The best international payroll software features makes it quick and easy to manage all aspects of wages, benefits, and taxes due on employees, wherever they happen to be.
1. Best for onboarding
2. Best one-stop platform
3. Best outsourcing service
4. Best for versatility
5. Best dependable solution
6. Best for SMEs
7. Best mobile-friendly
8. Best no frills
9. Best for ease-of-use
10. Best for time tracking
11. Best for small business
12. Best simple solution
13. FAQs
14. How we test
Key players in this market have software that can be tailored to suit different geographical territories, with all the forms and compliance information included as part of the package.
What that means is businesses can hire globally, using all of the tools needed to get the job done, while ensuring that all local laws are met. Employment records, salary data and personnel information are all stored within a secure environment and updates, no matter what your business location, can be done quickly and efficiently.
Ensuring you’re equipped with the best international payroll software makes life a lot less complicated than it used to be. Check through our guide to find a payroll provider that ticks all of your required boxes and then hit them up for a quote. Remember the global approach, which should mean you’ll get a product that’s custom tailored to suit your needs, with a price tag to match.
We've also listed the best HR software.
We've also highlighted the best free software for small businesses and the best tax software.
The best payroll software for small business in 2024 in full:
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Best for onboarding
Business and larger corporations have flocked to Remote Payroll, simply because it has a very powerful feature set, albeit at a higher cost than many rivals. And, while there’s no shortage of best payroll software providers on the market, sometimes you need a little more potency to get the job done. If you’re running a larger organisation then Remote Payroll makes an awful lot of sense.
Remote Payroll comes with an extensive list of features, which can help business owners tackle every facet of their onboarding needs. The functionality within Remote Payroll means workflow is pretty much seamless too. It can also be tweaked to suit different country requirements, with functionality that can be similarly adapted to meet local laws.
Read our full Remote Payroll review.
Best one-stop platform
Deel is an extensive package that combines all of the tools that best payroll software offers. It includes a dazzling array of the features and functions businesses need on a daily basis, but also proves really useful for building up a more efficient bigger picture of how your company ticks. If you’ve got employees to hire and subsequently manage, as well as pay, then Deel packs a sizeable punch.
Inside the Deel software suite there are tools for fast and efficient onboarding, functionality that facilitates paying employees, even on a global scale where it’s needed and lots of HR features. In fact, Deel boasts HR functionality that makes light work of handling employees, no matter where they happen to be located.
Adding to the overall appeal is a dependable level of compliance, with Deel proving able to stay on top of any relevant regulations, irrespective of where your business operates. Deel is well-known for its quick and easy setup processes and ongoing administration benefits, making it suitable to companies of all shapes and sizes.
Read our full Deel review.
Best outsourcing service
Paychex provides a full range of full HR solutions for business, to cover the entire employee lifecycle, including of course Payroll.
This means covering everything from recruitment to onboarding, payroll and benefits, as well as development and training. The software's interface is quite straightforward and accessing employee records and payroll is easy.
Paychex also ensures regulatory compliance and mitigating risk. It does this through a combination of self-service computer software for easier employee management, to personalized support to ensure you're getting the help you need. Performance management also ensures that employee development works in line with your business strategy.
Because Paychex has offices across the US, the company can offer competitive benefits and insurance packages for employees on a par with those offered by Fortune 500 companies.
Read our full Paychex review.
Best for versatility
Lots of businesses are moving to flexible, remote ways of working, and plenty of companies are growing quicker than ever. Rippling is the ideal HR provider if you need a company that can cope with the versatility of modern business.
Rippling offers remote laptop management and instant local tax registration, so you can manage staff no matter where they're located. It also provides a slick, straightforward dashboard that you can use to evaluate data, manage employees, pay salaries and alter employee benefits.
This company offers the sort of benefits you'd expect from the most prestigious organizations, and you can rely on one-on-one support from experts on a complete range of issues.
Rippling is eminently scalable, too: it's easy to upgrade or downgrade your services to match your business needs, and it's simple to stop using Rippling if you want to bring HR in-house. Services are billed using a flat per-employee rate, too.
If you've got a company dominated by remote or flexible working or if your business is growing rapidly, then Rippling could be the HR provider you need thanks to its balance of versatility and features.
Read our full Rippling employee management review.
