A human resources information system (HRIS) is the software that holds the official record of every employee, and payroll is the software that turns that record into each month's salaries and payslips. The two are usually sold together as one product. It is also called an HRMS (human resource management system) or core HR and payroll. The record holds each person's start date, role, manager, salary, bank account, leave balance and tax details.
The HRIS is the company's system of record for people. When a candidate accepts an offer, the applicant tracking system sends their details to the HRIS, and the record is created. From then on, other systems read from this record. The employee's software logins are created by identity governance software. Their laptop is set up through unified endpoint management. When the employee leaves, the record changes, and both are switched off. The page on the HRIS as the root record explains this idea.
Payroll runs once a month. It reads each employee's salary, the days they worked and their leave. Then it calculates the deductions required by Indian law. These are the employee's provident fund (PF), a retirement saving of 12% of basic pay; professional tax, a small state tax; and TDS (tax deducted at source), the income tax that the employer deducts each month.
Take, for example, an engineering firm in Vadodara with 400 staff. One design engineer has a monthly salary of ₹60,000: basic pay of ₹30,000, a house rent allowance of ₹12,000 and other allowances of ₹18,000. In March, she took 2 days of unpaid leave in a 30-day month. So payroll reduces each part of her salary by 2/30, and her gross pay becomes ₹56,000, with basic pay of ₹28,000. Her firm calculates PF on her full basic pay, not only on the first ₹25,000 that the law requires. So her PF is 12% of ₹28,000, which is ₹3,360. Gujarat's professional tax is ₹200. She has chosen the old tax regime. Under it, her TDS works out at ₹2,100. Under the new tax regime, which applies unless an employee chooses the old one, she would pay no income tax on this salary. So ₹50,340 is credited to her bank account, and her payslip shows each line. The employer also pays its own PF share of ₹3,360.
After the run, payroll sends one payment file to the company's bank, which credits all 400 salaries. It prepares the PF return for the EPFO, the government body that runs provident fund, and the quarterly TDS return. At the end of each tax year, it produces Form 130 for each employee. This certificate shows the salary paid and the tax deducted. Before the Income-tax Act 2025, it was called Form 16. Employees use it with income tax filing software. It also posts the total salary cost into the company's ERP, its main accounting system.
Indian suites serve India's mid-sized and small firms. Some apps serve a small shop owner who runs attendance and pay from a phone. Several large American suites build much of their software in Bengaluru, Noida, Chennai and Hyderabad.