What does it cost to have a shakai hoken roumushi run your payroll?

In short: Outsourced payroll is generally priced as "a base fee plus so much per employee." The per-employee figure is most often described as 200-500 yen a month (before tax), which comes to roughly 220-550 yen including tax. The base fee sits on top of that. It is a structure in which the fewer people you have, the heavier the cost per person becomes.

When people set out to have payroll handled elsewhere and start reading fee schedules, we often hear that the amounts are put together so differently from office to office that they cannot be compared. Look into it and you find that the differences lie less in the prices themselves than in how the fee is assembled.

How is payroll priced in the market?

Shape	Example pricing	Character
Base fee + per head	Base fee + 200-500 yen per person per month (before tax)	The most common shape. With few employees the base fee weighs heavily
Included in the retainer	Payroll is included within the retainer fee	The breakdown is hard to see. What happens when headcount grows is settled by the contract
Support for doing it in-house	From 6,980 yen a month (from around 10 people)	★Not outsourcing, but support that walks you through using a cloud service. Not directly comparable with outsourcing
Adopting software and running it in-house	The software fee only (depends on the plan)	Not engaging an office at all. No outsourcing fee arises, but entry, checking and judgement stay with you. Outsourcing the procedures is a separate contract
Not offered	—	Some offices that specialize in one-off work have a policy of not taking payroll at all

The third row calls for care. Even where you see "payroll from 6,980 yen a month," whether that is outsourcing or help with doing it yourself changes the work required entirely. When you compare, line that up first.

As in the fourth row, there is also the option of adopting software and not outsourcing at all. What you would still ask a shakai hoken roumushi for in that case, and what stays with you, is set out in We've brought in freee HR. So what does a retained shakai hoken roumushi actually do?. At Yotsuba, we support the switch to this "run it yourselves" shape within the retainer agreement (more below).

Why is there a "base fee"?

Payroll divides into work that scales with headcount and work that arises every month regardless of headcount.

Work that scales with headcount

• Checking attendance records and reflecting them
• Calculating payments and deductions
• Producing pay statements

Work that arises every month regardless of headcount

• Handing over and reconciling data at each cut-off date
• Keeping up with revisions to premium rates and withholding tax tables
• Producing the transfer data
• Tracking down the cause when the amounts do not agree

Because of the latter, most offices set a base fee. Even at a company with one employee, the work at the end and start of each month still happens.

What does Yotsuba do?

Outsourcing fee	1,100 yen per employee per month (tax incl.)
Base fee	None
Condition	★Bundled with a retainer agreement. We do not accept payroll on its own
Support for going in-house	★Support for building a setup to run payroll yourselves on freee is included in the retainer (there is no separate charge)

1,100 yen per person is twice the top of the market (around 550 yen including tax). In exchange, there is no base fee. At 20 employees the amount comes out the same as the common market shape of "an 11,000 yen base fee + 550 yen per person." Below 20 people Yotsuba is cheaper; above that, more expensive.

We can do without a base fee because we do not take payroll on its own. A retainer agreement is a precondition, so the situation of "taking on a company with one employee for 1,100 yen a month" does not arise. The smallest configuration is a 22,000 yen retainer plus 1,100 yen for payroll: 23,100 yen a month (tax incl.).

In other words, the engagement policy plays the part that the base fee would otherwise play.

There is also the choice of not outsourcing at all. We support the build-up to running payroll in-house on freee — designing the initial settings, sorting out pay items and deductions, checking the months when premium rates are revised, and consulting on each month's close — within the retainer agreement. There is no separate charge for this support. You can also start by working out with us which suits you better: outsourcing (1,100 yen per person) or in-house.

Four things to line up when you compare

Setting the figures from fee schedules side by side is not yet a comparison. Line up these four first.

1. Outsourcing, or support alongside you — whether your own staff do the data entry
2. Tax included or tax excluded — 500 yen and 550 yen per person can be the same amount
3. How bonuses are treated — whether a charge arises separately from the monthly fee
4. How the year-end tax adjustment is treated — the year-end tax adjustment is the work of a tax accountant. It is never included in a payroll fee

The fourth is easily missed. We do not handle the year-end tax adjustment either; we refer you to a tax accountant.

The fees as a whole, payroll included, are on the fee schedule, and how we think about the retainer is set out in What is a shakai hoken roumushi's retainer actually paying for?.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Can we ask you for payroll alone?
A. We do not accept that. Payroll is taken on together with a retainer agreement. If we handled the calculations without also handling the consultations, we would risk processing the work on mistaken assumptions without knowing the actual situation. We do, however, support switching to calculating payroll yourselves on freee, with the support included in the retainer. Policies differ between offices, so looking for an office that takes payroll on its own is one reasonable option.

Q. Is payroll work that only a shakai hoken roumushi may do?
A. No. Payroll itself is not exclusive to shakai hoken roumushi. However, the procedures that arise alongside payroll — acquiring and losing social insurance coverage, the standard remuneration base notification, notifications of monthly remuneration changes — require registration as a shakai hoken roumushi if they are carried out for a fee (Article 27 of 社会保険労務士法).

Q. Is there a separate charge when bonuses are paid?
A. At Yotsuba the calculation of the bonus itself is included in payroll. Filing the bonus payment notification, however, is a labor and social insurance procedure, so the fee in the fee schedule is charged separately. Other offices treat this differently, so please check before you sign.

Q. Does this assume employees enter their own data?
A. If you use a cloud HR and labor management system, the basic arrangement is for employees themselves to enter their details and My Number when they join. Where you receive the information on paper and we enter it on your behalf, the volume of work changes, so please raise it with us individually.

Sources for this article

• 社会保険労務士法 (Act No. 89 of 1968), Article 2, paragraph 1, item 1; Article 27
• The market figures are drawn together from the fee schedules and explanatory articles published by several social insurance and labor consultant offices and services as of August 2026. Conditions differ from office to office, so please treat them as a guide.
• "200-500 yen per person per month" is written in most sources in a way that reads as excluding consumption tax; converted to tax-included figures it corresponds to 220-550 yen. Because the original sources do not always state whether the figure excludes or includes tax, this conversion is our own reading.

This article is general information. A judgment on your individual circumstances is made by a qualified professional after a consultation. Written by Joji Uramatsu (Shakai Hoken Roumushi, Gyoseishoshi, Registered Real Estate Transaction Specialist).