School payroll in India is a multi-step exercise that most institutions still run manually. Biometric attendance records in one system, leave approvals in email or paper, salary calculations in Excel, statutory deductions computed by the accounts officer, and bank transfers initiated one by one.
Every step between attendance capture and salary credit is a manual handoff. And every handoff is an opportunity for an error that the staff member discovers on salary day. The best payroll software for schools removes those handoffs entirely.
This guide evaluates 5 platforms available in India in 2026 specifically for school payroll requirements. From salary calculation through integrated attendance, to PF, ESI, TDS & Professional Tax compliance running automatically, payslip generation, disbursal, and full & final settlement handled within the same tool.
TL;DR
The best payroll software for schools in India is one built for the school payroll context.
- Teacher & non-teaching staff salary structures
- Biometric & geo-fenced attendance directly linked to salary calculation
- One-click payroll with automatic PF, ESI, TDS, and Professional Tax deductions
- Payslip generation, bank file creation for salary disbursal, and full & final settlement
- All without manual reconciliation between separate tools
edumerge HRMS is the top-ranked option. Purpose-built for educational institutions, with one-click payroll that auto-calculates every statutory deduction from integrated attendance & leave data. Not just that, it even generates & sends out payslips, creates bank disbursement files, and keeps payroll auto-synced with the school's academic & fee management modules.
Why School Payroll is Different from Generic Corporate Payroll
Most Indian payroll software is designed for the corporate sector. Single employee category, fixed office hours, one-time investment declarations, standard leave policies. School payroll has a different set of structural requirements that make generic tools a poor fit without heavy customisation.
1. Manual attendance-to-payroll bridge
School attendance is often recorded in biometric systems or paper registers that are disconnected from the payroll tool. Before every salary run, HR must manually reconcile attendance data, calculate Loss of Pay (LOP) days, verify leave balances, and then enter the adjusted figures into the payroll software. This manual bridge is the single largest source of salary errors in Indian schools.
2. Teaching & non-teaching staff have different salary structures
A school's teaching, administrative & support staff, and contractual workers have different CTC structures, allowance heads, PF applicability, and LOP calculation rules. Most generic payroll tools are designed for one employee type. Schools end up maintaining separate salary sheets per category, which multiplies the reconciliation work every month.
3. PF, ESI, PT & TDS compliance with no in-house finance team
Unlike corporate HR departments with dedicated compliance staff, most Indian schools process payroll with one or two accounts officers. Who also manage fee collection, vendor payments & academic expenditure. Missing a PF deadline by a day costs a penalty. A wrong TDS projection carries over into a year-end recovery. Schools need statutory compliance that runs automatically, not manually.
4. Salary delays damage teacher retention
In Indian schools, each teacher exit represents a cost estimated at Rs. 1.5 lakh to Rs. 3 lakh when recruitment, onboarding & learning disruption are counted together. Delayed or incorrect salary payments are among the most cited reasons teachers give for leaving. A payroll system that processes salaries accurately on the same day every month, with transparent payslips, removes one of the primary drivers of teacher attrition.
5. Multi-campus school groups need consolidated payroll
A school group managing 5 campuses under one trust has staff who may move between campuses, share HR policies, and need consolidated payroll reporting for the trustee. Running separate payroll tools per campus multiplies administrative work & creates compliance gaps at the group level.
These challenges define why education-native payroll software outperforms a generic HR tool for schools, even when the generic tool has strong statutory compliance.
The integration layer between attendance, leave & payroll is where most school payroll errors originate. And it is the layer that only a purpose-built education HRMS connects by design.
5 Best Payroll Software for Schools
1. edumerge HRMS (Top Pick for School Payroll India 2026)
Purpose-built payroll for Indian schools and school groups
Type: Education-native HRMS with integrated payroll, attendance, leave, compliance, appraisals, and exit management on one platform.
