Payroll software for Indian businesses: what to check before you choose

Payroll is the one HR task that every employee notices when it goes wrong. A late salary, a wrong deduction or a missing payslip becomes a problem for the whole company within a day. In India it is also more involved than a simple calculation, because several statutory deductions apply and some of them vary by state.

This checklist is for owners and HR or finance managers who are comparing payroll software. It does not replace advice from your chartered accountant. Use it to ask better questions in the demo.

The statutory items to ask about

• Provident Fund (PF). Employee and employer contributions calculated on the right wage base, with the rules your company has chosen.
• Employees' State Insurance (ESI). Applies to eligible employees under the scheme's conditions. Ask how the software decides who is covered and what happens when someone's pay crosses the limit.
• Professional Tax (PT). Set by each state, so it differs by where the employee works. Ask whether it handles multiple states if you have more than one location.
• Income tax on salary. Ask how the software handles it today, and whether your accountant will handle declarations and filings separately.

Rules and limits change from time to time. Rather than asking "what are the rates", ask how updates are delivered and who is responsible for keeping them current.

Beyond compliance: the checklist

1. Does attendance feed payroll? Salary should be calculated from approved attendance and leave, not retyped. Ask to see a payslip produced from real attendance data.
2. Can you model your salary structure? Basic, allowances, deductions, bonuses and reimbursements. If it cannot represent how you actually pay people, payroll becomes a spreadsheet again.
3. How does it handle changes mid-month? New joiners, leavers, unpaid leave, arrears and corrections are where errors happen.
4. What do employees see? Payslips they can download themselves, with a clear breakdown, cut the number of questions to HR.
5. Is there an audit trail? You should be able to see who changed what and when, especially for pay and deductions.
6. Can it handle more than one entity or location? Useful if you have several branches, states or companies.
7. How is it priced? Per-employee monthly pricing is easier to forecast. Ask whether payroll is included in the base price or an add-on.
8. Can you get your data out? You should be able to export your records if you ever switch.

Run one real month in parallel

The safest test is simple: run one real payroll month in the new software alongside your current method, and compare each person's net pay. Differences show you either an error in your old method or a gap in the software's setup. Fix them before you switch.

Where DeskViu fits

DeskViu payroll lets you configure salary structures for any country, with built-in PF, ESI and Professional Tax rules for India, and produces payslips from attendance and leave in the same system. See how it fits with DeskViu HRMS, or request a demo and bring your own salary structure. Every feature is in every plan, with per-employee monthly pricing and a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card.