You’ve likely recently launched a new company, or you’re looking for the best HR and payroll software for startups in 2023.
Payroll and HR software is definitely going through a revolution, with many new companies offering their services. This is likely making it harder for founders to sift the good and useful HR tools, from the bad HR software systems.
This is who we wrote this guide for - for busy founders looking to find the HR and payroll software that will work hard for them, saving them time and money.
Below is our recommended list of best payroll software for small business and startup hr software that will have a positive impact on your company and team, in terms of time saved, cost effectiveness and employee experience.
Onfolk
Best combined HR and payroll tool
Paying yourself and your team is one of the inevitable tasks you’ll need to get done every month as a business owner. This involves other tasks too: keeping your employee documents safely stored, keeping an employee log of their salaries, addresses etc, tracking time-off, and more. Onfolk is a payroll company software that offers HR software with payroll integrated to it in order to minimise the amount of admin involved with paying your team and managing their data.
Think effective payroll automation, allowing to run payroll in the UK in a matter of minutes. It is also an official HMRC payroll software, meaning all HMRC reporting is done automatically for you every month.
✅ 90% automated payroll every month
✅ HRIS synced with payroll - specialised in small business payroll software
✅ Time off management and annual leave calculations included
✅ Automated onboarding and offboarding
✅ Pensions fully integrated with Nest, Smart Pensions and more
✅ Integrations with accounting softwares such as Xero and Quickbooks
✅ People insights, custom reports and org charts come built in
“Payroll has never been a concern since day one with Onfolk. They take care of everything for you, so you can focus on the important things.” Valerio Magliulo, CEO, Abatable
Pricing
£8 per employee per month:
- Pay monthly, cancel anytime
- Inclusive of all features
- No added fees
Xero
Best accounting software with the most integrations
Xero is a well established accounting software with a global presence. The biggest advantage to this is that the software integrates with many other providers (including Onfolk for payroll). This is very beneficial, as bookkeeping will likely involve extracting data from multiple sources for the purpose of your yearly bookkeeping - the more integrations you can use, the less manual work you’ll need to do. Most accountants will be very familiar with Xero which will facilitate your bookkeeping process too.
✅ Track and pay bills
✅ VAT calculations and returns sent online securely to HMRC
✅ Claim expenses, track and manage your employee spend
✅ Connect your bank to Xero and set up bank feeds, so transactions flow straight into Xero.
Pricing
Pricing for Xero starts at £5.60 per month. They also have an offer where you can get 60% off Xero's Starter plan for 6 months (link here).
Penfold
Best modern pensions provider
Penfold is a newer pension provider with a great focus on educating its users on how pensions work and why they matter. They’ve already won awards for their products and boast a 4.4 rating on Trustpilot. Users can expect clear, uncomplicated, and jargon free language throughout the platform, as well as an employee-facing app for easy access to their savings pot. Penfold are also one of the few pension providers to offer a Sharia pension plan.
Onfolk integrates with Penfold, as well as other pension providers.
✅ Award-winning pension provider that demystifies pensions for employees
✅ Simple selection of diversified pension plans backed by BlackRock and HSBC funds that can match employee's goals and help grow wealth.
✅ 5-star rated pension app which provides employee with a clear view of how much they’ve got and how their saving is going
✅ Penfold provides comprehensive onboarding sessions, webinars where no amount of questions are too many.
Pricing
Completely free for employers. One simple fee. No hidden charges.
Lifetime, Standard and Sustainable plans: Charge 0.75% for savings up to £100k, and 0.4% on any amount over £100k.
Sharia plan: Charges 0.88% for savings up to £100k, and 0.53% on any amount over £100k.
Happl
Best company benefits platform for companies up to 200 people
Happl is a modern employee benefits and engagement platform that manages compliance & tax - to help founders and people teams save time & money on admin tasks. Happl’s main purpose is to reduce the admin burden companies may experience with offering their team great benefits. But also offer an all-in-one benefits platform that caters to a wide range of employee needs and interests.