Payroll and compliance capabilities:
- One-click payroll run: auto-calculates attendance deductions, leave adjustments, LOP (Loss of Pay) deductions, PF, ESI, TDS, and Professional Tax from integrated attendance and leave data, no manual reconciliation step required
- Payroll auto-syncs with attendance: biometric and RFID attendance data feeds directly into the payroll engine. A teacher's absent day or LOP entry updates the salary calculation automatically without any HR action
- Payslip generation and distribution: individualised, itemised payslips generated on every payroll run and distributed digitally to each staff member's email or HRMS self-service portal
- Bank file creation for salary disbursal: generates bank-format disbursement files compatible with major Indian banks for direct salary credit to employee accounts; no manual transfer initiation required
- Configurable salary structures for teaching and non-teaching staff: multiple salary templates, allowance heads, variable pay components, and deduction rules configured per staff category; not a generic corporate pay structure
- PF, ESI, TDS, Professional Tax, and gratuity built into the payroll engine: statutory calculations run automatically without manual input; compliance does not depend on HR remembering the current rates
- LOP (Loss of Pay) tracking: unpaid leaves flow in real time from the leave management module to the payroll engine, preventing revenue leakage from incomplete LOP deductions
- Arrears and salary revision processing: mid-year increments, arrears payments, and salary structure changes are processed within the same payroll run without requiring a separate manual entry
- Full and Final settlement: processed within the exit management workflow, drawing on verified payroll, leave encashment, and LOP data already in the HRMS; F&F settlement letter generated on completion
- Statutory reports and challans: PF ECR, ESIC challan, Form 16, Form 24Q, and Professional Tax challans generated from within the platform for compliance filing
- Staff self-service portal: staff access their payslips, apply for leave, update personal details, and view salary history without raising HR desk queries, reducing admin workload by up to 60%
- Multi-campus payroll for school groups: group-wide payroll run across all campuses with consolidated payroll cost reporting for the trustee dashboard; inter-campus staff transfers automatically carry payroll records
What to note: edumerge HRMS is built specifically for the education sector; schools needing purely standalone payroll without integration to school operations can use it independently, though the full value is realised when deployed alongside edumerge School ERP since your every operation comes on a singular architecture.
No other platform in this list is built specifically for educational institutions. Every other option in this guide is a generic Indian HR or payroll platform that a school can use but must configure for its context. edumerge HRMS is designed from the ground up for schools, colleges, and education groups: school-specific salary structures, attendance directly linked to payroll without a manual bridge, and the same database as the school's academic and fee management operations.
Explore edumerge HRMS Explore edumerge Payroll Capabilities
2. greytHR
Reliable India-built payroll with strong statutory compliance
Type: Dedicated payroll and HRMS platform with deep Indian statutory compliance coverage, widely used by Indian SMBs and NGOs.
Payroll and compliance capabilities:
- Automated PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS with state-wise support built into the payroll engine
- Payslip generation and employee self-service portal for payslip access
- Bank transfer file creation for direct salary disbursal
- Leave and attendance modules available for integration with payroll
- Form 16, Form 24Q, PF ECR, and ESIC challan generation for compliance filing
- Affordable pricing with a free tier for up to 25 employees
What to note:
- Not built for educational institutions: school-specific configurations (teaching & non-teaching salary structures, timetable-linked attendance, education-context leave policies) require manual customisation
- No integration with school academic operations, student records, or fee management
- Biometric attendance typically requires a separate integration layer
You might also like this comparison on edumerge HRMS vs greytHR.
3. Keka HR
Modern HRMS with strong payroll automation and polished UX
Type: Modern cloud HRMS platform with payroll, attendance, leave, performance management, and analytics for Indian businesses.
Payroll and compliance capabilities:
- Payroll automation with attendance deductions, leave adjustments, and statutory calculations
- PF, ESI, TDS, and PT calculations with automated compliance reporting
- Bank disbursement file generation and salary transfer workflows
- Attendance and leave management integrated with payroll engine
- Appraisal and performance management modules connected to salary revision workflows
- Modern mobile-first interface for employee self-service and HR operations
What to note:
- Designed for the corporate sector
- School-specific payroll configurations and education-context HR workflows require customisation
- Not integrated with school ERP academic modules
- Pricing is at the higher end for single-campus schools
- Implementation typically takes 3-6 weeks
- No education-specific compliance or accreditation context
Also check out this comparison of edumerge HRMS vs Keka HR for your evaluation purposes.
4. Zoho Payroll
Cloud payroll integrated with the Zoho ecosystem
Type: Cloud-based payroll solution within the Zoho product suite, covering salary processing, compliance, and basic HR.
