Most payroll budgets only account for the software subscription fee and forget the statutory admin charges that come with it. This calculator adds both together so you know the real monthly cost of running payroll for your headcount, separate from what you pay your employees.
This tool is scoped narrowly on purpose: it answers what it costs to run the payroll function itself, not what it costs to employ your people. That means your payroll software or outsourcing fee per employee, the EPF admin charge (0.5% of PF wages, capped at a wage of ₹15,000, an employer-side cost that is easy to miss since it never shows up on an employee’s payslip), and any one-time implementation cost spread across the year. If you want the bigger picture, total employee cost including workspace, tools, and overhead, that is a different question answered by our Workforce Cost Calculator linked below.
Companies that outsource payroll entirely sometimes fold the admin charges into a single vendor invoice, in which case you can leave the EPF checkbox unticked here to avoid double-counting. If you run payroll in-house through software, the admin charge is usually a separate statutory remittance and should stay included.
No. This is the cost of the payroll function, software or outsourcing fees, statutory admin charges, and setup costs, not the CTC you pay your employees. Use our CTC to In-Hand Salary Calculator for individual salary math, or our Workforce Cost Calculator for the fully-loaded cost of your whole team.
0.5% of PF wages (capped at the ₹15,000 statutory wage ceiling) is the standard rate, but exemptions exist for certain establishment types and some state-specific variations apply. Confirm your exact liability with your payroll provider or a compliance consultant before using this figure for statutory filing.
Implementation and onboarding costs for a new payroll system are real and often underestimated when comparing vendors on their headline per-employee fee alone. Spreading it over 12 months gives you a more honest monthly comparison between switching providers and staying put.
If you are deciding between running payroll in-house versus outsourcing, our guide to HR outsourcing covers the cost bands for both models, and our payroll software comparison lists the leading India-focused platforms if you are shopping for one.