The Definitive Sri Lankan Payroll Software Comparison & Review for Small Businesses and Payroll Service Providers
With payroll being the lifeblood of a company, it is essential to manage properly to ensure employee satisfaction while remaining compliant and avoiding hefty fines.
With payroll being the lifeblood of a company, it is essential to manage properly to ensure employee satisfaction while remaining compliant and avoiding hefty fines.
Consider the following in understanding the impact of proper payroll. A QuickBooks report revealed that 25% of workers (in a US study) had received a paycheck with errors! Plus, there is a greater chance of salary payments being late in smaller businesses with 20 staff members or less. This can lead to dissatisfied employees, a high turnover rate, unnecessary regulatory fines, and damage to company reputation.
The same applies to and is seen across Sri Lankan companies, and with these issues requiring streamlining and automation of payroll to handle effectively, local small businesses as well as larger corporates are displaying an increasing pattern of payroll software adoption.
Growing Need for Payroll Software to Manage Local Statutory Compliance Challenges + Pay Staff On-Time
Another key reason for this is the rapid changes Sri Lanka is undergoing in employment laws and business regulations, making it more challenging for employers to handle some or all payroll aspects manually. A critical part of any business regardless of size or scale, payroll has become an increasingly complex process, requiring EPF/ETF/APIT statutory payment compliance and paying staff on-time, to ensure employee satisfaction and avoid penalties and the like.
A clear example of this, The Inland Revenue (Amendment) Act No. 10 of 2021 states that APIT tax (Advance Personal Income Tax) would replace the previous PAYE tax, and employers will be required to deduct APIT from payments made to its employees and remit to the Inland Revenue Department.
Equal Pressure on Small Businesses and Payroll Service Providers to Streamline Payroll
With these changes placing added pressure on employers to automate and standardize their processes, the need for HR and payroll software has become a critical one. The need for digital payroll software has become a pressing one for payroll service companies as well, with Chartered Accountancy firms and Management Consultancy firms having to streamline provision of payroll services to clients.
An Industry-First: a Thorough Sri Lankan Payroll Software Comparison
Although there are several payroll software options available in the market both locally-developed and others adopted from the international market, there is a general lack of comprehensive online sources comparing or reviewing Sri Lankan payroll software.
Therefore, in this article, we look to provide a helpful, unbiased account of all the areas that will be important in deciding which payroll software best fits your organization’s payroll needs. We start with a brief introduction of the seven payroll products that will be compared in this article — MiHCM, Humanised, Cemex HRM, Accsoft Payroll, PeoplesHR, BetterHR and Gallery HR — and a quick exploration of their ideal users, implementation approach, current pricing in LKR, and the customer service each vendor offers. Finally, the features of each payroll software are compared against each other. This article was last refreshed in 2026 to add BetterHR and Gallery HR — two newer entrants now actively competing in the Sri Lankan SME market — and to update pricing across the original five vendors.
MiHCM
MiHCM is a proud creation of Microimage HCM, who have several decades of experience developing HR solutions starting from the 90s. MiHCM as we know it presently began its development in 2014 and in 2017 MiHCM Cloud was released. It is hosted on Microsoft Azure cloud.
It is one of the most comprehensive HR systems available in Sri Lanka, also capturing most of the functional payroll requirements we encounter in the local context. They offer two solutions, one aimed for enterprises and one for small businesses. They’re positioned as a total HRIS solution and payroll is one of the key areas they cover.
Humanised
Started in September 2020, Humanised is the brainchild of Beta Launch Pvt Ltd — a trusted software development company not only locally but also across Australian State Governments. A digital payroll solution built specifically for local payroll service companies,
Humanised has been developed through working closely with industry professionals from reputed Chartered Accountancy and Management Consultancy firms over more than five years, in understanding their payroll service process, pain points, and desired state, to better match their exact needs.
Built to accommodate most standard payroll service workflows unique to Sri Lankan CA firms in a simple, streamlined manner, Humanised’s main objective is to help payroll service companies optimize and grow their payroll business through automation plus payroll-specific marketing support. Humanised also incorporates a range of people plus leave management functionality, parallelly positioning it as a comprehensive HR solution for small businesses.
Cemex HRM
Incorporated in February 2014, as a subsidiary of their parent company Cenmetrix (Pvt) Ltd, Cemex HRM has been in the market for over a decade. It is a cloud-based (Microsoft Azure) HRIS solution available in several modules that allows users to pay only for the modules required.
Cemex HRM particularly caters to internal HRM requirements of SMEs and large enterprises. Their payroll module is one that you can purchase stand-alone or integrated with their other modules.
Accsoft Payroll
Accsoft Solutions (Pvt) Ltd. was founded in 1998 with a vision to provide overall accounting solutions for small and medium sized enterprises locally. Accsoft Payroll is one among their full solution set. Originally a desktop-installed product, Accsoft now offers a cloud-supported deployment alongside the legacy desktop option. You can choose to use Accsoft by itself or integrate it with one or few of their other products to suit your needs.