Payroll and compliance capabilities:
- Automated payroll processing with PF, ESI, TDS, and PT compliance for 28 Indian states
- Payslip generation and employee self-service portal
- Direct salary disbursal via integrated banking partnerships
- Native integration with Zoho Books for accounting and Zoho People for HR
- Form 16, Form 24Q, and statutory filing support
- Competitive per-employee pricing
What to note:
- Best suited to institutions already in the Zoho ecosystem
- Schools outside Zoho's product suite face a steeper integration overhead
- Not education-specific and may lack school ERP connectivity
- Biometric attendance and school-specific leave policies require custom configuration
- No education-native HRMS modules (vacancy management, academic staff onboarding)
5. factoHR
Compliance-heavy HRMS with biometric depth for multi-location payroll
Type: India-built HRMS with strong biometric attendance integration, multi-location payroll, and deep statutory compliance.
Payroll and compliance capabilities:
- GPS-based and biometric attendance integration with payroll engine for automatic attendance-linked salary calculation
- Automated PF, ESI, TDS, PT, and Labour Welfare Fund calculations for multi-state payroll
- Bank disbursement file generation and direct salary transfer workflows
- Payslip generation with mobile employee self-service app
- PF ECR, ESIC challan, Form 16, and Form 24Q generation for statutory compliance
- Multi-entity payroll consolidation for school groups with multiple campuses
What to note:
- Primary design focus is industrial & logistics sectors with field teams
- School & education-context HR workflows (teaching staff onboarding, academic staff leave policies, probation workflows, appraisal structures aligned to education) require significant configuration
- No school ERP integration; not education-native
Payroll Feature Comparison: edumerge HRMS vs the Field
The table below compares 12 payroll and compliance capabilities that matter specifically for Indian schools.
| Payroll Capability | edumerge HRMS | Others in this list |
|---|---|---|
| One-click payroll run | Yes | Partial or manual steps in most |
| Auto-sync from biometric attendance | Yes | Integration layer needed in greytHR, Zoho, Keka; native in factoHR |
| LOP auto-calculated from leave | Yes | Requires configuration in most |
| PF, ESI, TDS, PT built in | Yes | Yes in all 5 platforms |
| Bank file for salary disbursal | Yes | Yes in all 5 platforms |
| Payslip to staff email auto-send | Yes | Yes in Keka and greytHR; varies in others |
| F&F settlement in same platform | Yes | Available in Keka; limited in others |
| Teaching + non-teaching structures | Yes, education-native config | Requires custom setup in all non-education platforms |
| School ERP integration | Yes, same database | Not available in any other platform in this list |
| Multi-campus consolidated payroll | Yes, with group dashboard | Limited in most; factoHR has multi-location support |
| Same-day go-live | Yes, under 7 hours | 3 to 6 weeks in Keka and Darwinbox; days in greytHR and Zoho |
| Education-specific statutory context | Yes | No platform in this list other than edumerge is education-specific |
How to Evaluate Payroll Software for Your School: 8 Criteria
Run every payroll platform you consider through these eight criteria before signing up. Ask for a live demonstration of the complete payroll cycle, not just the salary calculation screen.
| Criterion | What to Check | Why It Matters for Schools |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance-payroll integration | Does the payroll engine pull directly from biometric or attendance data, or does HR need to export and re-import attendance before each payroll run? | Manual attendance reconciliation is the most common cause of salary errors and delays in Indian schools |
| LOP and leave auto-calculation | Are Loss of Pay deductions calculated automatically from approved leave records, or does HR manually compute and enter them each month? | Incorrect LOP is one of the top reasons teachers dispute their salary in Indian schools |
| Education-specific salary structures | Can the platform configure different salary structures for teaching staff, non-teaching staff, support staff, and contractual employees without requiring IT customisation? | Generic corporate CTC structures do not map cleanly to school payroll categories without manual workarounds |
| Statutory compliance breadth | Does the platform handle PF, ESI, TDS, Professional Tax (state-wise), gratuity, and Labour Welfare Fund automatically, with compliance filings generated for each? | Missed PF or TDS deadlines result in penalties that accumulate quickly; manual compliance tracking is not sustainable at school scale |
| Bank file generation | Does the payroll run produce a ready-to-upload bank disbursement file, or does the accounts team need to separately prepare NEFT instructions? | Manual NEFT preparation for staff salaries wastes accounts team time and introduces transfer errors |
| Staff self-service portal | Can teaching and non-teaching staff access payslips, view leave balances, and submit investment declarations from a portal, reducing HR desk queries? | Staff self-service reduces HR overhead significantly in schools where one or two people manage all HR and payroll functions |
| Multi-campus support | Can the platform run payroll across multiple school campuses in one go, with group-level consolidated reporting for the principal or trustee? | School groups processing payroll campus by campus multiply their compliance risk and administrative overhead unnecessarily |
Is your school's payroll running on a manual bridge between attendance, leave, and salary?
