EOR onboarding steps in Austria: the order from offer to payslip

The EOR onboarding steps in Austria begin before anyone drafts a contract, with five facts you settle internally: the job title and duties, the city where the person will mostly work, the gross annual salary, the weekly hours, and whether the role is partly or fully remote. Each one changes something downstream.

The city matters more than most clients expect. The surcharge on the Dienstgeberbeitrag differs by federal state: 0.36% for a Vienna workplace, but 0.31% for one in Linz and 0.39% for one in Innsbruck, Kommunalsteuer is paid to the municipality where the workplace is, and only Vienna charges the extra €2 per employee for each week begun. The duties decide which Kollektivvertrag (collective agreement) and which grade apply, and the grade sets the lowest salary you may offer.

Then work out when the person can realistically start. A candidate leaving another Austrian employer is bound by their own notice: by default a month, expiring on a month-end, though a contract can stretch it to as much as six months. A candidate who resigns on 10 March is therefore usually free from 1 May, not from 10 April. If you agree the start date before checking the candidate’s notice clause, you will probably have to move it. Ask about notice in the first interview rather than the last; it costs nothing and saves an awkward renegotiation of the start date later.

If you are still deciding whether this route suits you at all, read what an EOR does in Austria first and come back to the sequence afterwards.

Once the inputs are fixed, the EOR prepares the employment contract and the written statement of terms, and both go to the candidate for signature. The Dienstzettel was widened on 28 March 2024, so it now has to state, among other points, the employer’s seat, a brief job description, the termination procedure, how overtime is paid, how pay is made, the probation period, the social insurance carrier, the severance fund and any training entitlement.

A few clauses deserve your attention before you approve the draft:

• Probation can last one month at most, and a collective agreement may shorten it but never lengthen it. During that month either side can end the contract at any time without giving a reason.
• All-in pay, where one salary covers all overtime, only works if the base pay for normal hours is written down. Without it, the usual market salary is treated as the base.
• Non-competes bind nobody whose final gross monthly salary stays at or under the 2026 threshold of €4,620, and for better-paid staff they are capped at one year.
• Fixed terms need no justification the first time. A chain of renewals without an objective reason turns into an open-ended contract.
• Telework needs a separate written agreement naming the place, under the rules in force since 1 January 2025.

Once the paperwork is signed, the contract exists. For the full anatomy of the written terms, see our guide to the Austrian employment contract and Dienstzettel.

EU and EEA citizens need no work permit, so for them this stage is skipped. Anyone else needs a residence title that lets them work, and the most common is the Rot-Weiß-Rot-Karte (Red-White-Red Card).

The card is tied to one employer and is valid for 24 months. The residence authority passes the file to the AMS, which checks the criteria, and the employer may file the application in Austria on the candidate’s behalf. Three tracks matter for most hires: very highly qualified workers, who need 70 of 100 points; skilled workers in shortage occupations, who need 55 of 90 points and at least the collective agreement minimum; and other key workers, who need 55 of 90 points and in 2026 at least €3,465 gross a month plus special payments, whatever their age. The application fee for the last group is €218.

Graduates with a degree of at least three years and a matching job offer can instead apply for the EU Blue Card, which in 2026 requires at least €55,678 gross a year including special payments. It also runs for 24 months and allows a free change of employer after 12.

No official processing time is published, so we would not plan a fixed start date around a permit. Keep the date flexible and tell the candidate the same. Check the salary against the 2026 threshold while the offer is still a draft, budget the €218 fee if the key-worker route applies, and read our breakdown of the Red-White-Red Card and Blue Card for 2026 before you make the offer.

The single hard deadline in the whole sequence is the registration with social insurance. It must go through ELDA, the electronic channel the Austrian insurers run, and it must be in before the employee starts work. A registration posted on the afternoon of day one is already late.

The rule is strict because of what follows when it is broken. An inspector who comes across an unregistered worker triggers a €1,000 bill from the ÖGK, split into €400 charged per person and €600 charged for the inspection itself, and separate administrative fines may follow. Late reports in general cost €70 each in 2026.

