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HR Management

Factorial

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Factorial HR S.L. · factorialhr.de

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Factorial: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Factorial: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Factorial at a glance

Vendor
Factorial HR S.L.
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Factorial 1.5/5, the mean of 6 judges. Factorial HR S.L., a Barcelona-based HR Management vendor selling into the German market, presents a broad product menu while leaving most operational detail undocumented. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 15 Sep 2026 to 19 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 19 Oct 2026. all sources

Factorial alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Works Council Advocate

Weighted verdict

Sits on the Betriebsrat and has to approve this rollout under BetrVG §87. Reads every feature for whether it can monitor behaviour, and asks what is logged, who can read it and what can be switched off. A tool that cannot answer those questions does not get installed, however good it is.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Works Council Advocate

Panel median The Works Council Advocate This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Works Council Advocate
Digital personnel file & data model 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Payroll handoff 2 of 5 2 of 5
Absence & working-time 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Recruiting & onboarding 2 of 5 2 of 5
Employee data protection & co-determination 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
European sovereignty 1 of 5 1.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 0.5 of 5 1 of 5

Digital personnel file & data model

How this is scored

The system of record: employee master data, the digital personnel file, org structure, custom fields, and whether history is kept rather than overwritten.

0 — A contact list with job titles; no document storage, no org structure, no history — changes overwrite what was there.

3 — Employee records with document upload, but a flat structure: no org chart, few or no custom fields, and no dated history of contract or salary changes.

5 — Digital personnel file with structured document types, an org chart, custom fields, and change history on the core employment fields.

8 — Complete record: versioned contract and compensation history with effective dates, document templates with e-signature, org structure supporting multiple entities and cost centres, and granular field-level permissions.

10 — The file is the single source of truth an auditor could work from: full effective-dated history on every field, retention rules per document type, delegated administration per entity, and export that reproduces the record intact.

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The Works Council Advocate

A document-management offering and a digital-personnel-file page exist in the captures, which is the floor of a personnel file. Beyond the titles, we found no public information on structured document types, org structure, custom fields, or any dated change history — and whether contract changes are versioned rather than overwritten is the first question I would ask. 5 6 5

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Payroll handoff

How this is scored

Whether the month closes cleanly into payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, an in-house system or an external tax adviser — and how much of that is automated rather than re-typed.

0 — No payroll path stated at all; whatever leaves the system leaves as a spreadsheet somebody retypes.

3 — Generic CSV export said to be usable for payroll, with no named payroll system, no defined format and no handling of mid-month changes.

5 — A named payroll integration or a documented export format for at least one major system (e.g. DATEV LODAS/Lohn und Gehalt), covering the recurring monthly fields.

8 — Certified or vendor-maintained integration with a named payroll provider, covering variable pay, absences and mid-month joiners and leavers, with a documented pre-payroll check.

10 — Payroll is a first-class part of the product: maintained bidirectional integrations with several named systems, an auditable approval and lock step before transmission, retro-accounting for backdated changes, and the tax adviser given their own access.

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The Works Council Advocate

Dedicated DATEV pages appear in the captures, so a named payroll path is implied. We found no public information on the export format, variable pay, absences, mid-month joiners and leavers, or any pre-payroll check, so the month closing cleanly into payroll is not something these pages evidence. 7 8

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Absence & working-time

How this is scored

Vacation, sickness and working-time recording — including whether the product meets the German recording duty (BAG 2022, ArbZG) rather than merely offering a timer.

0 — No absence or time handling; both live in a spreadsheet elsewhere.

3 — Vacation requests with an approval step, but entitlement is manual, carry-over is not handled and there is no working-time recording.

5 — Automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, an absence calendar, and basic working-time capture with a report per employee.

8 — Configurable per country and contract: pro-rata entitlement, public-holiday calendars per location, break and rest-period rules, overtime accounts, and an export the employer can hand to a labour inspection.

10 — Working-time recording built as a legal obligation rather than a feature: tamper-evident records, documented compliance with the ArbZG recording duty, works-council-configurable monitoring limits, and shift or on-call models handled without add-ons.

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The Works Council Advocate

A vacation-management page appears, so request handling is implied. We found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over or sickness recording — and nothing at all on working-time recording, which is the legal duty the BAG ruling created; as captured, this cannot carry that obligation. 9 10

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Recruiting & onboarding

How this is scored

The join path — vacancy to signed contract to a person who has an account, equipment and a plan on day one.

