HRMS & Payroll for Growing Indian Businesses

Run Payroll & HR the

A purpose-built HRMS for growing Indian businesses — PF, ESI, EDLI, PT, gratuity, leave, and attendance, all automated on one simple platform.

20+ hrssaved per month on payroll ops
0manual EPFO/ESIC portal logins
100%on-time challan & filing record
7 daysto go live, first payroll in 14
20+ hrssaved per month on payroll ops
0manual EPFO/ESIC portal logins
100%on-time challan & filing record
7 daysto go live, first payroll in 14
app.cohort26.com
Employees
Attendance
Leave
Payroll
Recruitment
Performance
Expenses
Reports
Employees
142
Total Employees
+8 this month
96%
Attendance Today
+2% vs avg
12
On Leave
+3 vs avg
5
Open Positions
2 in pipeline
NameDepartmentStatusRoleJoined
Priya SharmaEngineeringActiveSenior DevJan 2024
Arjun PatelMarketingOn LeaveLeadMar 2023
Meera JoshiOperationsActiveManagerJul 2023
Rahul SinghSalesNew HireExecutiveApr 2026
— The problem

Manual HR & payroll is a silent liability.

One miscalculated PF challan, one missed ESI deadline, one wrong leave encashment — and a routine inspection turns into months of penalties, back-dues, and employee disputes.

01

PF/ESI penalties

12% p.a. interest + damages up to 25% of arrears on every late deposit.

02

New 50% wage rule

Labour Codes now live — PF & gratuity liabilities up 25–50% for most companies.

03

48-hour F&F rule

Full & final settlement now mandated within 2 working days of any exit.

04

Error-prone sheets

90% of Indian HR teams still rely on spreadsheets alongside their HRMS.

— The industry is failing

The HRMS you're looking at is already broken.

A market-wide review reveals a consistent pattern: the HRMS products Indian businesses pay most for are failing on the things that matter most.

₹627 Cr
paid in fines for late statutory filings — 2024 alone
33%
of Indian companies still don't use any payroll software
90%
of HR teams rely on spreadsheets even alongside their HRMS
30–50%
real cost mark-up from hidden add-ons and forced upsells

Pricing opacity & add-on traps

Performance management, recruitment, API access, SSO, expense claims — all quoted as 'included' but sold as add-ons.

Support that disappears

4-month support waits. 30-minute phone call caps. Tickets older than 6 months unresolved.

Payroll calculation errors

Wrong tax computations for entire fiscal years. PF auto-selection bugs. Attendance-payroll sync failures.

Mobile apps that don't work

Apps taking 8–10 minutes to open. GPS failing 40% of the time. Crashes after every update.

Vendor lock-in by design

Fair Usage Policies that commit you to employee counts you cannot modify. No refunds. Data export restricted.

Compliance updates always lag

When rules change, updates come weeks late — and the penalties land on you.

Free AI Agent

Upload your salary sheet.
The AI Agent does the rest.

Our AI Payroll Agent reads any Excel or CSV — no fixed format required. It maps your columns automatically, flags compliance issues before you file, and generates four filing-ready outputs in under 30 seconds. No account. No data stored.

PF ECR file — EPFO 2.0 format, upload directly to EPFO portal
ESI contribution statement — Excel, portal-ready
Per-employee payslips — single multi-page PDF
TDS working sheet — Form 24Q summary (estimated)
1,247 payroll runs processed
38,412 employees calculated
28 states supported
Try the AI Agent — Free → For CAs & HR →
Download filing-ready outputs 24 employees · April 2026
PF ECR File
EPFO 2.0 · ready to upload
ESI Statement
Excel · 5 employees covered
Payslips PDF
24 employees · single file
TDS Working
Form 24Q summary · estimated
Products

Everything your HR team needs. Nothing they don't.

Nine modules, one employee database. When someone marks attendance, it flows into payroll automatically. When leave is approved, the roster updates. No re-entry, no syncing.

Payroll

Accurate payroll. Every single month.

Configure salary structures once. Attendance, leave, loans, and tax deductions flow in automatically. Process payroll for your entire company in one click.

