizations can now toggle feature visibility, like specific modules or tools, for their child entities independently. This gives you granular control to customize the platform experience for different subsidiaries or branches without affecting settings for the entire group.

Other Notable Enhancements

• Asset Command: We've strengthened Deel IT with comprehensive asset visibility (including items in transit), a simplified MDM activation flow, and a new flexible per-seat billing model.
• Advanced Notifications Hub: A new inbox with intelligent grouping and filtering to declutter your platform alerts.
• Group-Based API Tokens: Assign API tokens to specific groups instead of organization-wide for tighter security scopes.
• Consolidated Email Notifications: We now bundle multiple updates into a single digest to reduce inbox noise.

2025 in Review: 1,624 Ways We Evolved

December isn't just about closing the books before the holiday rush; it's about stepping back to reflect on the scale of what we built together.

This year, our engineering team released 1,624 product updates, roughly 4.4 improvements every single day. We didn't just build features in a vacuum; we built them to help you scale. Here’s what that velocity looks like in practice:

• For People Leaders: We released 206 Core HR Updates and 153 Onboarding Enhancements, helping you relocate over 17,000 people and pay 1 million workers on time.
• For Payroll/Finance Teams: We shipped 117 Fintech Innovations and processed $20 Billion in payroll, giving you the tools to pay teams in 114 local currencies and over $250 Million in crypto.
• For IT Leaders: We secured your perimeter with 157 Connectivity Updates and shipped 40,000+ devices globally through Deel IT without you ever visiting a post office.

One Last Thing: Your cheat sheet for product updates

We know that staying on top of 1,600+ updates can feel overwhelming. That’s why we introduced the Centralized Changelog in your Knowledge Hub back in October. If you haven't checked it recently, consider this your reminder. It’s your dedicated home to filter releases by product and catch up on anything you might have missed without digging through emails.

Next steps: Bookmark the changelog in your Knowledge Hub to stay ahead of the curve.

Ready for 2026? 1,624 updates is a lot. But we're just getting started. As we head into the new year, our promise remains the same: We will keep moving as fast as you do.

To our clients, partners, and the entire global workforce: Thank you for building with us in 2025.