Top 5 HR software for small businesses in Nigeria in 2024

Finding HR software for small businesses in Nigeria might be quite difficult if you own a small business. Hiring, training, and getting the best out of your staff is no small feat. Jumpstart-HR report that “82% of small businesses fail because they experience cash flow problems.”

To survive and grow your business, you must find ways to sort administrative tasks and lead your employees while building your company’s brand, managing income/expenditure, and dealing with market changes, customers, and competitors. It is honestly hard to do all these things without going crazy!

The answer is simple: you need a good HR software solution. With good HR software, you will save money and resources, improve performance and productivity, and automate and streamline your HR procedures. The right HR software can also help you attract, retain, and develop your talent while also creating a positive and engaging work culture. You can also meet the demands of your staff and accomplish your business goals with the aid of effective HR software.

But how do you find a good HR software solution for your small business in Nigeria?

There are so many options out there, each claiming to be the best, the cheapest, or the most suitable for your situation. How do you compare them, and how do you decide which one is right for you?

Don’t worry; we’re here to help you find the best fit for your business. In this blog post, we will review the top 5 HR software for small businesses in Nigeria and their features, benefits, and pricing. We will analyze these solutions based on their functionality, usability, affordability, and suitability for the Nigerian HR landscape. By the end of this blog post, you will have a clear idea of which HR software solution can best match your needs, budget, and goals.

Here we have compiled a list of some of the top HR software in Nigeria for 2024:

NotchHR

If you are looking for free, robust, and reliable HR software for your small business in Nigeria, you might want to check out NotchHR. NotchHR is a cloud-based platform that offers a full stack of administrative solutions for Payroll, Tax & Pension, Recruitment, Employee Development, and Attendance Management. NotchHR was launched in 2020 to help simplify and automate the HR processes for small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria and across Africa. Let’s explore the features, benefits, functionality, usability, and pricing of NotchHR, and why it is one of the best HR software solutions in Nigeria.

Features of NotchHR

NotchHR has a range of features that cater to the diverse needs of small businesses in Nigeria. Some of the key features are:

• Payroll & Payments: NotchHR helps you run your payroll quickly and efficiently. You can create multiple salary schemes based on your team’s peculiarities, including allowances, taxes, and pensions. The NotchHR Wallet gives users a unique bank account to handle all payments and transfers.
• Attendance Management: NotchHR helps businesses manage employee attendance. You can set up custom attendance policies, track biometric and/or app clock-in and clock-out with GPS location, and view attendance reports and trends.
• Recruitment: NotchHR Recruitment helps businesses manage the entire hiring and onboarding process. The feature gives you everything you need to manage, message, and move candidates through each stage of the hiring process, all in one place.
• Learning Management System: NotchHR provides a user-friendly and engaging learning journey that gives new and existing employees access to free learning courses, quizzes, and more; to teach staff new skills and boost their productivity.
• Requisition: This helps you manage and approve employee requests for petty cash, cash reimbursement, work tools, consumables, and other requests.
• Leave Request Management: Your employees can submit leave requests without all the paperwork and unnecessary reminders about their application. 
• E-wallet: With NotchHR eWallet, employees can: Easily save for the future; Make quick utility payments like airtime, data, subscriptions, etc.; Budget their monthly spending and track how much they spend.
• Meeting: NotchHR Meetings feature simplifies meeting scheduling within your organization and eliminates scheduling back-and-forth to find a suitable time between two or more people. 
• Chat & Announcements: The Chats & Announcements feature improves internal communication and enables seamless collaboration within your organization.

