Most Indian companies run HR on three things: a biometric machine, an Excel sheet and WhatsApp. It works at 15 employees. Somewhere between 40 and 80 employees it starts costing more than it saves. Here is how to tell, and what to do about it.
Seven signs you have outgrown spreadsheets
- Salary day takes two or more days of one person's time.
- You have had a PF, ESI or TDS error or a late challan in the last year.
- Leave balances are disputed because the sheet and the manager's memory disagree.
- Attendance is fixed manually at the end of the month.
- Employees ask HR for payslips, salary certificates and Form 16 by WhatsApp.
- Appraisals happen late because nobody has the data in one place.
- You have more than one branch, shift or pay structure.
What an HRMS changes
Attendance flows in from biometric devices or a GPS mobile app. Leave requests are approved on the phone against live balances. Payroll runs in minutes with PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS calculated and challans ready. Employees download payslips, letters and Form 16 themselves. Managers see headcount, attrition and overtime without asking anyone. Onboarding and exit become checklists instead of email chains.
What it costs
Subscription HRMS products charge per employee per month, which is simple to start and expensive at scale. A customised HRMS like ours starts at Rs 49,999 one-time for a single company and from Rs 2 lakh for multi-branch groups with biometric integration, with a modest annual maintenance plan. Over five years, owning the system is usually cheaper once you cross about 60 employees.
Implementation without disrupting salary day
- Clean the master data first: employee codes, departments, salary structures, bank details.
- Run one payroll cycle in parallel (old sheet and new system) and reconcile to the rupee.
- Switch attendance and leave first, payroll second, appraisals last.
- Train managers on approvals and employees on the self-service app in one short session each.
Mistakes to avoid
Buying on feature count rather than fit with your policies, skipping the parallel run, and choosing software with no local support. Ask for references from companies of your size in your industry, and insist on a demo using your own salary structure, not sample data.