Worklio Founder Robert Österlund Releases ‘Payroll Unlocked,’ the First Operator’s Playbook for Modern U.S. Payroll

A 388-page field manual on running, scaling, and monetizing payroll — written for the operators, founders, and platforms building on top of it.

Worklio today announced the release of Payroll Unlocked: The Operator’s Playbook for Running, Scaling, and Monetizing Modern U.S. Payroll, a new book by company founder Robert Österlund. Drawing on more than a decade spent building payroll infrastructure, the book is the first comprehensive, operator-focused guide to how U.S. payroll actually works — from the mechanics of money movement and tax filing to the unit economics and business models behind the industry.

WOW. Robert leaves no stone unturned. So many nuggets to make current providers rethink their operations, and newcomers will find real-world insights. A great resource at any level in payroll.”

— Veleta E. Jones · 35 years in the PEO industry

Where most payroll literature stops at compliance checklists, Payroll Unlocked treats payroll as what it truly is: a high-stakes operating discipline and a serious business line. Across 388 pages, the book walks readers through the systems, decisions, and failure modes that define payroll at scale — the details that rarely make it into documentation but determine whether an operation runs cleanly or breaks under pressure.

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“I spent ten years building payroll — not selling it, building it. I wrote the book I wish I’d had when I started: an honest account of how the machine works, why it fails, and how it makes money.”
— Robert Österlund, Founder of Worklio and author of Payroll Unlocked

INSIDE THE BOOK
• How money moves through payroll — funding, settlement, float, and the timing that governs every pay run
• Tax filing and compliance across all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico
• The unit economics of payroll — take rates, interchange, float, and how embedded and wholesale pricing actually pencils out
• Building and scaling a support organization, including realistic staffing ratios by operating model
• Launching embedded payroll inside a SaaS product, and the partnership models behind it
• The failure modes nobody warns you about — and how mature operators design around them

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