greytHR
4.4 (1569)The SME Payroll Standard-Bearer
greytHR, built by Greytip Software out of Bengaluru, has become something close to a default answer for Indian small and mid-sized businesses that need payroll done correctly without hiring a compliance team. The platform has been in market since the late 1990s and now serves tens of thousands of employers across India and the Gulf, processing payroll for millions of employees each month. That longevity matters in this category: statutory rules in India change constantly, and vendors who have survived multiple PF rate revisions, the ESI wage ceiling changes, the professional tax patchwork across states, and the ongoing new versus old tax regime elections tend to have the deepest rule libraries.
What distinguishes greytHR is depth of Indian statutory coverage delivered through a self-service product rather than a consulting engagement. The system handles Provident Fund with UAN and ECR file generation, ESI returns, Professional Tax at the state level, Labour Welfare Fund, gratuity accrual, TDS computation with Form 16 and Form 24Q generation, and full income tax declaration and proof-of-investment workflows for employees. Its employee self-service portal and mobile app are genuinely used by frontline staff, which reduces the payroll team's query load considerably during declaration season.
The natural buyer is an organisation between roughly 20 and 1,000 employees that wants software plus optional managed payroll rather than a full outsourcing relationship. Larger enterprises with complex multi-entity structures, heavy union agreements, or global consolidation requirements may find the platform less accommodating. Pricing is transparent and modular, and the ecosystem of integrations with attendance devices, Tally, Zoho, and common accounting stacks is well developed. Support is India-based and reasonably responsive, though ticket resolution times can stretch during month-end and year-end peaks.
Key Features:
- Automated PF, ESI, PT and LWF computation with statutory return file generation
- Full TDS engine with Form 16, Form 24Q and investment proof verification workflow
- Employee self-service portal and mobile app for payslips, declarations and reimbursements
- Configurable leave and attendance module with biometric device integration
- Multi-state professional tax rules and shops and establishments compliance tracking
- Open API and prebuilt integrations with Tally, Zoho Books and major accounting systems
Why I Picked greytHR:
I included greytHR because it is the platform I see most often when Indian SMEs describe payroll as a solved problem rather than a monthly fire drill. Its statutory rule library is genuinely deep for the price point, and the self-service adoption rate among employees meaningfully reduces HR workload. It is the sensible default I would shortlist for almost any company under a thousand employees operating solely in India.