Benefits of NotchHR

NotchHR offers many benefits for small businesses in Nigeria, such as:

• Saving time and money: NotchHR helps you to save time and money by automating your HR processes. You can reduce manual errors, paperwork, and compliance risks, and focus on your core business activities. 
• Improving efficiency and accuracy: NotchHR assists you in increasing the accuracy and efficiency of your HR procedures. You can make quick decisions by having access to your data, insights, and reports. NotchHR also ensures that your data is secure, encrypted, and backed up regularly.
• Enhancing employee satisfaction and retention: NotchHR helps you to enhance the satisfaction and retention of your employees. You can provide them with a convenient and transparent payroll system, a flexible and fair attendance policy, a stimulating and rewarding learning environment, and a supportive and engaging HR platform. NotchHR also helps you to communicate and collaborate with your employees effectively and create a positive and productive work culture.

Functionality and Usability of NotchHR

NotchHR is incredibly suitable for small businesses in Nigeria. It has a simple and intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and use. It is cloud-based which will allow you to access it from any device and location. NotchHR has a modular design that lets you choose the features that you need according to your preferences. 

NotchHR is a scalable software that is built to be used by any business, regardless of the organisation’s size or staff strength. It has a responsive and helpful customer support team that is available 24/7 to assist you with any issues or queries.

Pricing of NotchHR

NotchHR’s features are free to use for all business sizes. To continue to use the features for free, you are required to run payroll monthly. Payroll payments come with statutory bank payment fees capped at ₦2,000 per payroll. This makes it the best HR software for small businesses in Nigeria.

SMEPayroll

SMEPayroll is also a cloud-based HR software that is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses automate their HR processes, such as payroll, benefits, compliance, recruitment, performance, learning, and more. The payroll processing involves the deduction of taxes and the remittance of the withheld taxes.

Features of SME Payroll

Here are some of the main features:

• Comprehensive Employee Information System: SME payroll allows you to store employee’s information ranging from biodata to job information to emergency contacts as well as guarantors, job details, compensation benefits, education, certifications, work history, and much more.
• Employee Self-Service (Ess) & Manager Portal: Your staff can apply for time off and a loan. They can be empowered to make corrections to biodata, emergency contacts, work history, certifications, and education based on system configurations.
• Electronic Library for HR Document Management: SME Payroll System provides the facility to dematerialize HR documents. Employee documents can be uploaded to the platform and accessed anywhere, anytime, securely.
• Advanced White-Label HR Reports and HR Analytics: You can choose to get the reports in Microsoft Excel format, PDF, or MS Word format. Additionally, there are crafted charts to help you visualise your data. This visualisation of data deepens understanding and aids data comparison.
• Loan and Repayment Management:  Your workers can use the platform to log in and seek loans. Additionally, the system will automatically oversee the payback till it is liquidated.
• Leave Management: Control employee leave. Check your leave balances. Profit from leaving. Allow employees to accrue vacation time.

Functionality and Usability of SME Payroll System

The SME payroll system is quite functional and easy to use for small businesses. It is easy to use and navigate. Because it is cloud-based, you may access it from any location and on any device. Because of its modular architecture, you can select the functions that best suit your needs and tastes.

Pricing

SME Payroll’s pricing is based on subscription:

• ₦4500 per person for 20 employees.
• Training of the trainer (one-off) – ₦25,000

Total Cost: ₦96,000 for 20 employees annually as subscription cost while training

cost (one-off) is ₦25,000. The initial total cost is ₦121,000.
If you are interested in trying out SMEPayroll, you can request a free demo or a free trial from their website. You can also contact their sales team for more information and assistance.

SeamlessHR

SeamlessHR is a cloud-based, end-to-end HR software that can help you manage your entire human resource processes. It caters to various companies, from SME with fewer than 100 employees to large enterprises with over 10,000 employees.

