Affordable payroll software for Indian small businesses. Auto PF, ESI, TDS, salary slips & bank file for teams under 50. Free to start, no accountant needed.
Most small businesses with under 50 employees can complete Avani's payroll setup in a single sitting. Add your employees, define salary components (Basic, HRA, allowances), set PF and ESI eligibility, choose the Professional Tax state, and you are ready to run your first payroll. No implementation consultant, no lengthy onboarding call, and no upfront data-migration fee. If you have an existing Excel salary sheet, you can import it directly to seed employee data.
Provident Fund is calculated at 12% of basic wages for the employee contribution and 12% on the employer side (split as 3.67% EPF + 8.33% EPS). ESI is deducted at 0.75% employee and 3.25% employer on gross wages for anyone earning up to ₹21,000 per month. Avani handles both automatically every payroll cycle — small business owners no longer need to open the EPFO or ESIC calculator before running payroll. Monthly ECR and contribution files are generated and ready for portal upload.
TDS under Section 192 is projected based on the full financial year salary. Avani considers the employee's declared 80C investments (EPF, PPF, ELSS up to ₹1.5 lakh), standard deduction of ₹50,000, health insurance under 80D, and HRA exemption under Section 10(13A). The correct monthly TDS is deducted without any manual input from HR or the owner. Both old and new tax regimes are supported — each employee can declare their preference at the start of the year.
Professional Tax slabs for Maharashtra (up to ₹2,500/year), Karnataka (up to ₹2,400/year), West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat are built into Avani. For small businesses operating in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, or Rajasthan — states with no PT — the system correctly applies zero PT. Even if your 20-person team works across two states, each employee gets the right PT deduction automatically based on their work location.
After payroll is approved, salary slips are instantly available for every employee on the self-service portal. Each slip shows earnings (Basic, HRA, allowances), all deductions (PF, ESI, TDS, PT, LOP, advance recovery), gross pay, and net take-home. Your employees download their own slips — you never have to email slips individually. For small businesses applying for bank loans or audits, payroll history and salary slips are available for any month from the day you started using Avani.
Once payroll is approved, export a bank disbursement file in NEFT/RTGS bulk format compatible with HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis, and Kotak corporate banking portals. Upload the file to your business banking portal and transfer salaries to all employees in a single batch — no typing account numbers, no per-employee transfers. For a 30-person company, this alone saves two hours every month and eliminates transfer errors.
Loss of Pay (LOP) deductions are the most common payroll headache for small businesses. Avani links attendance directly to payroll — approved leaves, unapproved absences, and public holidays are all accounted for when calculating the payable days. The LOP amount is computed per day based on the employee's monthly salary and deducted automatically. No cross-referencing a separate attendance sheet with the salary Excel every month — it all flows through the system.
Small business owners and office managers often spend hours every month answering the same employee queries: 'Where is my salary slip?', 'How much PF was deducted?', 'Can I see my leave balance?'. With Avani's employee portal, every team member can log in and view their salary slips, PF deduction history, leave balance, and attendance records on their own. This reduces HR-related interruptions dramatically — owners can focus on running the business instead of acting as the payroll helpdesk.
Payroll software for small business is a tool that automates salary calculations, statutory deductions (PF, ESI, TDS, Professional Tax), salary slip generation, and bank disbursement for teams typically under 50 employees. Avani Business OS is designed specifically for Indian SMBs — it handles all statutory compliance under Indian law (EPFO, ESIC, Income Tax Act Section 192, state PT acts) without requiring a dedicated payroll accountant. Small business owners can run compliant payroll themselves in under 30 minutes each month.
Yes. Once a business registers for PF (mandatory when headcount crosses 20, voluntary before), it must file monthly ECR returns with EPFO by the 15th of each month and remit contributions. Manual PF calculations on Excel are error-prone and have resulted in penalties and notices for small businesses. ESI applies from 10 employees in most states. Avani ensures correct PF at 12% of basic wages and ESI for employees earning up to ₹21,000/month — even for a 10-person team. The cost of software is far lower than one EPFO penalty.
Most businesses with under 50 employees can complete the initial payroll setup in 45–60 minutes. The steps are: add employees (or import from Excel), configure salary components, set PF/ESI eligibility and Professional Tax state, and define TDS investment declarations. Avani provides guided setup wizards so no technical knowledge is required. Your first payroll run can happen the same day you sign up.
PF is calculated at 12% of basic wages as the employee contribution. The employer also contributes 12% — split as 3.67% towards EPF and 8.33% towards EPS (Employee Pension Scheme, capped at ₹15,000 basic). For employees with basic salary above ₹15,000, contribution can be capped at the statutory limit or calculated on actual basic — this is configurable per employee in Avani. The system generates the monthly Electronic Challan cum Return (ECR) file in the exact format required for upload to the EPFO Unified Portal.
ESI (Employees' State Insurance) is mandatory for establishments with 10 or more employees (20 in some states) where any employee earns gross wages of ₹21,000 or less per month. Once applicable, it covers all eligible employees — employer contributes 3.25% and employee contributes 0.75% of gross wages. Avani automatically applies or exempts ESI based on each employee's gross salary and handles the monthly ESIC contribution challan. When an employee gets an increment crossing ₹21,000, the system automatically stops ESI deduction.
Yes. Avani is designed so that a business owner, office manager, or admin with no payroll or accounting background can run compliant payroll. All statutory rates — PF 12%, ESI 0.75%/3.25%, TDS under Section 192, and state-wise Professional Tax slabs — are pre-configured and updated by Avani when regulations change. The system flags errors (such as missing bank details or incomplete TDS declarations) before you finalize payroll. You approve, download the bank file, and upload to your bank — done.
Avani supports all standard Indian salary components: Basic, HRA (configured as a % of basic for metro or non-metro city), Dearness Allowance, Conveyance Allowance (₹1,600/month tax-exempt), Special Allowance, LTA, Medical Reimbursement (₹15,000/year exempt), and performance bonuses. You can create custom allowance heads as well. Each component can be set as taxable or exempt, fixed or percentage-based. CTC, gross, and net take-home are automatically computed from the structure you define.
Avani Business OS offers a free trial with no credit card required — small businesses can sign up, configure payroll, and run their first payroll cycle at no cost. There is no minimum employee count and no implementation or onboarding fee. Paid plans are affordably priced for Indian SMBs and scale with headcount, making Avani one of the most cost-effective payroll solutions available for businesses with 10–50 employees.
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