The things worth asking before you switch.

Short answers, including the ones that are not in our favour. If something you need to know is missing, ask us and we will add it here.

The short version

It does not guess at your country's rules.

HRStuff lets you state them, shows you its working, and never changes a payslip you have already published. That is what lets it work in one country as well as the next, and it is why most of the answers below are about what you decide rather than about what we decided for you.

Using it

Getting started, and getting through the month.

How do we get our staff list in?

From the spreadsheet you already use. HRStuff shows you what will happen before it changes anything — who will be added, whose details will be updated and which rows need attention — and nothing is written until you confirm it.

Can staff use it on a phone?

Yes. Every page works in a phone browser, including applying for leave and photographing a receipt for a claim. There is no app for anyone to install and none to keep updated.

Can the month run itself?

Payslips can draft themselves on a day you choose and publish themselves on another. Leave and claims approvals can be automated too, up to limits you set. All of it is optional.

Who can see what?

Staff see their own record. Managers see their team's leave and claims, not their pay. HR sees the company. What each person may reach is decided in one place in the software rather than page by page.

Your rules

What a rule can say, and what it cannot undo.

What can a rule test?

Age, residency, country, department, job title, years of service and employment type, among others — as well as the money on the payslip being worked out and the money so far this year. Conditions join with AND or OR.

Does changing a rule change old payslips?

No. A published payslip is frozen, and every rule carries the date it came into force. June's payslip uses June's rules a year later, which is what makes a reprint match the original.

Can one rule charge both sides?

Yes, and that is the point of writing it as one. A single rule can calculate the employee deduction and the employer contribution together, including which amount is rounded first — written as two rules the total comes out different.

Can we see how a figure was reached?

Every payslip amount shows which rule applied and every step in the calculation. If a figure looks wrong, you correct the rule rather than typing over the result.

What we do not do

Said plainly, before you sign up.

We do not file for you

HRStuff works out the figures and produces the payslips. Submitting to your tax authority stays with you. We would rather say so plainly than have you find out when billing comes.

We do not give tax and compliance advice

Payroll rules are settings you control, and you are responsible for making sure the rules you enter are correct and updated. HRStuff applies them consistently and shows you exactly how every amount was calculated.

We do not move your money

HRStuff produces the payslip and tells you what each person is owed. Paying them is done by you, through your bank, as it was before.

We do not know your country's law

And the software does not pretend to. Every contribution, levy, allowance and deduction is a rule you write, which is exactly why it works anywhere rather than in one place.

Your data

Where it sits, and who can reach it.

Is our data mixed in with other companies'?

Every record carries its company and every query is filtered by it. A request for another company's record comes back "not found" rather than "forbidden", so nobody can even test whether your records exist.

Can you see our payroll?

Support access is read-only, requires a written reason and closes automatically after 30 minutes. Every session appears in your activity log, so you can see that it happened, when and why.

Can we get our data out?

Yes. Employee records export to a spreadsheet whenever you want them, and every employee can save their own payslips as PDFs.

Can somebody else's security problem become ours?

Most software is assembled from hundreds of free code libraries written by strangers, and when one of those turns out to have a security hole, every product using it inherits the hole. That is how a great many breaches happen. HRStuff uses none of them — everything in it was written for HRStuff. Your password, and the key your browser holds while you are signed in, are scrambled before they are stored, so nobody here can read either. And anything important that anyone does goes into a log that can be added to but never edited or deleted.

Still something you need to know?

Ask, and the answer goes on this page for the next person. Or create your company and find out with a month of your own figures.

Figures shown on this page are an example. Statutory rates must be verified against your own authority before your first payroll run.