Two smaller set-up items happen around the same time. The new employee is attached to the employer’s chosen severance fund, the Betriebliche Vorsorgekasse, which will receive 1.53% of all pay from the second month of employment onward, with no ceiling. And the payroll record is opened with the details the monthly calculation needs: tax data, bank account, the collective agreement grade and the agreed hours. If any of these arrive late, the registration can still go in on time, but the first payslip may need a correction, so chase them in the week before the start rather than on the day.

The government business portal (USP) explains the registration rule in German if your finance team wants the primary source.

The first working month is mostly yours to run. Your manager handles introductions, equipment, system access and early goals; the EOR answers the employee’s questions about payslips, leave and insurance. Make sure the person knows whom to contact for which topic, because new starters often send everything to their manager.

Keep the probation month in mind. If the fit is clearly wrong, the contract can be ended in that window without notice. After it, the statutory notice periods apply, starting at six weeks for the employer.

Leave starts to accrue at once. In the first work year the right builds up pro rata until six months have passed, when the full entitlement of 30 Werktage (25 days for a five-day week) applies. Sickness in the first year is paid in full for six weeks and at half pay for four weeks after that. Care leave also applies from day one. A new hire whose spouse, parent, other close relative or household member is ill can stay home on full pay for up to a week in each work year, and a parent gets a further week when a child below the age of 12 is sick for a second time.

Home working can come with an allowance that is exempt from wage tax: up to 100 telework days a year at €3 each, which caps it at €300. Whether you offer it is a policy choice; if you do, tell the EOR before the first payroll so it appears from the start.

The first payslip turns the contract into numbers. From the gross salary the EOR deducts the employee’s social insurance, 18.07% for a white-collar employee on regular pay in 2026, with reduced unemployment contributions for those earning €2,630 a month or less. Wage tax is then worked out by annualising the month’s taxable pay, applying the tariff and dividing by twelve.

On the employer side, the first month’s figures go into the monthly contribution return, the mBGM, and the wage tax and the two employer levies go to the tax office. Both must arrive by the 15th, one month on from the pay month. Kommunalsteuer follows the same timetable to the municipality.

Two moments come later in the first year. The holiday bonus and Christmas bonus are paid when the collective agreement says, and because the bulk of each is taxed at a flat 6%, the employee keeps far more of them than of an ordinary month’s pay. Then, by the end of February of the following year, the EOR files the annual payslip, the Lohnzettel L16, through ELDA.

Here the onboarding sequence ends. From the second month onward, the cycle simply repeats. If you are comparing providers before you start, our checklist for vetting an EOR for Austria covers the questions to ask about each of these steps, and Employer of Record Austria can walk you through them for a specific role.

Onboarding goes wrong mostly at the hand-overs, when each side assumes the other has sent something. Writing down who owns each step before the offer goes out avoids that. A split we find workable looks like this:

• Your company: the job description, the gross salary, the start date you would like, the reporting line, the equipment, the remote-work decision, and the welcome plan for week one.
• The EOR: the collective agreement and grade check, the contract and Dienstzettel, the ELDA registration, the severance fund enrolment, the payroll record and every filing that follows.
• The candidate: notice to the current employer, signed documents, tax and bank details, and for a non-EU national the documents the permit application needs.
• Shared: agreeing the start date once the candidate’s notice and any permit are known, and fixing which overtime and leave figures your manager reports each month.

The list looks obvious on paper. In practice, the item most often missed is the last one. If nobody agrees how hours and absences reach payroll, the first month’s figures go out without them and are corrected a month later, which irritates the new employee at exactly the wrong moment.

Q01How far ahead must the ELDA registration be made?+

A.It has to be made before the employee starts work. There is no earlier cut-off, but registering on the first morning after work has begun counts as late.

Q02Can probation in Austria be longer than a month?+

A.No. One month is the statutory maximum, and a collective agreement can only shorten it. Either party may end the contract during that month without notice.

Q03My candidate works for another Austrian employer. When can they join?+

A.Usually at the end of the month after they resign, because employee notice is one month to the end of a month. Check their contract, since it may extend notice up to six months.

Q04When does the severance fund contribution begin?+

A.From the second month of employment. It is 1.53% of all pay, special payments included, with no ceiling, and goes to the employer’s chosen Vorsorgekasse.

Q05Does a non-EU hire change the onboarding order?+

A.Yes. The permit step comes before the start date, and because no official processing time is published, the start date should stay flexible until the card is granted.