Best dependable solution
Gusto offers a full-service payroll, incorporating time tracking, compliance, as well as managing taxes, 401(k), and benefits such as medical, dental, and vision plans.
Gusto also integrates with a number of existing accounting software and related platforms, such as Freshbooks, Quickbooks, Aplos, Zipbooks and Xero accounting software.
There are a handful of different plan levels available, with the cheapest offering to cover the basics of payroll, by way of a monthly software fee plus a fee per employee. After that plans offer features such as onboarding, time tracking, accounting, benefits, and document management.
There is also a full-service payroll available, which along with employee self-service, also offers onboarding, directories, surveys, as well as support and a resource center. Although Gusto is a brilliant payroll and HR software choice for small businesses and users who are new to payroll, it may not be ideal for larger companies.
Read our full Gusto Review.
Best for SMEs
Sage Business Cloud Payroll is a payroll platform that makes it easier for businesses and human resource managers to process employ payments. Sporting a quick, four-step pay run, the platform lets you enter hourly or annual pay, and Sage will then handle the rest.
There are tools to process absence, bonuses, expenses, holiday pay, pensions and student loans. Additional features can process PAYE and HMRC tax filing, and there is even a mobile app to manage payroll while on the go.
More than anything, the software is easy and quick to use – you don’t need any experience or training to get around the user interface. However, if you do end up getting confused or experiencing an issue, you can access a 24/7 support service.
What’s worth noting is that this software is aimed squarely at small and medium-sized businesses, and offers transparent pricing.
Best mobile-friendly
If you are looking for a mobile-friendly payroll application you should definitely take a look at the venerable QuickBooks from Intuit. Working across smartphones, tablets and computers, the software functions as an affordable and easy system for managing employee payments.
Through the platform you will be able to generate pay slips and send them directly to employees, as well as mandatory forms. There is a feature to calculate maternity and sick leave too, and QuickBooks will also remind you to send payments so you don’t forget. You can also quickly access employees and manage pension contributions from one dashboard.
The QuickBooks self-service payroll package has both a monthly cost for the service, plus an additional fee per employee, with fees varying according to the number of features and payment tier required.
Read our full QuickBooks review.
Best no-frills
By using Patriot Payroll it’s possible to tackle both your accounting and payroll tasks, with the emphasis on ease of use, especially for small business owners. Patriot also gets a resounding thumbs-up for its efficient support infrastructure. The company has a long-standing pedigree too, with around three decades of experience shaping the look and feel of the current package.
Choose from one of two different packages that include the Accounting Premium option, which lets you handle business expenses, financial affairs and invoicing duties too.
Payroll can be tackled with a full service payroll package option. If you plump for this package you can run Payroll and Patriot deals with the payroll taxes side of things. Opt for the cheaper basic payroll edition and you’ll need to handle payroll and payroll taxes yourself.
Lookout for plenty of features, including unlimited payments to vendors, the option or creating and printing 1099s and 1096s, optional 1099 e-filing, expense and income tracking. There’s also the option for producing unlimited customer invoices, accepting credit card payments, recording payments, importing bank transactions automatically and integration of your accounts with payroll.
Read our full Patriot Payroll review.
Best for ease-of-use
When searching for a good payroll solution you will generally find that most HR technology companies offer their own payment features or applications. BambooHR, for instance, provides a separate payroll platform that syncs with its employee-management software.
The software allows you to eradicate double entries, add new employees quickly, and track employee hours and bonus payouts. Other features of the platform include time-off tracking, staff database and records, an applicant tracking system, performance management and electronic signatures.
BambooHR offers two tiers of subscription, starting with the Essentials plan at the lower end. The upgrade is the Advantage plan with a gaggle of additional features including support for on-boarding and off-boarding, electronic signatures and custom email alerts. Unfortunately, pricing is opaque, and you'll have to get in touch for a quote.
Read our full BambooHR review.
Best for time tracking
Hourly payroll covers other crucial areas of your business, with unlimited payroll runs, direct deposit and paper checks, automatic tax filing along with 1099 and W-2 handling all featuring as part of the package. Lookout too for easy handling of garnishments and benefits, while the combination of Time Tracking and Payroll offers the added benefit of smart works comp insurance. Priority phone support is included too.
If you’re looking for a combination of payroll and time management software, with a worker’s comp insurance package also included Hourly is well worth investigating. It’s already doing a decent job of rivalling the likes of Gusto and OnPay, with two plan options including Time Tracking, Payroll or a combination package that includes both.