The best payroll software for schools in India is not the one with the most compliance certificates. It is the one that eliminates the manual steps between attendance capture & salary disbursal, handles statutory deductions without the accounts officer remembering the current rates, and integrates with the school's academic operations so that payroll is not an island of data managed in a separate tool.
Every month that a school manually reconciles attendance with payroll is a month where a salary error is one missed LOP entry away. edumerge HRMS removes the bridge entirely. Attendance auto-flows to payroll. Leave auto-deducts. The salary run takes one click.
edumerge HRMS delivers that for Indian schools in 2026.
Fee collection is the revenue-side equivalent of this same automation problem. How to Automate Fee Collection in Engineering Colleges (2026) covers the same manual-bridge pattern on the collections side.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is one-click payroll for schools?
One-click payroll in edumerge HRMS means that after the monthly attendance and leave data has been captured by the system (automatically, from biometric devices), the payroll administrator runs the full salary calculation for all staff in a single action. The system auto-calculates attendance deductions, LOP days, PF contributions, ESI deductions, TDS based on declared investments, Professional Tax by state, and any arrears, then generates payslips and produces the bank disbursement file, all without manual input.
2. How does payroll software handle PF, ESI, and TDS for school staff?
Education-native payroll software like edumerge HRMS has PF (12% employee and employer contribution), ESI (0.75% employee and 3.25% employer), TDS (income tax deduction based on investment declarations and applicable slabs), and Professional Tax (state-wise slabs pre-loaded) built into the payroll engine. Every pay run applies these calculations automatically. PF ECR files, ESIC challans, Form 16, and Form 24Q are generated by the system for statutory filing.
3. What is LOP (Loss of Pay) and how is it managed in school payroll software?
Loss of Pay (LOP) is the salary deduction for days a staff member was absent without approved leave. In edumerge HRMS, unpaid leave & unauthorised absences tracked in the leave management module flow in real time to the payroll engine. LOP deductions are calculated automatically on the payroll run without any HR team intervention. The LOP amount per day is derived from the employee's daily rate, and the deduction appears as a named line item on the payslip for full transparency.
4. What is a school-specific HRMS and why is it better than generic payroll software for schools?
A school-specific HRMS like edumerge is designed for the operational context of schools: teaching and non-teaching staff categories, biometric attendance directly linked to payroll, leave policies aligned to school calendars (summer vacation, exam periods, compensatory offs), timetable-linked faculty workload, and integration with the school's academic and fee management data. Generic payroll software processes salaries accurately but requires schools to manually bridge the gap between attendance records, leave policies, and salary structures every month, creating the very errors and delays that the software is supposed to eliminate.
5. Can edumerge HRMS handle payroll across multiple school campuses?
Yes. edumerge HRMS supports multi-campus school groups with a single payroll run across all campuses. Each campus maintains its own staff records and policies, while the HR head at the group level processes a consolidated payroll for all campuses simultaneously. Payroll cost reports by campus are available in real time for the trustee or director. Inter-campus staff transfers automatically carry the employee's payroll records and salary structure to the new campus without manual re-entry.
6. How long does it take to set up payroll software for a school?
edumerge HRMS goes live the same day for most schools. Staff records, salary structures, leave policies, and payroll configurations are set up in a single guided onboarding session. The payroll engine is ready to process the first salary run by the end of the setup day. Most generic payroll platforms take three to six weeks for full implementation, requiring data migration, salary structure mapping, and attendance integration as separate steps.
7. Does payroll software for schools integrate with accounting?
Yes. In edumerge's full suite, monthly payroll auto-generates the corresponding journal entries in the Finance & Control accounting module. The salary expense posts to the correct cost centre, PF and ESI liabilities post to payable accounts, and TDS payable is recorded automatically. Finance and HR are connected, not separate, eliminating the manual journal entry step that accounts officers typically perform after each payroll run.
Comparing this against a standalone HR point solution? edumerge HRMS vs Zoho People covers exactly where a payroll-and-accounting-connected HRMS pulls ahead of a people-management-only tool.