  • Flexible salary structures — Basic, HRA, DA, Special Allowance
  • One-click bulk payroll processing for all employees
  • Preview salary slips before finalizing
  • Additional salary, incentives, and bonus management
  • Employee loan tracking with automatic EMI deductions
  • Multi-currency and multi-company payroll support
  • Integrated accounting — journal entries auto-created
Salary Structure — earnings, deductions, and formula configuration

Tax & Reports

Indian tax compliance, built in.

PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS — configured for your state. Employees declare exemptions, HR verifies proofs, tax is computed automatically every pay cycle.

  • Income tax slabs for both old and new regime
  • Employee tax exemption declarations (80C, 80D, HRA)
  • Proof submission and verification workflow
  • PF, ESI, and Professional Tax auto-calculation
  • Tax computation and projection reports
  • Compliance-ready statutory reports
  • Gratuity calculation based on tenure and rules
Income Tax Slab — old tax regime configuration with salary slabs

Mobile App

HR in every employee's pocket.

Employees and managers don't need to be at a desk. Attendance, leave, payslips, approvals — everything works from their phone.

  • Mark attendance with one-tap mobile check-in
  • Apply for leave and track balance from your phone
  • View and download salary slips instantly
  • Submit expense claims with photo receipts
  • Manager approvals — leave, expense, attendance — on the go
  • Push notifications for pending actions and updates
  • Works on iOS and Android
Leave Application with mobile app view — leave balance and approval workflow

Recruitment

Hire the right people, faster.

From planning headcount to sending offer letters — manage your entire hiring pipeline without switching tools.

  • Create staffing plans and job requisitions by department
  • Publish job openings and track applicant sources
  • Manage candidates through customizable pipeline stages
  • Schedule multi-round interviews with panel assignments
  • Capture structured interviewer feedback and ratings
  • Generate and send offer letters with configured terms
  • Recruitment analytics — source effectiveness, time-to-hire
Interview Calendar — schedule and reschedule interviews with calendar view

Employee Lifecycle

Onboarding to offboarding, fully automated.

Every employee transition — joining, promotion, transfer, exit — is structured, documented, and trackable.

  • Structured onboarding checklists with task assignments
  • Auto-generate appointment letters from templates
  • Visual org chart for your entire company
  • Track promotions, transfers, and designation changes
  • Employee separation workflow with handover tasks
  • Full and final settlement calculation
  • Exit interviews with feedback capture
Organizational Chart — employee hierarchy and reporting structure

Shifts & Attendance

Real-time attendance. Zero guesswork.

Mobile check-ins, biometric integration, shift rosters, and auto-attendance — built for office floors, warehouses, and field teams alike.

  • Configure multiple shift types with flexible timing rules
  • Drag-and-drop shift roster management
  • Employee self-service shift swap requests
  • Mobile and biometric clock-in with GPS tagging
  • Auto-calculate attendance from check-in/check-out logs
  • Attendance correction and regularization requests
  • Attendance sheet with daily, weekly, and monthly views
Monthly Attendance Sheet — chart and employee attendance grid

Leave Management

Six leave types. Configurable. Self-service.

EL, CL, Sick, Maternity, Paternity, Compensatory Off — all configurable with accrual rules, carry-forward, and encashment policies.

  • Earned Leave — accrual-based, carry-forward, encashable at exit
  • Casual Leave — monthly cap, no carry-forward, half-day enabled
  • Sick Leave — medical cert threshold, auto-approval for ≤2 days
  • Maternity Leave — 26 weeks paid, Maternity Benefit Act 1961 compliant
  • Paternity Leave — configurable 5–15 days
  • Compensatory Off — auto-credited for weekend/holiday work, 90-day expiry
  • Mobile self-service with manager approval workflow
Employee Checkin — log type, timestamps, and employee records

Expense Management

From receipt to reimbursement.

Employees submit expenses, managers approve, finance processes payment — with automatic accounting entries at every step.

  • Employee expense claim submission with receipt attachments
  • Multi-level approval workflows by amount and department
  • Employee advance management and settlement tracking
  • Travel request planning with itinerary and cost estimation
  • Automatic journal entries for approved expenses
  • Expense analytics by department, type, and period
Expense Claim — itemized expenses with tax calculation

Performance Management

Goals, feedback, and growth — built in.

Set goals at the start of the year. Collect feedback throughout. Run structured appraisals at the end. No more reviewing from memory.

