Payroll That Does Not Start With a Spreadsheet
Attendance, leave, overtime and statutory deductions resolve into one salary calculation — with the derivation visible, so a disputed payslip is a question about a rule rather than an argument about a number.
Most payroll problems are not calculation problems. The arithmetic of gross-to-net is the easy part, and almost every product gets it right. What goes wrong is everything upstream: attendance that arrives as a spreadsheet someone typed by hand, leave balances kept in a different system, a mid-month joiner nobody flagged, an overtime claim approved over WhatsApp, and a statutory deduction whose rules were configured once and never revisited. By the time those inputs reach the payroll engine the errors are already baked in, and the engine faithfully computes a wrong answer. AttendancePay is built the other way round. Attendance, leave, shifts and overtime are recorded in the same system that runs payroll, so payable days are derived rather than transcribed. Statutory deductions — Provident Fund, ESI, state-wise Professional Tax, Labour Welfare Fund and TDS under both tax regimes — are computed from that same salary record. And every figure carries its derivation, so when someone disputes a payslip you can show which rule produced which number instead of recounting a month by hand.
Why payroll takes a week when it should take an hour
The inputs arrive as spreadsheets
Attendance is exported from one system, leave from another, overtime from a supervisor's notebook. Each hand-off is a chance to transpose a number, and none of them leave an audit trail. The payroll team spends most of the cycle reconciling inputs rather than running payroll.
Nobody can explain a payable-days figure
Payroll says 24.5 days, the employee counted 26, and the attendance report supports a third number. Without a visible derivation the disagreement is settled by seniority rather than by evidence, and the same argument recurs next month with a different employee.
Statutory rules are configured once and go stale
Professional tax slabs change by state notification. Tax slabs change at every Budget. A configuration that was right when it was set up produces a plausible-looking number every month long after it stopped being correct, and nobody checks a deduction of a few hundred rupees.
Multi-state payroll is run on one state's rules
A company with branches in three states is liable under three separate professional tax regimes. Most payroll systems hold one state — the company's — and apply it to everyone, simultaneously under-collecting in one state and over-deducting from employees in another.
Corrections rewrite history
An attendance record is edited after payroll has run, and the payslip no longer matches the attendance report. Without a lock and a defined cut-off, the two disagree permanently and neither is wrong.
How payroll management works
- 1
Attendance and leave resolve into payable days
Shifts, grace periods, half-day thresholds, week-off and holiday treatment, sandwich rules and approved leave are evaluated per employee per day against your configured policy. The output is a payable-days figure with a per-day derivation you can open.
- 2
The salary structure is applied
Earnings and deductions are computed from the employee's current salary record — components, per-employee overrides, and effective-dated revisions — so a mid-month increment applies from the day it takes effect rather than to the whole month.
- 3
Statutory deductions are computed on the resulting figures
PF, ESI, Professional Tax, LWF and TDS are derived from earned salary, with the employee's work state driving state-specific levies rather than the company's registered address.
- 4
The run is previewed, reviewed and locked
Exceptions surface before the run rather than during it — missing punches, employees with no salary record, unapproved regularizations. Once approved, the period locks so later attendance edits cannot silently change a payslip that has already been issued.
- 5
Payslips and registers are produced from the same figures
Payslips, the payroll register, statutory registers and the PF ECR upload file all read the numbers payroll computed, rather than recalculating them independently and drifting.
What you get
Payable days derived, not typed
Attendance, leave, holidays, week-offs and overtime feed the calculation directly, with the per-day derivation visible on the payroll entry.
Statutory deductions for India
Provident Fund with the ₹15,000 wage ceiling and a correct EPS split, ESI at 0.75% / 3.25% with the ₹21,000 eligibility ceiling, state-wise Professional Tax, and Labour Welfare Fund with per-state contribution months.
TDS under both regimes
Monthly TDS computed under the old and new regimes from each employee's declaration, with HRA exemption, Chapter VI-A deductions, the section 87A rebate, and surcharge with marginal relief. Slabs are versioned by financial year.
Effective-dated salary revisions
Increments, promotions and structure changes carry an effective date, so a revision applies from the correct day and history stays intact rather than being overwritten.
Multi-branch and multi-state
Professional tax and Labour Welfare Fund resolve from the employee's work state, falling back to their assigned branch — so a company operating across states applies the right levy per person without maintaining a spreadsheet of exceptions.
One-time earnings and deductions
Bonuses, arrears, reimbursements and recoveries can be added per employee for a single cycle, with categories and an optional approval step, and imported in bulk from CSV.
Salary hold
Individual employees can be held out of a payroll run — pending clearance, disputed attendance, an exit in progress — with the hold and its reason recorded, rather than deleting them from the run and remembering to add them back.
Exports and registers
Payroll register, statutory registers, professional tax register, bank transfer file and PF ECR in EPFO's upload format.
Who this is for
See payroll management on your own data
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Frequently asked questions
Does payroll actually use our attendance data, or do we still upload a sheet?⌄
It uses the attendance recorded in AttendancePay directly. Punches, approved leave, holidays, week-offs, regularizations and overtime are evaluated against your attendance policy to produce payable days, and the per-day derivation is visible on the payroll entry. There is no export-and-re-import step, which is where most payroll errors originate.
Which statutory deductions are calculated automatically?⌄
Provident Fund (employee EPF, employer EPF and EPS with the statutory ₹15,000 ceiling and a configurable wage base), ESI (0.75% employee / 3.25% employer with the ₹21,000 eligibility ceiling and ESIC's round-up rule), Professional Tax across 30 states and union territories including February instalment rules, Labour Welfare Fund with per-state contribution months and ceilings, and TDS under both the old and new regimes.
Can you generate Form 16?⌄
No, and neither can any other payroll product — Form 16 Part A is downloaded from the government TRACES portal after Form 24Q has been filed. What we produce is the complete annual TDS statement your CA needs in order to file 24Q: per-employee PAN, gross and taxable salary paid, approved deductions, the quarterly TDS split and total TDS deducted. It reuses the figures payroll already computed rather than recalculating them, so Form 16 can be issued from TRACES without rebuilding the numbers by hand. Any vendor claiming to generate Form 16 locally is describing something other than the statutory certificate.
We have employees in several states. Is professional tax handled per employee?⌄
Yes. Professional tax is levied by the state where the employee works, not where the company is registered, so the state is resolved from the employee's work state and falls back to the state on their assigned branch. Slabs, exempt thresholds and the higher final instalment that several states levy in February are configured per state.
What happens if attendance is corrected after payroll has run?⌄
A payroll period can be locked once it is approved, so a later attendance edit cannot silently change an issued payslip. Corrections discovered after the lock are carried into the following cycle as an adjustment rather than rewriting history, which is what keeps the payroll register and the attendance report reconcilable.
Can we run payroll for hourly and monthly employees together?⌄
Yes. Salary type is set per employee, so hourly staff are paid from recorded hours at their configured rate with overtime rules applied, while monthly salaried employees are paid on payable days, in the same run.
Does it handle mid-month joiners, leavers and increments?⌄
Yes. Pro-rating runs from the employee's date of joining and last working day, so days before joining are not paid and are not counted as absence. Salary revisions are effective-dated, so an increment applies from the day it takes effect rather than to the entire month.