Opting for the combination deal lowers the cost overall. You can also experience it by requesting a demo if you’d like to see exactly how it ticks.
Features are many and varied, with the Time Tracking package including the ability to track time for all of your workers with the benefit of automatic timesheet creation and GPS clock-ins. Overtime and breaks can also be monitored with ease and it’s all supplemented with detailed reports and audit logs.
Read our full Hourly review.
Best for small business
The benefit of Workful for small business owners has to be its ability to cover many bases at once thanks to payroll, HR and timesheets all being handled within one package. Developed by the people who brought TaxSlayer to market, this is an easy to use option that has a relatively straightforward setup process.
Pricing is keen too, with a free 30-day trial and the single tier pricing helps to keep things even simpler while still offering payroll, time tracking and a host of employee tools too.
For the payroll aspect of the package you get unlimited payroll runs, multiple pay rates, built-in time tracking, state/federal tax forms and integration with QuickBooks. On top, you can also prepare W-2 and 1099 forms, create reports, produce electronic paystubs and carry out direct deposits.
In addition, users get an employee portal for W-4’s, onboarding tools, check printing and everything can be access from any location. Time tracking follows suit with more on the features front, including payroll syncing, automatic calculation of overtime and hours plus PTO tracking. It also delivers customized policies and there are multiple accrual methods.
Employee tools add another edge to the feature set, with the aforementioned employee portal allowing easy onboarding, expense tracking and a place to store documents and file for mileage reimbursement.
Read our full Workful review.
Best simple solution
The appeal of Uzio is its SaaS-based package that lets you streamline many of your business administration tasks into one single online platform. You get plenty of tools for getting the job done too, with everything from HR issues through to tax affairs all covered by the package. Add in the ability to manage records, ensure compliance and cover payroll duties and you have many business bases covered.
This cloud-based package does need to be tailored to fit your business, which means there are no off-the-shelf pricing options available. However, this will probably prove more favourable to businesses as it can be scaled to suit the requirement, with the likes of onboarding new employees, time-tracking, PTO and personnel tracking all on offer for companies of varying sizes.
Payroll is similarly well covered, with a fully integrated cloud-based system that integrates with the HR side of things. Therefore, your business can manage payroll, handle taxes, salaries of employees and then carry out year-end reporting all within the same application. That’s always going to be a bonus.
Automation is central to a lot of what Uzio does too, which, combined with intuitive dashboards and controls, makes multi-tasking a doddle. Uzio also offers a high level of employee self-service access too.
Read our full Uzio review.
Also consider
While our main listing includes the top names in payroll software there are many other options to choose from. If you're in business and have employees you'll also need software to help handle HR requirements. There are payroll software packages that make this possible, all from within one interface. Others let you tackle numerous admin chores too, all within the confines of one bundle.
Here's our selection of other best payroll software packages worth considering.
FAQs
What is international payroll software
Payroll software for small business is an essential tool for companies to manage their accounting and payroll processes. This software simplifies otherwise arduous processes, like managing employee salaries, wages, and deductions, and it integrates with existing HR or accounting systems.
How to choose the best international payroll software
In order to compile our best payroll software for small business list, we tried all of the software options available over a period of time. This allowed us to evaluate all of the features and functions designed to help small and medium-sized business work more efficiently.
If you run a business and have employees then a good quality, robust payroll package is invaluable for letting you get the task completed. Processing payroll doesn't just involve producing checks and direct deposits either because you'll want to have a payroll system that can help you with calculating taxes correctly and staying on top of other accounting chores.
Quite how many features and functions you'll need from your payroll software largely depends on how big your business is. While larger brands such as Sage and QuickBooks can often be easily scaled up as you need more functionality, it may be an idea to stick with a smaller scale, slightly cheaper option. After all, there's no point in paying for the best payroll software if it contains more features than you actually need.
How we test
We look for a solid collection of features and functions when we test the best payroll software for small business. That means we're on the lookout for unlimited payroll runs, options for administrative and employee access, plus cover for things like health benefits and workers comp.
Given that payroll software can frequently have its complicated aspects we always make a point of checking the customer support side too. This should ideally include phone, email and chat options, supplemented by plenty of documentation and training where possible.
Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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