HR software for a small business in India: what to look for, what it costs, and a checklist

Signs you have outgrown spreadsheets

Excel is a good first HR system. It is free, everyone knows it, and for the first ten people it is enough. The trouble starts quietly, usually somewhere between 15 and 40 employees, or as soon as you open a second branch. Look for these signs:

• Leave balances are argued about. An employee says they have six days left, the sheet says three, and nobody can show who changed it.
• Payroll depends on one person. The salary sheet has formulas only your accountant understands, and the month they are on leave is the month it breaks.
• Candidates go missing. CVs arrive by email, WhatsApp, walk-ins and agencies, and a good applicant waits a week because the store manager forgot to forward the message.
• Documents are everywhere. Aadhaar copies on a manager's phone, offer letters in someone's Gmail, signed appointment letters in a drawer.
• You cannot answer simple questions quickly. How many people joined last quarter? Who is on probation? How many sick days did the Kochi branch take?

If three or more of those sound familiar, the time you spend chasing information already costs more than most HR software would.

The modules that matter for a 10 to 200 person company

HR suites list dozens of features. For a growing Indian SMB, six areas do almost all of the work. Judge every product on these first.

1. Hiring (applicant tracking)

If you are a retail chain, a clinic, a logistics company or a BPO, you are probably hiring every month. You want one list of applicants per role, a careers page you can put on your own website, a record of where each candidate came from, interview scheduling with written feedback, and an offer that turns into an employee record without retyping. We go deeper on this in Excel vs an applicant tracking system.

2. Employee records and documents

One record per person: personal details, bank account, emergency contacts, department, designation, reporting manager and the documents collected at joining. Access should be role-based, so a branch manager sees their team and not everyone's salary.

3. Leave and holidays

Leave types, balances, approvals and a holiday calendar. The India-specific test: can it hold a different holiday list and work week for each office? A Karnataka branch and a Tamil Nadu branch do not share festival holidays, and a six-day week produces different loss-of-pay from a five-day week. Our leave policy template explains the usual leave types.

4. Attendance

Whether you use a biometric device, a register or self-marked attendance, the software should accept the data (an import from the device is fine), let employees request corrections for missed punches, and pass the result to payroll. Think about privacy here too; see attendance tracking without GPS.

5. Payroll and payslips

Salary structures, monthly runs, payslips and a bank transfer file. Ask how the product treats the split between basic pay and allowances, because provident fund, gratuity and bonus are calculated on wages rather than gross. Whatever the vendor says, have your CA review the first few runs.

6. Approvals and self-service

Staff apply for leave and download payslips themselves; managers approve from their own login. If every request still goes through HR, you have bought a database, not a system.

India-specific questions to ask every vendor

Many HR tools are built for one market and adapted for others. These questions show quickly whether a product was designed with Indian employers in mind:

• Can each office have its own State, holiday calendar and work week?
• Is the financial year April to March by default, and are amounts in rupees with Indian digit grouping (₹1,45,870, not ₹145,870)?
• Does the payroll module distinguish wages from allowances, and can it produce the files your CA needs?
• Can it keep the registers an inspector may ask for, or at least export what you need to build them?
• Does it support Indian documents at onboarding (PAN, UAN, bank details) and let you limit who can see them?
• Where is the data stored, and is each company's data kept separate?
• What does it do for personal data protection under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: role-based access, audit logs, expiring document links, a breach log?

No software can promise you are compliant with labour law, and you should be wary of any vendor that does. Software keeps the records and does the arithmetic; the obligations remain yours. Confirm thresholds and filing rules for your States with your CA or labour consultant.

What HR software costs in India

Cloud HR software for SMBs is almost always priced per employee per month, often in tiers where higher tiers add modules such as payroll or performance. When you compare quotes, look past the headline number:

• Minimum billing. Many vendors bill a minimum headcount or a minimum monthly amount.
• What counts as an employee. Active staff only, or also people who left this month, interns and contractors?
• Monthly or annual. Some prices are only available if you pay a year upfront.
• Setup and migration fees. Some charge for implementation or loading your existing data.
• Taxes. Check whether GST is included in the quoted price.
• Add-ons. Hiring, attendance devices, extra admin users or SMS can be priced separately.

For reference, HR-VEND charges ₹49 (Starter, up to 25 employees), ₹99 (Growth, up to 200) or ₹149 (Enterprise, unlimited) per employee per month, billed to a minimum of 10 employees. A 40-person company on Growth pays 40 × ₹99 = ₹3,960 a month. Our HR software pricing guide walks through more examples and what each tier includes.

How to run a trial that tells you something

A sales demo shows the product at its best. A trial with your own data shows whether it fits. Give yourself a week and do these things:

1. Load 10 to 20 real employees, ideally from two different offices.
2. Post one real job and push a few candidates from applied to interview to offer.
3. Have a manager approve a real leave request from their own login. Watch where they get stuck.
4. Import one month of attendance and check that working days match what you would have calculated.
5. Run a dummy payroll for three people and compare the payslips with last month's.
6. Try to delete or export your data. You should be able to leave as easily as you joined.

The checklist

Copy this into your notes before your next vendor call.

• Hiring: careers page, one pipeline per role, source tracking, interview feedback, offer to employee without retyping
• Employee records with role-based access and stored documents
• Leave types, balances, approvals, year-end carry-forward
• Holiday calendar and work week per office and State
• Attendance import and employee correction requests
• Payroll that separates wages from allowances (if you need payroll now)
• Employee self-service and manager approvals
• Separate data per company, audit log, expiring document links
• Clear per-employee price, minimum bill, GST and what counts as an employee
• No-card trial with every module switched on
• Help moving your existing spreadsheet in
• An easy way to export your data if you leave

Where HR-VEND fits

HR-VEND is built by Pinetech ITS in Kerala for Indian teams of roughly 10 to 200 people. Each company gets its own workspace at its own address and a separate database. Its strongest area is hiring: a careers page you embed on your site, every channel in one pipeline, and candidates who carry their record into employment. Leave, holiday calendars per State, attendance and payroll sit in the same workspace. Read how screens work in the user guide, starting with Jobs and Employees.

It will not file your PF or ESI returns for you, and its India payroll rules are still being reviewed by a chartered accountant. If you need a fully managed payroll service today, pair it with your CA.

Frequently asked questions

This article is general information for Indian employers, not legal or tax advice. Labour and tax rules differ by State and change over time, so confirm anything you act on with your CA or labour law consultant.