Bureaus know filings. You know your people.
A payroll bureau sells expertise: statutory filings done right by people who do them all day. In-house payroll on ZekoHR sells control: your data, your corrections, your timeline. Both are legitimate; here is the trade, played straight.
Up to 50 employees free for 12 months. No card, no sales call.
What each model is actually like to live with
| The question | Payroll bureau | In-house on ZekoHR |
|---|---|---|
| Turnaround for corrections | An email, a wait, sometimes "next cycle". Reasonable for the bureau, slow for the employee whose pay is wrong. | You fix the input and rerun. Pre-flight checks catch the same class of error before payslips go out. |
| Who holds the data | The bureau's systems hold salaries and PANs. Fine while the relationship is good; awkward during a switch. | Your records, in your account, stored in Mumbai. Export or point the API at it whenever you like. |
| Payslip queries | Employees ask HR, HR asks the bureau, the answer comes back through two inboxes. | Every employee has their payslips as PDFs in their own portal; most queries answer themselves. |
| Cost shape | Per-employee-per-month fees, often with charges for reruns, registers and year-end work. Predictable, not small. | Part of a flat ₹10 to ₹30 per user per month for the whole product, payroll included. First year free up to 50 people. |
| TDS proof handling | Declarations and proofs collected over email or the bureau's forms; the deadline chase is still yours. | Employees submit TDS declarations in the portal; payroll picks them up, and the record stays attached. |
| Statutory filings | The bureau's core strength: returns prepared and filed by specialists who track every change in the rules. | ZekoHR does not file returns for you. It prepares clean, complete data for you or your CA to file from. |
Read that last row again before deciding. Filing expertise is real value, and ZekoHR does not replace it; running payroll on ZekoHR while keeping a CA for the filings is a sensible split.
When a bureau is the right call
Your compliance load is heavy
PF, ESI, PT across states, labour-law registers, frequent notices: if this is your reality and nobody in-house owns it, a specialist bureau earns its fee every single month.
Nobody in-house can own payday
In-house payroll needs one accountable person each month, even with pre-flight checks doing the sweeping. If that person does not exist yet, outsourcing beats a run nobody reviews.
Complex, exception-heavy pay
Arrears, court attachments, expat taxation, retro revisions every cycle: a bureau that handles edge cases daily may serve you better than any software run part-time.
A middle path works too: run payroll and payslips on ZekoHR for speed and self-service, and hand your CA or bureau the clean data for filings. The free year lets you trial that split without spending anything on the software side.
Common questions
Can we keep our CA or bureau and still use ZekoHR?
Yes, and many setups should. ZekoHR produces clean runs, payslips and registers; your CA files from them. You get speed and self-service, they keep the statutory expertise.
Does ZekoHR file statutory returns?
No. We prepare accurate, exportable data, and we state plainly that filings stay with you or your professional. Software that quietly implies otherwise is selling you risk.
When is the least disruptive time to switch?
A fiscal year boundary is cleanest, and a quarter boundary is workable. Whenever you switch, run one month in parallel and compare payslips before you rely on the new run.