Payroll software is judged in March. Everything else is rehearsal. A system that produces clean payslips for eleven months and then falls over at the tax year end has failed at the only job that carries real risk.
We assessed six products against the full statutory set, and then against what they are like to use on the twenty fifth of the month when someone needs their payslip reissued.
The statutory checklist
Every product below handles the core. What separates them is how much you have to know to get the right answer out.
- EMP201 monthly declaration, and whether the figures reconcile to your ledger without adjustment
- EMP501 biannual reconciliation, and how long it takes in practice
- IRP5 and IT3(a) certificates that validate in e@syFile on the first attempt
- UIF declaration file for the Department of Employment and Labour
- SDL where the payroll crosses the threshold
- ETI on the correct sliding scale, with the twenty four month window tracked per employee
- BCEA leave accruing at the statutory rate, with the three year sick leave cycle
- ACB payment file your bank imports without a support call
Our recommendation for most businesses
SimplePay, at around R26 per employee per month excluding VAT with no minimum. It handles every item on the list above without a consultant, it shows its ETI working, and the support desk is in South Africa and understands the question you are asking.
It is a payroll rather than an HR system, so if you want performance reviews and recruitment you are buying a second product. For most businesses that is the right trade.
When to buy something else
If you have hourly or wage staff
PaySoft. Weekly cycles, shift differentials, piece rates and bargaining council agreements are first class features rather than workarounds. It looks its age and the businesses that use it do not care, because it gets a factory payroll right.
If you operate in more than one African country
PaySpace. Statutory rules maintained across more than forty countries, with payroll and HR sharing one employee record. It is an enterprise purchase with an implementation project attached, and below roughly two hundred employees it is difficult to justify.
If you already run Sage Accounting
Sage Business Cloud Payroll, at around R30 per employee per month. The compliance engine is inherited from thirty years of getting South African payroll right, and it posts straight into your ledger with no export step. Our reviewers consistently find the interface less clear than SimplePay, particularly the ETI screens, so trial both with your own data.
If your payroll administrator already knows Pastel
Sage Pastel Payroll. Complete statutory coverage, runs locally so month end survives a power cut, and there are more trained operators for it than for anything else. Watch the licensing bands, because crossing an employee count boundary produces a step change in cost that catches people out.
The ETI mistake we see most often
Employers claiming ETI for employees who no longer qualify, usually because the twenty four month window expired and nobody was tracking it per employee. On audit that becomes a repayment plus interest. Ask any system you are evaluating to show you the ETI working per employee, per month, with the window remaining. If it cannot, that is a real risk rather than a missing convenience.
Before you switch providers
Switch at the start of a tax year, in March, or at the very least at the start of a reconciliation period. Mid year migrations mean two systems producing one IRP5, and reconstructing year to date figures accurately is slow and error prone. Run parallel for one period. It costs a day and it has saved every employer who has done it.