0 — Neither applicant tracking nor onboarding exists; hiring happens in a shared inbox.

3 — A basic applicant list with statuses, or an onboarding checklist — one of the two, without the handover between them.

5 — Applicant tracking with a careers page, structured stages and rejection handling, plus a checklist-driven onboarding that carries the hired candidate over into an employee record without re-entry.

8 — Multi-posting to named job boards, interview scheduling and scorecards, GDPR-conscious applicant retention and deletion, e-signed contracts, and onboarding that triggers tasks in IT and payroll.

10 — The whole join is one governed flow: approval-gated requisitions with budget, structured and bias-conscious evaluation, automated applicant deletion at the stated deadline, and provisioning driven from the record so day one needs no HR intervention.

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The Works Council Advocate

Both applicant management and an onboarding/offboarding offering appear in the captures, so both halves of the join path exist. We found no public information on structured stages, applicant retention and deletion deadlines, or whether the hired candidate flows into the employee record without re-entry. 11 12

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Employee data protection & co-determination

How this is scored

How the product handles the most sensitive personal data a company holds — retention, deletion, role separation, subject rights — and whether it can pass a works council (BetrVG §87) rather than merely a procurement checklist.

0 — No stated retention or deletion handling, no role model beyond admin-or-not, and no DPA offered on the site.

3 — A DPA exists on request and roles are coarse; retention and deletion are described as something the customer arranges themselves.

5 — A signable DPA is published, roles are configurable per module, applicant and employee retention periods are stated, and deletion can be executed rather than only promised.

8 — Field-level access control with an audit log of who read what, configurable retention per data category with automatic deletion, documented subject-rights support, and monitoring or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for the works council to say yes: published processing documentation and subprocessor list, per-entity data separation, tamper-evident audit trail, evaluation and behavioural-analysis features off by default with their scope documented, and a data-protection impact assessment the customer can build on.

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The Works Council Advocate

The security page confirms a Data Processing Agreement exists and lists logging, but only in the context of the vendor's own internal controls. We found no public information on retention periods, configurable role separation, a customer-readable audit trail of who accessed whose file, or whether the AI features named on that page can be switched off — for a works council decision under co-determination law, that silence is decisive. 4 13 13

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether the answer is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as the buyer would weigh it.

0 — US-headquartered vendor, US contracting entity, hosting region unstated or US, subprocessors not named.

3 — EU hosting is offered as an option but the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is incomplete or absent.

5 — EU hosting stated as standard and an EU contracting entity, but the subprocessor chain includes non-EU providers without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, an EU contracting entity, the full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, contracting entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification of the data centres published, and an on-premises or private-cloud option for buyers who need it.

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The Works Council Advocate

The vendor is Barcelona-based, which is a start, but the captured pages name AWS and Azure as infrastructure with no hosting region stated, and we found no public information confirming the contracting entity or any subprocessor list. For an HR system holding our employees' data, that is an open question, not an answer a data-protection officer can file. 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether an HR lead can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount — including the modules they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — An entry price per employee exists, but the modules most buyers need are unpriced, or a minimum headcount, setup fee or mandatory onboarding package is not stated publicly.

5 — Per-employee prices are public for the main tiers with the billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed module (payroll, time, recruiting) hides in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and module priced publicly with per-employee maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table that produces the annual invoice for a given headcount and module selection, including setup, minimums and renewal terms.

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The Works Council Advocate

A pricing page appears in the captures, but no figure could be confirmed from it — no per-employee rate, billing period, or module price for payroll, time or recruiting. An HR lead cannot compute an annual invoice from what is captured here. 2 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Questions about Factorial

Is Factorial European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies Factorial as EU-Made.

Where does Factorial store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

Does Factorial have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 19 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Factorial?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates rexx systems (3.5/5), HRworks (3/5) and Kenjo (3/5) highest among the other 30 HR Management products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is rexx systems (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Factorial alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Factorial? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 16 Sep 2026, 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Digital personnel file & data model — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +2 earlier captures: 13 Oct 2026, 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Digital personnel file & data model — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Absence & working-time — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Absence & working-time — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Employee data protection & co-determination — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Employee data protection & co-determination — found from sitemap factorialhr.de Checked 19 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 1 Oct 2026 Details →