What HR software in Nepal actually has to do
Most HR software lists the same modules: employee records, attendance, leave, payroll, recruitment, performance. Comparing those lists tells you little. What separates systems is how well they handle the parts of HR that are specific to Nepal, and how little manual work they leave between the modules.
Start with the rules your payroll has to follow. Under the Social Security Fund, contributions are calculated on basic salary: employees contribute 11 percent (10 percent to the pension fund and 1 percent as social security tax) and employers contribute 20 percent, a combined 31 percent. Tax deducted from salary is deposited and reported to the Inland Revenue Department on a monthly cycle, with the VAT and TDS deadlines falling on the 25th of the following Nepali month. Dates, leave years and fiscal years follow the Bikram Sambat calendar. Confirm current rates and deadlines with the Social Security Fund and the IRD, because they change.
If a system treats these as configuration you will set up yourself with a consultant, that is a cost. If it already models them, that is a head start. Ask which it is.
Test 1: does attendance feed payroll, or do you re-key it?
The biggest hidden cost in HR is the monthly step where someone copies attendance and leave into a salary sheet. A good system makes that step disappear: late arrivals, absences, approved leave and overtime flow into payroll for the same period, and payroll reads them without anyone retyping.
Ask the vendor to show one employee who was absent two days, took one approved half-day leave and worked overtime, and to show how each of those changes that person's payslip. If the answer involves exporting a file and importing it somewhere else, the re-keying is still there.
Test 2: reproduce your real salary sheet
Bring last month's salary sheet and ask the vendor to reproduce it in the demo for at least three employees with different situations: one on a standard scale, one with allowances and an advance, and one who joined mid-month. The net pay, SSF or PF contribution and tax for each should match yours to the rupee.
If it cannot be shown in the demo, treat it as unresolved rather than as something to settle during rollout. Payroll is the module where small differences cause the most damage, because employees notice them first.
Test 3: how biometric attendance really works
Many employers in Nepal use biometric devices. The question is not whether a system supports them, but how. Ask which device brands are supported, how punches arrive (in real time or in batches), what happens when a device loses connectivity, and how a missed punch is corrected.
Corrections matter as much as capture. A good system lets a manager correct a record through an approval, keeps the original punch, and shows who changed what and when. If corrections are silent edits, you will eventually lose an argument about a disputed day.
Test 4: shifts, rosters and leave rules
A system that handles a nine-to-five office can fail in a school, hospital or hotel. Check that it supports rotating shifts, split duties, roster planning by station and time slot, and holidays that differ by branch.
Then test leave. Ask for your own policy, not a sample: accrual, carry-forward, encashment, half-days, and leave that spans a holiday. Leave rules are where generic software most often has to be bent.
Test 5: what employees and managers can do themselves
Self-service decides whether HR spends its time on people or on requests. Employees should be able to check attendance, request leave, travel and expenses, view payslips and see balances. Managers should have one place for approvals instead of a different screen for each type.
Check it on a phone as well as on a desktop. For frontline staff, the phone is usually the only screen they have.
Test 6: the reports you will be asked for
Within a quarter, someone will ask for headcount by department, attrition, attendance by branch, payroll cost by month, or a statutory summary. Count how many of those the system answers without an export to a spreadsheet.
Look for a searchable report library, not just a dashboard, and for the ability to export. A dashboard is good for a glance; a report library is what you use at audit time.
What drives the cost
Pricing in Nepal varies by employee count, by module, and by branch, and some vendors offer free or low tiers for very small teams. Compare on total first-year cost rather than on the headline rate.
The parts that are easy to overlook are data migration from your current records, payroll configuration, biometric device integration, training, and what support costs after the first year. Ask for each as a line item. A quote that looks cheap often moves those costs rather than removing them.
Options available in Nepal
The Nepali market has several established HR and payroll systems, plus international tools. Knowing the range helps you shortlist three to compare, rather than twelve.
Descriptions below are the vendors' own positioning, taken from their public websites in October 2026. They are not rankings and we have not tested every product. Vividia is a vendor too, so check every claim, including ours, in a demo with your own data.
- Nimble HRMS: describes itself as widely used across government institutions, banks, microfinance, NGOs, education, hospitals and hotels, with modules for recruitment, payroll and compliance, leave and attendance, appraisal, training and mobile self-service.
- HajirHR (Hajir Khata): a cloud-based HR and payroll system covering attendance, leave and payroll with SSF, TDS and SST compliance, which says it serves more than 1,600 organisations.
- RigoHR: HR and payroll software positioned for growing businesses and described as covering hire to retire.
- Pace HRMS: positioned as an affordable all-in-one HRMS for payroll, attendance, employee management and compliance.
- NepalHRM: lists PF, CIT, SSF and eTDS payroll, biometric attendance, leave, recruitment and a mobile app, with a free tier for very small teams.
- Bidhee HRIS: focused on employee records, payroll and recruitment.
- Agile HRMS: built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, for organisations that want payroll inside an ERP.
- Vividia HRM: employee records, biometric attendance, leave, payroll with tax, PF, SSF and insurance, recruitment, performance, training and 43 reports, connected to the other Vividia Suite applications.
Where Vividia HRM fits
Vividia HRM is built for employers with more than one team, shift or site. It covers employee records, attendance with biometric device logs, leave, payroll with tax, PF, SSF and insurance deductions, recruitment, performance, training and a library of 43 reports, and it shares employees with the accounting and operations applications in Vividia Suite instead of duplicating them.
It is not the right tool for everyone. If you have a handful of employees and only need a simple attendance register, a lighter tool will be cheaper and quicker to adopt. If your HR sits next to accounting, inventory or education operations and you want one employee record across them, a connected system removes the reconciliation work that separate tools create.
Questions to put to every vendor
Use the same questions with each vendor so the answers are comparable.
- Show my last salary sheet reproduced for three different employees.
- How do attendance, leave and overtime reach payroll, and where does anyone have to retype anything?
- Which biometric devices are supported, and how are missed punches corrected and audited?
- Show my leave policy and my shift pattern, not a sample one.
- What can an employee do from a phone without calling HR?
- Which of these reports can I run without exporting: headcount by department, attrition, payroll cost by month, attendance by branch?
- What does year one cost in total, including migration, devices, training and support?
- Who answers the phone locally when payroll is due and something is wrong?