✅ All-in-one benefits platform from pension to healthcare, as well as flexible benefits through our curated marketplace.
✅ The Happl spend card allows employees to use their company benefits as well as claim expenses back, for better flexibility
✅ Happl source the best price and plan for each benefit, saving employers money and time.
✅ Their Insights feature allows employers to track benefit uptake across the company
Pricing
£4 per person / month on their Premium plan, ideal for start-ups and scale-ups with 5 or more employees.
Otta
Best recruiting platform for tech and startup roles
Otta is a poorly kept secret within the tech and startup industry, for attracting, sourcing and recruiting great people. Used by both startups and tech scaleups, both companies and candidates have to create an in-depth profile that helps matching both together effectively.
According to Otta, Applications from Otta are twice as likely to lead to an interview. And across multiple seniority levels too - 48% of hires made on Otta are for expert, leadership or technical roles, including software engineering, data, product and design.
Their salary benchmark is widely used in the tech industry.
✅ Although not an ATS, the platform allows you to post jobs, receive candidate applications, and source candidates
✅ Build your employer brand in your company profile, by ****highlighting your mission, values, culture and more.
✅ Otta syncs with all major ATS software providers and with another 40+ partners
Pricing
Upon request only.
Notion
Best documentation tool for team management, recruitment and more
Used and loved by many startups and tech scaleups, it’s hard not to mention Notion as an indispensable software tool for small companies in 2023. Notion is a documentation and team collaboration tool that is incredibly versatile in its uses and scales easily with your company. You can use one of their many templates to set and track hiring processes, organise team retros, document your people policies, and so much more.
✅ Create your own company Wiki by centralising all internal knowledge in Notion
✅ Very easy to use, beautiful and clean design
✅ All company documents are stored in one place, and can be searched or commented it easily
✅ Many, many templates for different teams: product, design, ops, recruitment, engineering
Pricing
Starts at $8 per user / month, billed annually.
However they also do offer a discount for startups, where startups can apply to get up to 6 months free.
You’ve likely recently launched a new company, or you’re looking for the best HR and payroll software for startups in 2023.
Payroll and HR software is definitely going through a revolution, with many new companies offering their services. This is likely making it harder for founders to sift the good and useful HR tools, from the bad HR software systems.
This is who we wrote this guide for - for busy founders looking to find the HR and payroll software that will work hard for them, saving them time and money.
Below is our recommended list of best payroll software for small business and startup hr software that will have a positive impact on your company and team, in terms of time saved, cost effectiveness and employee experience.
Onfolk
Best combined HR and payroll tool
Paying yourself and your team is one of the inevitable tasks you’ll need to get done every month as a business owner. This involves other tasks too: keeping your employee documents safely stored, keeping an employee log of their salaries, addresses etc, tracking time-off, and more. Onfolk is a payroll company software that offers HR software with payroll integrated to it in order to minimise the amount of admin involved with paying your team and managing their data.
Think effective payroll automation, allowing to run payroll in the UK in a matter of minutes. It is also an official HMRC payroll software, meaning all HMRC reporting is done automatically for you every month.
✅ 90% automated payroll every month
✅ HRIS synced with payroll - specialised in small business payroll software
✅ Time off management and annual leave calculations included
✅ Automated onboarding and offboarding
✅ Pensions fully integrated with Nest, Smart Pensions and more
✅ Integrations with accounting softwares such as Xero and Quickbooks
✅ People insights, custom reports and org charts come built in
“Payroll has never been a concern since day one with Onfolk. They take care of everything for you, so you can focus on the important things.” Valerio Magliulo, CEO, Abatable
Pricing
£8 per employee per month:
- Pay monthly, cancel anytime
- Inclusive of all features
- No added fees
Xero
Best accounting software with the most integrations
Xero is a well established accounting software with a global presence. The biggest advantage to this is that the software integrates with many other providers (including Onfolk for payroll). This is very beneficial, as bookkeeping will likely involve extracting data from multiple sources for the purpose of your yearly bookkeeping - the more integrations you can use, the less manual work you’ll need to do. Most accountants will be very familiar with Xero which will facilitate your bookkeeping process too.
