Gerem: optimising directors' pay (review and firm uses)

Quick answer. Gerem is an online tool for optimising company directors' pay, used by accounting firms to advise their clients. It is built around three modules: the salary/dividend trade-off, a legal-status comparator (SAS, SARL and other forms) and self-employed (TNS) contribution planning. It does not keep the books: it helps decide the most efficient pay mix, factoring in income tax, corporate tax and social contributions. It is most useful to firms with many director clients.

Two families of software coexist in a firm. Production tools (bookkeeping, review, payroll, filings) handle client obligations. Decision-support tools help advise: they model scenarios to inform a choice. Gerem belongs to the second family, on one specific, recurring question: how much, and in what form, should a director be paid?

Its purpose is not to produce a balance sheet but to answer the question every director asks their accountant: "Should I pay myself a salary or dividends, and in what proportion?" This is exactly the ground of the salary versus dividends trade-off, which Gerem equips with costed simulations rather than rough rules of thumb.

Gerem is a fully online platform, updated in line with legal and tax developments. The publisher structures it into three complementary modules.

The trade-off module factors in the director's personal situation (income tax, corporate tax, social contributions) to compare complete scenarios, not just the payslip. The status comparator produces educational reports, useful for presenting a recommendation to a client. The provisions module helps plan self-employed contributions, whose collection is staggered over time.

A director's pay is not a simple amount: it is a balance between social charges, personal tax and company tax. Two parameters structure the analysis — and that is precisely what a tool like Gerem helps objectify.

First, the director's social regime. A majority manager of an SARL or EURL is a self-employed worker (TNS); the president of an SAS or SASU, like a minority manager, is treated as an employee under the general regime. This choice between TNS and employee-assimilated status changes both contribution costs and social cover — a gap that the comparison between SASU and EURL makes concrete.

Second, the treatment of dividends. For a majority manager of an SARL or EURL subject to corporate tax, the share of dividends exceeding 10 % of share capital, issue premiums and shareholder current-account balances is subject to social contributions (article L131-6 of the Social Security Code, since 1 January 2013); the fraction below that threshold bears only the social levies. For income tax, dividends fall by default under the flat tax (PFU), with an option for the progressive scale. Juggling salary, dividends, statuses and thresholds by hand quickly becomes unreadable: that is where a tooled simulation adds reliability.

1. Firms with many director clients. If you advise numerous company managers and presidents, the pay trade-off comes up every year. A dedicated tool industrialises an analysis that is otherwise time-consuming and hard to standardise across staff.
2. Firms that want to make their advice reliable and traceable. On a sensitive subject, a costed, reproducible report beats an oral recommendation. The status comparator and the trade-off module produce documents you can share with the client.
3. Firms that serve the self-employed and liberal professions. Managing TNS provisions is a recurring topic for the self-employed and majority managers; a dedicated module secures contribution planning.

Majority manager of an SARL or EURL. TNS status and the partial liability of dividends to social contributions make the trade-off specific: a tool helps find the balance point between pay and distribution.

President of an SASU or SAS. Treated as an employee, the director pays no social contributions on dividends, but employee and employer contributions on pay are higher: the salary/dividend comparison follows a different logic.

Liberal professions. For liberal professionals, often TNS, contribution planning and the pay trade-off are central to steering the business; it is one focus of our support for the liberal professions.

Director with a holding company. When a holding is involved, the trade-off combines with dividend upstreaming and the parent-subsidiary regime; it is then handled with our holding tax support.

• Pricing is usually on a quote. Such platforms are often priced by subscription, depending on the number of users and the modules chosen. Ask for a quote suited to your firm rather than relying on a headline price.
• A simulation is only as good as its assumptions. The result depends on the inputs (personal situation, rates, thresholds). A tool does not replace analysis: it equips it. Validation by the accountant remains essential.
• Tax and social parameters change. Contribution rates, thresholds and dividend taxation shift from year to year; check that the tool is up to date with the relevant year's figures.
• Director data is sensitive. Wealth and income are confidential: check hosting, security and compliance with the professional secrecy that binds the accountant.

At Hayot Expertise, we rely on Gerem to model and defend our director clients' pay strategies. The value of such a tool is not to "produce a number", but to compare complete scenarios and make the recommendation legible for the client: a report showing net disposable income for each option beats a hunch.

Recently, a majority SARL manager came to us convinced that paying himself only dividends was always more advantageous. The simulation showed the opposite in his case: the partial liability of dividends to social contributions, and the absence of associated social rights, made a salary component more relevant once cover was included. As a chartered accountant registered with the Ordre, our role is precisely to weigh immediate income against protection, beyond the tax calculation alone. For a first do-it-yourself approach, our director's pay simulator already gives useful benchmarks.

Hayot Expertise tip. Before settling this year's pay, have a full simulation drawn up factoring in income tax, corporate tax and social contributions — not just dividend taxation. Compare at least two scenarios (all salary, salary/dividend mix) and reason in net disposable income and social cover, not only in immediate tax saving.