  • Define KRAs and measurable goals per employee
  • Create appraisal cycles — quarterly, half-yearly, or annual
  • Customizable appraisal templates with weighted criteria
  • Employee self-appraisal and manager evaluation
  • 360-degree multi-rater feedback from peers and reports
  • Formula-based scoring for objective final ratings
  • Performance reports and analytics across teams
Appraisal Feedback — employee ratings and peer reviews
Getting started

Live in 7 days. First payroll in 14.

setup.js
Ready

Zero setup fees · Parallel run with your existing payroll · Most customers cancel their Excel payroll inside a fortnight.

Outcomes

Outcomes you'll feel from week one.

Speed

Live in days. Not months.

We handle the setup. Employee data imported, salary structures configured, policies loaded per state. Most customers run their first live payroll inside two weeks.

Simplicity

Zero IT burden. No engineer.

No servers to manage, no updates to install, no backups to schedule. You open a browser and it works. Your team focuses on people, not infrastructure.

Reliability

Reliable on payday. Every month.

Designed for 99.9%+ availability. Daily automated backups. When month-end comes, the system is there — no downtime, no data loss.

Compliance

Self-updating. Compliance built in.

When PF rates change, when new Labour Codes take effect, when a state revises Professional Tax — we push the update. You never lag a regulation change.

Security & Data

Your employee data — safer than your filing cabinet.

Encrypted end-to-end

Strong encryption protects every record at rest and in transit. Salary, PAN, and bank details stay private.

Hosted in India

Your data lives on servers in Mumbai. It never crosses Indian borders.

Role-based access

HR, Manager, and Employee roles with granular permissions. Nobody sees what they shouldn't.

Complete audit trail

Every change tracked with who, when, and what. Labour inspections answered in minutes, not days.

DPDP Act ready

Consent management, data-principal rights, and breach-reporting workflows built in. 2027 compliance deadline already covered.

Daily backups

Automated daily snapshots with 30-day retention. Your data is never more than 24 hours away from a clean recovery.

Your data is yours — export it any time, take it anywhere. No lock-in, no retention games.

Pricing

Starts as low as ₹499 per employee.

All nine HR modules included. No hidden fees. Fill out the form below to get a custom quote for your team, or talk to us directly.

Get a Quote Talk to Founders — founders@cohort26.com
FAQ

Common questions.

Most companies go live within 7 days. We import your employee data, configure salary structures with the 50% wage rule, set up PF/ESI/PT per state, and load leave policies. Your first live payroll runs by day 14 with a parallel verification run.

Yes. We support bulk employee data import via CSV — names, departments, designations, leave balances, salary structures. If you are migrating from another HRMS, we help with data mapping so nothing is lost. Most migrations take less than a week.

Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Hosted on servers in Mumbai — it never leaves India. Role-based access ensures only authorized people see sensitive information like salary, PAN, or bank details. Daily backups with 30-day retention. DPDP Act compliance built in.

Yes. Cohort26 has built-in support for Indian statutory compliance: PF, ESI, Professional Tax, Income Tax (old and new regime), and gratuity. Tax slabs, deductions, and employer contributions are configured per your state and company structure.

Cohort26 auto-applies the 50% basic + DA rule to every CTC structure. If any employee's structure is non-compliant, the system flags it with a dashboard alert and offers auto-fix. Your PF and gratuity liabilities are always computed correctly.

No. Month-to-month billing. Cancel anytime. If you decide to leave, we export all your employee data, payroll records, and documents in standard formats. No lock-in, no exit fees, no retention games.

Nine modules are included in every plan: Recruitment, Employee Lifecycle, Shifts & Attendance, Leave Management, Expense Management, Performance, Payroll, Tax & Reports, and Mobile App. No add-ons, no upsells — everything is included from day one.

Get started

See it working for a company like yours.

Book a 20-minute call. We will show you the platform configured for your team size, your leave policies, and your payroll structure. Ask anything — implementation timeline, compliance, data migration.

Live walkthrough with your actual use case
See payroll, attendance, and leave working together
Get a setup plan and go-live timeline
No commitment. No credit card. No follow-up spam.

Request your walkthrough

No credit card required. We will respond within 24 hours.