✅ Track and pay bills
✅ VAT calculations and returns sent online securely to HMRC
✅ Claim expenses, track and manage your employee spend
✅ Connect your bank to Xero and set up bank feeds, so transactions flow straight into Xero.
Pricing
Pricing for Xero starts at £5.60 per month. They also have an offer where you can get 60% off Xero's Starter plan for 6 months (link here).
Penfold
Best modern pensions provider
Penfold is a newer pension provider with a great focus on educating its users on how pensions work and why they matter. They’ve already won awards for their products and boast a 4.4 rating on Trustpilot. Users can expect clear, uncomplicated, and jargon free language throughout the platform, as well as an employee-facing app for easy access to their savings pot. Penfold are also one of the few pension providers to offer a Sharia pension plan.
Onfolk integrates with Penfold, as well as other pension providers.
✅ Award-winning pension provider that demystifies pensions for employees
✅ Simple selection of diversified pension plans backed by BlackRock and HSBC funds that can match employee's goals and help grow wealth.
✅ 5-star rated pension app which provides employee with a clear view of how much they’ve got and how their saving is going
✅ Penfold provides comprehensive onboarding sessions, webinars where no amount of questions are too many.
Pricing
Completely free for employers. One simple fee. No hidden charges.
Lifetime, Standard and Sustainable plans: Charge 0.75% for savings up to £100k, and 0.4% on any amount over £100k.
Sharia plan: Charges 0.88% for savings up to £100k, and 0.53% on any amount over £100k.
Happl
Best company benefits platform for companies up to 200 people
Happl is a modern employee benefits and engagement platform that manages compliance & tax - to help founders and people teams save time & money on admin tasks. Happl’s main purpose is to reduce the admin burden companies may experience with offering their team great benefits. But also offer an all-in-one benefits platform that caters to a wide range of employee needs and interests.
✅ All-in-one benefits platform from pension to healthcare, as well as flexible benefits through our curated marketplace.
✅ The Happl spend card allows employees to use their company benefits as well as claim expenses back, for better flexibility
✅ Happl source the best price and plan for each benefit, saving employers money and time.
✅ Their Insights feature allows employers to track benefit uptake across the company
Pricing
£4 per person / month on their Premium plan, ideal for start-ups and scale-ups with 5 or more employees.
Otta
Best recruiting platform for tech and startup roles
Otta is a poorly kept secret within the tech and startup industry, for attracting, sourcing and recruiting great people. Used by both startups and tech scaleups, both companies and candidates have to create an in-depth profile that helps matching both together effectively.
According to Otta, Applications from Otta are twice as likely to lead to an interview. And across multiple seniority levels too - 48% of hires made on Otta are for expert, leadership or technical roles, including software engineering, data, product and design.
Their salary benchmark is widely used in the tech industry.
✅ Although not an ATS, the platform allows you to post jobs, receive candidate applications, and source candidates
✅ Build your employer brand in your company profile, by ****highlighting your mission, values, culture and more.
✅ Otta syncs with all major ATS software providers and with another 40+ partners
Pricing
Upon request only.
Notion
Best documentation tool for team management, recruitment and more
Used and loved by many startups and tech scaleups, it’s hard not to mention Notion as an indispensable software tool for small companies in 2023. Notion is a documentation and team collaboration tool that is incredibly versatile in its uses and scales easily with your company. You can use one of their many templates to set and track hiring processes, organise team retros, document your people policies, and so much more.
✅ Create your own company Wiki by centralising all internal knowledge in Notion
✅ Very easy to use, beautiful and clean design
✅ All company documents are stored in one place, and can be searched or commented it easily
✅ Many, many templates for different teams: product, design, ops, recruitment, engineering
Pricing
Starts at $8 per user / month, billed annually.
However they also do offer a discount for startups, where startups can apply to get up to 6 months free.