Features

SeamlessHR has a lot of features that cover HR functions, such as:

• HRMS: This is the core module of SeamlessHR that allows you to manage employee information, leave and loan requests, payroll, performance, and statutory compliance. You can also generate reports and analytics to gain insights into your HR data and make informed decisions.
• Payroll: You can automate your payroll process and ensure accuracy and compliance with tax and pension regulations. You can also integrate it with your bank accounts and payment gateways for easy and secure transactions.
• Performance Management: This module helps you set clear and measurable goals for your employees and track their progress and achievements. You can also conduct regular feedback sessions, appraisals, and reward programs to motivate and retain your talent.
• Recruitment Management: This helps you automate your hiring process and attract the best candidates for your vacancies. You can create and post job ads, manage applications, schedule interviews, and onboard new hires with ease.
• Time and Attendance: You can monitor and manage your employees’ working hours, attendance, and overtime. You can also set up flexible work arrangements, such as remote work, shift work, and part-time work, and track them accordingly.
• Learning Management: You can also create and deliver engaging and effective learning and development programs for your employees. You can also track their progress and performance and provide them with certificates and badges.

Benefits

SeamlessHR offers many benefits for small businesses in Nigeria, such as:

• Cost-effectiveness: It is a cloud-based software that does not require any installation, maintenance, or upgrade costs. You only pay for what you use and you can scale up or down as your business needs change.
• User-friendliness: It has a simple and intuitive user interface that makes it easy to use and navigate. You can also access it from any device and any location, as long as you have an internet connection.
• Security: It uses the latest encryption and security protocols to protect your data and transactions. You can also control who can access and edit your data with role-based permissions and audit trails.
• Support: They provide 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and chat. You can also access their knowledge base, FAQs, and tutorials for self-help.

Functionality and Usability

SeamlessHR is a highly functional and usable HR software for small businesses in Nigeria. It allows you to customize and configure the software to suit your specific needs and preferences.

The interface is easy to use and navigate through.

Pricing

SeamlessHR offers three pricing plans for small businesses in Nigeria, depending on the number of employees and the features you need. They are:

You can also request a custom quote for businesses with more than 100 employees or for additional features, such as Learning Management, Employee Self Service, and Mobile App.To get started with SeamlessHR, you can request a free demo or a free trial from their website.

Prime Payroll

PrimePayroll is an enterprise cloud service for payroll and human resource management. PrimePayroll is safe, efficient, and simple to use with zero upfront investments, all from the comfort of your Internet-enabled PC or mobile device.

Features

• Leave and loan management for employees: With PrimePayroll, Employees can apply for loans with ease via self-service in line with the company’s loan policies. Your employees can also apply for leave with ease via self-service. The notification of concerned persons (HR, team members, line managers etc) and approvals of leave applications is also a smooth process.
• Employee information management: This enables administrators and managers to access employee records, create new employees and/or manage existing records as required.
• Automated tasks: Prime Payroll have automated features like Contributory Pensions, Payroll On Autopilot, Supports Multiple Tax Laws (PIT/PAYE), Automated Pay Calculations
• Support and Security: PrimePayroll is accessible at all times from any internet enabled computer, mobile phone or tablet, as long as one has valid authentication details. The system is highly secure, utilizing industry standard 128-bit SSL encryption of your information, same as used by many top banks and organizations.
• Employee Self Service Accounts: Any  of your valid employee with PrimePayroll will have access has the ability to log in and carry out certain activities, such as Bio-data/Personal Information update, Pay slip generation and viewing, these features enable employees to manage their affairs, have ubiquitous access to information as well as participate in the HR management process.

Benefits

Benefits of PrimePayroll PrimePayroll offers many benefits for small businesses in Nigeria, such as:

• Cost-effectiveness: PrimePayroll is a cloud-based software that does not require any upfront investment or hardware costs. You can choose from flexible pricing plans that suit your budget and business size. 
• User-friendliness: It has a user-friendly and customizable interface that allows you to tailor it to your specific needs and preferences. You can access it from any web browser or mobile device, anytime and anywhere.
• Security: PrimePayroll uses the highest standards of security and privacy to safeguard your data and comply with local and global regulations. You can also set up different levels of access and permissions for your employees and managers, and track all the changes and activities with audit logs and reports.
• Support: PrimePayroll provides 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and chat.

Functionality and Usability

Prime Payroll offers high functionality and usability, which means that it allows you to automate and streamline your HR processes, improve your HR efficiency and effectiveness, and enhance your employee engagement and satisfaction.

