A school in Jaipur has 46 staff: teachers, an office of four, two drivers and the people who keep the building running. Its accountant runs HR and payroll from one Excel workbook with a tab per month. It has worked for nine years. This year the school crossed 20 on the payroll register, PF started to apply, and the workbook grew a column nobody else understands.
None of that is a crisis. It's the point where a spreadsheet stops being the cheap option, and most owners don't notice it until somebody leaves.
Six signs you've outgrown the spreadsheet
1. One person can run payroll, and only one
If she's ill in the first week of the month, salaries are late. Everything else on this list is a version of this one.
2. The attendance register is typed in twice
Once on paper or a fingerprint reader, then again into Excel at month end. Every second copy is a chance to get a day wrong, and a wrong day is somebody's pay.
3. Leave balances are a matter of opinion
Staff ask how many days they have left, and the answer takes a day to find. Or two people have different numbers and both have a sheet to prove it.
4. PF, ESI and professional tax are worked out by hand
Formulas copied from month to month, with the ceiling typed in as a number. They work until a rate changes, or a salary crosses a limit and nobody notices. PF and ESI for a small business lists the limits that matter.
5. A payslip takes a day to produce
A bank asks for a salary certificate for a teacher's home loan, and somebody has to build it from three tabs.
6. An exit takes a week to settle
Leave to encash, a notice shortfall, an advance to recover. Wages are due within two working days of the last day, and the spreadsheet wasn't built to answer in two days.
When HR software for small business teams starts paying for itself
The school's accountant kept a note of her HR hours for one month. Here's what she wrote down:
| Task | Hours a month |
|---|
| Copying the attendance register into the sheet | 9 |
|---|
| Working out leave balances and unpaid days | 5 |
|---|
| Updating the payroll sheet and checking it | 8 |
|---|
| Payslips, salary certificates and questions | 4 |
|---|
| Total | 26 |
|---|
She earns ₹30,000 a month. Priced the way Facto Lite prices an hour for overtime, ₹30,000 over 26 days of 8 hours, that's ₹144 an hour, and 26 hours comes to about ₹3,750 of her month.
₹3,750of her time, every month
₹4,999HR & Payroll, up to 50 users, a month
₹2,499up to 10 users, a month
On time alone, the two are close, and I'd rather say so than stretch it. Software doesn't give back all 26 hours either: someone still approves leave and checks the run. The case for moving is the mistakes the hours don't show, like a pay cut from a typed-in wrong day, or ESI still deducted from somebody who crossed the limit months ago.
Check which band you're really in: Facto Lite counts a user as anybody who signs in. If the school's four office staff sign in and teachers mark attendance on a fingerprint reader, that's ₹2,499 a month, the band for up to 10 users. If all 46 check in on their phones and open their own payslips, it's up to 50 users at ₹4,999, or ₹4,167 a month paid yearly. It's a flat price for the band, not a price per employee.
Moving payroll from Excel without a bad month
- Pick a month to start that isn't March. The year end has enough going on. The start of a quarter is cleaner, because the quarterly TDS return then covers one system.
- Move the people first. Names, joining dates, bank accounts, PAN, UAN and ESI numbers. Most of it is already in your workbook, and it imports.
- Set up salary structures, not salaries. One structure per kind of employee, with Basic set the same way for everybody. CTC to in-hand salary covers how.
- Bring the balances across. Each person's leave balance, and the tax they've paid so far this year, so the rest of the year's TDS is spread correctly. Both import from a sheet too.
- Run one month twice. Once in your sheet and once in the software. Pay from the sheet, compare the two person by person, and don't switch until every difference has a reason.
Step 5 is the one people skip, and the one that matters. When the two disagree, it's usually the sheet that's wrong, and you want to find that out before the first salary goes out from the new system. The monthly routine after that is in how to run payroll for a small business.
HRMS for 50 employees: what to look for
- Attendance and payroll software that share one record. If attendance lives in one product and payroll in another, you're back to copying a register across at month end.
- Indian statutory rules built in. PF on the ceiling or on full Basic, ESI with its contribution periods, professional tax by state, and both tax regimes.
- A price you can predict. Know whether you pay per employee or per band, and what happens to the bill when you hire the 51st person.
- Something staff will open. Payslips and leave balances on their own phone save the accountant the questions.
- Your data out, any time. An export to a spreadsheet you can take elsewhere, so you're never locked in.
When to buy HR software, and when not to
If you have eight people, all salaried, no PF and no leave disputes, a well-kept spreadsheet is fine and I wouldn't change it. The time to buy is when two or three of the signs above are true at once, or just before you cross 20, when PF brings a monthly return with it.
When the real plan sits in a colour-coded spreadsheet that one person maintains, you've already left Tally behind for the part of the business that matters most. The day that person is on leave, planning stops.Jennifer Elisha, Tally vs ERP for Manufacturing: When to Switch
Jennifer wrote that about production plans in factories. Swap the plan for the payroll workbook and it describes the school exactly. If the chat groups and registers go wider than HR in your business, Facto Lite against Excel and WhatsApp goes through tasks and sales as well.
