Payroll software for software houses: what to check

A software house’s payroll looks simple from outside: forty to two hundred salaried people, one pay day a month, no shifts and no piece rates. From inside it is one of the busier payrolls in Pakistan. People join every month, raises land in the middle of the tax year, half the team has a salary advance running, and the engineers who leave do so on a month’s notice with leave, a loan balance and a tax certificate to settle. A system that only multiplies a salary by a tax slab handles none of that.

This guide sets out what a software house should test a payroll system against, and then how five options sold in Pakistan describe themselves on their own pages, including ours. It is about payroll. For hiring, attendance and the rest of HR, our shortlist of HR software in Pakistan covers the wider field.

What a software house’s payroll has to handle

Six things happen every month in a growing tech company that a basic salary calculator gets wrong:

• Raises with arrears. Increments are approved in April and paid from January, or agreed after the review cycle closed. The system has to pay the difference for months already run, and the tax on it, without anyone rebuilding old salary sheets.
• Mid-year joiners and bonuses. Income tax on salary is withheld on a projection of the whole tax year, not a fixed twelfth, so a July joiner, a December raise and a project bonus each change the deduction from that month on. Our explainer on annualised salary tax withholding shows the arithmetic.
• Loans and salary advances. Laptops, deposits and emergencies turn into advances that are recovered over several months. Recovery has to happen on its own, stop when the balance is zero, and survive a leaver.
• Reimbursement claims. Internet, travel to a client, certifications. Each needs a limit, and the limit is often set by grade, not person by person.
• Leavers. Attrition in tech means a final settlement most months: salary to the last day, unused leave, notice, the loan balance and the tax. Our final settlement calculator shows the lines.
• Different kinds of contract. Interns, contractors and part-timers sit beside permanent staff, and statutory schemes such as EOBI apply to some of them and not to others.

Underneath all six is attendance. A salary sheet built from a spreadsheet of who was on leave last month is where most payroll errors start, which is the argument of moving payroll off spreadsheets.

The questions to ask any vendor

Run these against a demo with your own last month’s data, not the vendor’s sample company. Each one is a month you will actually have.

1. A raise approved today, effective three months ago: does the system compute the arrears and the tax on them, and show where the figure came from?
2. A joiner on the 18th, a resignation on the 9th: are part months worked out from attendance, or typed in?
3. An advance of two months’ salary over ten instalments: is recovery automatic, and what happens to the balance at a final settlement?
4. Where do this year’s tax slabs come from, and who changes them after the June budget: you, or the vendor?
5. Is EOBI charged only to the people it applies to, with interns and contractors left out?
6. Can you see tax deducted against tax deposited, month by month, and give each employee a certificate for their return?
7. Can an employee see their own payslips and certificate without asking HR?

Five options, from their own pages

Every claim below is from the vendor’s own website, read on 2 October 2026. None of the four other vendors was tested hands-on, so treat this as a shortlist to demo, not a verdict.

Orbiz: Ledgr, fed by AMS and HRMS

Ledgr is the payroll tool in Orbiz. It builds each pay period’s timesheets from attendance and leave already recorded in AMS, and flags the people the month needs a decision on: someone who left mid-period, leave without pay, unexplained absences, or attendance that disagrees with tracked time. A salary revision is approved by a reviewer and, once applied, puts the new gross on the pay profile and computes arrears for every period already paid. Loans carry an instalment schedule that is recovered from payroll; claims take a limit from the employee’s grade, a fixed amount or an allowance on their profile.

Tax is a slab table with an annual-projection method, and statutory schemes such as EOBI are a rate on each side with a floor and a cap, applied by pay group and employment type, so an intern is left out by setting rather than by memory. These are settings your finance team enters and updates after each budget; this year’s figures are on our Pakistan payroll guide. Ledgr keeps a register of tax deposited against tax deducted, period by period, issues annual tax certificates, and gives each employee their payslips and certificate in self-service. The employee record itself lives in HRMS, so a hire is not typed in twice.

• Suits: software houses that want payroll, attendance and the employee record on one system, with projects and project cost in the same place.
• Honest limits: no general ledger, invoicing or benefits administration; no bank transfer file — a run is marked paid with its bank reference; tax slabs and EOBI are settings, not a preset the vendor updates for you; the mobile app is not out yet.

PayPeople

PayPeople describes itself as cloud payroll software for Pakistan. Its payroll page says the system applies the latest FBR income tax slabs and EOBI, accounts for exemptions and rebates, handles one-time bonuses, leave deductions and mid-month salary revisions, and sends payslips through its mobile app, SMS, email or bulk printing. Its plans are priced in PKR, with each one behind a contact-sales button.

WebHR

WebHR is the only option here with a price on the page: from $2 per employee per month, varying with the modules chosen. Its Pakistan page says payroll covers income tax under the Income Tax Ordinance, EOBI and provincial social security, and its payroll page describes calculations from attendance, hours, bonuses and overtime, payslips per cycle and direct deposit.

SmartHCM

SmartHCM’s payroll page is the most explicit about loans: loan types such as salary advances, automatic deduction from salary and loan reporting, alongside slab-based tax with one-time and in-year adjustments and multi-currency support. It has a separate final settlement module and an employee self-service portal, and its home page mentions a mobile app for salary details and leave balances. No price is published.

FlowHCM

FlowHCM lists tax slabs with a complete tax report in the government format, real-time payslips with deductions based on attendance, and an employee self-service area to view payslips. Its quote includes the licence, implementation and support, which suits a buyer who wants the vendor to set it up.

Where Orbiz is not the answer

If you need your payroll vendor to own the tax tables and update them the day the budget passes, choose one that says so on its page; in Ledgr that is a setting your team changes. If you want payslips on a phone app today, PayPeople and SmartHCM describe one. If you only need payroll and already run attendance and HR elsewhere, a payroll-only product may be the simpler buy. Orbiz earns its place when the attendance, the people record, the projects and the payroll are meant to be one system — when a raise approved in HRMS, the leave recorded in AMS and the hours behind project cost in Trackline are the same facts the salary sheet uses.

For the wider case for software and IT firms — hiring, delivery, time and payroll on one login — see Orbiz for software and IT services. To check a single salary first, the Pakistan salary tax calculator works out the monthly deduction for every tax year since 2022-23.

Sources

Vendor pages read on 2 October 2026: PayPeople’s payroll and pricing pages, WebHR’s payroll, pricing and Pakistan pages, SmartHCM’s home, payroll and final settlement pages, and FlowHCM’s payroll and pricing pages. Saved copies are kept with our evidence for this post. Prices and features change; check the vendor’s page before you buy.