Pricing

• Micro – ₦ 5,000/month (1-10 employees)
• Small – ₦ 10,000/month (11-40 employees)
• Medium(basic) – ₦ 20,000/month (41-100 employees)
• Medium(advance) – ₦ 40,000/month (101-250 employees)

If you are interested in trying out Prime Payroll, you can request a free demo or a free trial from their website. 

Zoho People

Zoho People is a cloud-based HR software crafted to nurture employees, quickly adapt to changes, and make HR management agile and effective. It will simplify your HR operations, retain talent, and build a high-performing workforce while putting employee experience first.

Features

Zoho people have numerous features that not only small businesses will benefit from. Here are some of the features you can find in Zoho people:

• Manage data efficiently: With Zoho People you can Streamline both your data collection and secure storage with our employee database management system. You can set up your organization and maintain all your employee records in one central location.
• HR management: Zoho people help you with all the onboarding processes of new employees, attendance tracker, leave tracker, keep track of time, and handle shift schedules.
• Corporate LMS: Zoho People’s LMS is an intuitive platform that will help you to easily create and manage your organization’s training programs. Create courses, track employee progress, and help your team master new skills.
• Employee Self-service: With Zoho people, employees can fill in their details, request leave, submit approvals, among other things.
• Document Management: You can send offer letters, contracts, or update about your policies to your employees through Zoho People. Zoho People’s File Cabinet stores all your documents in a single, central, secure location. Sort, organize, and share files. For your myriad documents that need to be signed and filed, Zoho People integrates with Zoho Sign, Docu Sign, and Adobe Sign.
• User Access Management: Zoho People help you to choose which members of the organization have access to view/edit particular documents, modules, or even locations. IPs and Geo-tracking will help you even validate employee check ins and time logs.

Benefits

Benefits of Zoho People Zoho People offers many benefits for small businesses, such as:

• Cost-effectiveness: Zoho People is a cloud-based software that does not require any upfront investment or hardware costs. You can choose from flexible pricing plans that suit your budget and business size. You can also save on operational costs by automating your HR processes and reducing manual errors.
• User-friendliness: Zoho People has a user-friendly and customizable interface that allows you to tailor it to your specific needs and preferences. You can also integrate it with other Zoho products and third-party apps to streamline your workflows and data management. You can access it from any web browser or mobile device, anytime and anywhere.
• Security: Zoho People uses the highest standards of security and privacy to safeguard your data and comply with local and global regulations. You can also set up different levels of access and permissions for your employees and managers, and track all the changes and activities with audit logs and reports.
• Support: Zoho People provides 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and chat. You can also access their extensive online resources, such as help guides, videos, webinars, forums, and blogs, to learn more about the product and its features.

Functionality and usability

Zoho People is easy to use and customize, as it has a drag-and-drop form builder, a user-friendly interface, and integrations with other Zoho products and third-party apps. Zoho People is also secure and compliant, as it uses encryption and security protocols, role-based access control, and audit logs and reports.

Pricing

Starting out new, Zoho People offer a 30-day free trial. No credit card required. They offer both yearly and monthly plans per user.

• Essential HR: ₦ 300/month per user
• Professional: ₦ 600/month per user
• Premium: ₦ 900/month per user
• Enterprise: ₦ 1,500/month per user
• PeoplePLus: ₦ 3,000/month per user 

Note: Each plan has different features to suit your company needs. If you are interested in trying out Zoho People, you can request a free demo or a free trial from their website. You can also contact their sales team for more information and assistance.

Conclusion

With so many HR solutions available, the key is to find the one that meets your organization’s specific needs. Develop a successful plan for assessing the best HR tools. Start by identifying your organization’s main HR challenges for 2024, then discover how automation can help you overcome them. Once you have a clear idea of what you need, compare it with the features of top-notch HR software in Nigeria. 

Customised demos are the most effective way to learn how HR software in Nigeria operates and how it can serve your business goals.