In many companies with 30 to 150 employees, HR administration still lives in several places. Employee details sit in a spreadsheet owned by HR, payroll is calculated in a separate file owned by finance, and leave requests go to managers over WhatsApp. While the company is small, this more or less works. As headcount grows, small mistakes start happening more often and eat up time.
That is usually when owners start looking for an HR and payroll app. This article covers what to check when you choose one, from employee records, payroll and leave to why your HR data should be connected to finance and projects.
Employee records come first
Every HR process depends on accurate employee records. That means identity details, job title, department, direct manager, start date, contract status, bank account, NPWP tax number and BPJS membership numbers. If this data is wrong or out of date, the error carries over into payslips, tax reports and work assignments.
When you trial an app, notice how easy it is to update employee details, who is allowed to change them, and whether the change history is recorded. Employee data is also personal data under Indonesia's Personal Data Protection Law (UU PDP, Law No. 27 of 2022). Restrict access to sensitive fields such as salary and ID numbers, and make sure the provider explains how it stores and secures your data.
Before moving to a new app, tidy up the spreadsheet you already have. Remove duplicate rows, make date and bank account formats consistent, and check that every active employee has exactly one row. It is tedious work, but clean data at the start saves a lot of time when you run the first payroll in the new system.
Payroll you can trace
Finance teams usually feel the weight of manual payroll the most. Every month they have to make sure base salary, allowances, overtime, deductions, PPh 21 income tax and BPJS contributions are calculated correctly for each person. One shifted formula in a spreadsheet can put dozens of payslips wrong.
A good payroll app lets you trace every number back to where it came from. Ask the provider how pay components are set up, how tax and BPJS calculations are updated when the rules change, and whether payslips can be sent straight to employees. Check too whether payroll results can be posted directly to the books as expenses, so finance does not have to copy the same figures twice.
Leave, permissions and approvals
Leave requests over chat feel convenient, but they are hard to total up. At year end, HR has to rebuild everyone's remaining leave from old conversations, and employees often have no idea how many days they have left.
Look for an app with a clear request and approval flow. The employee submits, the manager approves or declines, and the leave balance updates on its own. For service companies whose people work on client projects, this matters to project managers as well, because they need to know who is unavailable next week.
Why one shared record matters
This is where apps differ the most. Many companies use an HR app from one vendor, accounting software from another, and a separate tool for projects. Each one keeps its own list of employees.
The results are predictable. Someone who resigned is still on the payroll. A new hire has been working for two weeks but cannot be assigned to a project because nobody has entered them yet. A promotion is recorded in HR, but the new allowance never reaches payroll. Every time data has to be typed in again, there is another chance to get it wrong.
When every app reads from the same employee record, a change only has to be made once. A name, role or status updated in HR shows up immediately in payroll and in projects. It is worth thinking about this from the start, because moving data between systems later is far more painful than choosing well at the beginning.
Checklist for choosing an HR and payroll app
Use this list when comparing providers, and involve both HR and finance from the first trial.
- Complete employee records with change history and access restrictions.
- Pay components that can be configured to match your salary structure.
- A clear explanation of how PPh 21 and BPJS are calculated, and who updates them when the rules change.
- A leave and permission flow with manager approval and balances that employees can see.
- A direct link to accounting and project management, or at least an integration that does not require re-entry.
- Data export, so you are not locked in if you ever want to move.
- A trial period long enough to run one test payroll cycle with real data.
A single test payroll cycle usually tells you a lot. Compare the results with your existing calculations and note which parts still have to be done by hand.
Trying Trellis
Trellis is a suite of business apps that run on one company record. Employee data in Hana (HR) is linked directly to payroll in Mint (finance) and to assignments in Branch (projects), with one login for every app. There is a 14-day free trial, and you can read more on the Trellis page.