Peoples HR
In operation for over 20 years, Peoples HR is a cloud-based Human Resource Information System (HRIS) developed by hSenid Business Solutions. It is a reputed product internationally and currently possesses the ability to offer localized solutions in over 40 countries, establishing a presence in India, Australia, Kenya, Bangladesh, and the like.
Peoples HR recognises the importance of access to data in decision-making and helps remove the burden of monotonous processes. PeoplesHR is most commonly used as a total HRIS, however, payroll is one of the many features and functionalities that it offers
- One-time fee – USD 14,650
- Customization – USD 3000
- Monthly subscription minimum – USD 178.50
- Annual subscription – USD 2448
(Monthly subscription fee expected within the 1st week of the month while a 3-month advance will be incurred upon confirmation)
Pricing is only for 5 payroll configurations, and any additional payroll processes can be configured for USD 1000 each.
Accessibility
Cloud based, Remotely accessible
Training
6 days online training included, generally no visits to customer site
Support
hSenid has a mature and dedicated support team who are trained on the HRMS
BetterHR
BetterHR is a regional HR and payroll SaaS built by Better Technologies Pte Ltd, a Myanmar-origin product team incorporated in Singapore. The company opened a Colombo office in April 2022 and now markets actively into Sri Lanka alongside its existing Myanmar customer base. BetterHR positions itself on aggressive per-employee pricing, an AI-agent product narrative, and multi-country payroll coverage.
BetterHR’s payroll module covers EPF, ETF and APIT for Sri Lanka, but its public documentation does not currently highlight BOI compliance, stamp duty, or USD-pegged salary support — capabilities that matter to Sri Lankan exporters, IT services firms billing in USD, and the BOI-registered employer base. See the dedicated Humanised vs BetterHR comparison for a deeper head-to-head.
Accessibility
Cloud hosted, accessible via web and a mobile app (iOS + Android, ~4.0/5 on both stores with recurring complaints about crashes and GPS permission bugs across 2021–2024 user reviews)
Training
Online onboarding; Colombo-based customer success since the April 2022 office opening
Support
Standard email and in-app support; SL-specific support depth and named SLA commitments are not publicly documented on the product site
Gallery HR
Gallery HR is the HR and payroll SaaS from Soft Gallery (Pvt) Ltd, a Sri Lankan company founded in 2020 that has raised roughly USD 214,000 in Series A funding and now employs around 40 staff. The product is positioned as a cloud-native, bundled HR suite covering core HR, payroll, time and attendance, leave, and recruitment — aimed at Sri Lankan SMEs and mid-market companies.
Gallery HR’s market presence shows a credible logo wall but limited third-party validation: at the time of this refresh, the product has no published reviews on Capterra, G2 or Trustpilot, and the company’s /pricing/ URL returns a 404 — pricing is shared on request. Biometric integration is documented only for Hikvision; commonly deployed SL devices (ZKTeco, Suprema, ESSL, Anviz, Realtime) are not publicly listed as supported. See the dedicated Humanised vs Gallery HR comparison for a deeper head-to-head.
/pricing/ page returns 404). Request a quote for an exact figure. Accessibility
Cloud hosted, accessible via web and a mobile employee app
Training
Online onboarding plus on-site training within greater Colombo limits; specific training-hours tier not publicly documented
Support
Standard email and in-app support; no published SLA on the product site
Feature Comparison
Each business has a unique set of requirements when it comes to HR and payroll features. One business might need the basic functionalities of processing payroll along with people management ability, while another business requires an all-encompassing HRIS. Therefore, the right investment in software for each organization will vary. In order to help you compare some of the best payroll software options in the local market in terms of features, we have collated and neatly summarized our findings into a table. Providing a convenient overview, the features offered by each of these products can be generally categorized into four areas: Payroll Management, Time /Attendance and Leave Management, People Management and Others.
Having presented a brief overview of seven Sri Lankan HR and payroll software solutions plus a comparison of their features, we are confident there is sufficient information here for your team to shortlist one or two providers worth a closer look.
If you want a deeper head-to-head on a specific competitor, see Humanised vs PeoplesHR, Humanised vs MiHCM, Humanised vs BetterHR, or Humanised vs Gallery HR — each goes deeper on pricing scenarios at 15, 30, 50 and 100 employees, Sri Lanka compliance row by row, and the real customer reviews each vendor has on Capterra, G2 and the app stores. This comparison was assembled from each vendor’s official product website, Capterra and G2 reviews, ITQlick estimates, App Store and Google Play ratings, and Humanised’s own ongoing competitor research dossiers (compiled 2026-05). Spot something stale or wrong? Email inquire@gethumanised.com — we refresh this page quarterly.
Disclaimer
All the information on this website/article is published in good faith and for general information purposes only. Although we make strong efforts to make sure our information is accurate, Humanised cannot guarantee that all the information on this website and or blog is always accurate, complete, or up-to-date. Any action you take upon the information you find on this website is strictly at your own risk.
Additional Resources:
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/payroll/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-all-american-payday/
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