HR software for remote-first companies
Your team is in six states; your compliance is too. State-wise professional tax, remote attendance and digital-first payslips are the whole game for a remote-first employer.
What remote-first companies get from PeopleDeck
One system for attendance, leave, onboarding and payroll, with PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS applied to every payslip and upload-ready return files generated from the run. Priced per employee, per month, so it fits before you have scale.
Built around your month
- ✓ State-wise professional tax applied per employee work location
- ✓ Remote attendance without biometric hardware: web and mobile punches
- ✓ Fully digital payslips, Form 16 data and reimbursements, wherever people are
- ✓ PF, ESI, PT and TDS applied to every payslip, with upload-ready files, never filed on your behalf
- ✓ Employee self-service for payslips, Form 16 data and leave balances
Your month, week by week
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1
Location is a field, not a problem
Each employee's work state drives PT treatment automatically, so six states means six correct treatments in one run, including the states that levy none.
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2
Attendance without an office
Web punches and flexible policies capture the reality of distributed work; policy rules evaluate what you actually promised (core hours, async days) rather than pretending everyone commutes.
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3
Paydays that feel local everywhere
Payslips, declarations and reimbursements are fully digital; no employee is far from HR because HR is a login, not a floor.
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4
Compliance that travels
When someone relocates, an effect-dated state change re-maps their treatment from the move date. Hiring in a new state is a record pattern, not a project.
What this looks like in practice
Concretely: a 60-person remote company spans Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Kerala and two no-PT states. One run applies five different PT treatments, a Kochi employee's local-body levy included. When a designer moves from Pune to Jaipur, payroll notices via one dated field, and her next payslip simply loses its PT line, correctly. Two quarters later the company hires its first employee in a seventh state; nobody schedules a meeting about it. The state's PT treatment applies from the record, the offer went out same-day, and payroll's answer to geography has permanently become 'yes'.
Built for you if
- ✓ Your team spans three or more states
- ✓ Relocations happen quarterly and payroll notices late
- ✓ You promised flexibility and your attendance policy should encode it
Not the fit if
- ✕ You need multi-country payroll; this is Indian statute only
- ✕ You want monitoring of remote workers — punches and policies, not surveillance
Mechanism deep-dives: the payroll engine · attendance & leave · self-service
Ninety days in
Ninety days in, distributed stops being a payroll adjective. The first month is mostly mapping: recording each person's actual work state, which for many remote companies is the first time that list has been true, and letting the system re-derive PT treatment from it. The second month absorbs the churn that used to cause quiet errors: one relocation, two new hires in a state you had never employed in, all handled as dated field changes rather than research projects. By the third month the operating rhythm is fully digital, with declarations collected in-app during the investment-proof season, reimbursements flowing from photographed receipts to payslip lines, a payday that feels identical in Kochi and Gurugram. The structural win is subtle: your compliance surface now tracks your team's real geography automatically, which means the question 'can we hire in that state?' has stopped being a payroll question at all. The company's payroll, in short, has become as location-independent as its people, which is what remote-first was supposed to mean all along. One practice keeps it honest: a quarterly prompt asking employees to confirm their work state. It costs each person ten seconds, keeps the geography record true without surveillance, and means the statutory map under your payroll never drifts quietly out of date.
Where PeopleDeck stops, deliberately
The boundaries are the point for a remote company. PeopleDeck handles Indian statute across every state you touch; it does not do multi-country payroll, and pretending otherwise is how remote teams get burned, so international contractors belong in a tool built for that. It captures punches and evaluates the policies you actually promised; it does not screenshot laptops, track activity or infer engagement from hours, because a remote culture survives on trust and a surveillance payroll tool would cost more than it computes. And statutory files generate per your registrations for your consultant to file: the system keeps state treatment correct; authority over filings stays with people.
A different seat at the table?
Running a school or college? Staff payroll belongs inside your ERP: SchoolDeck staff payroll or CampusAlly payroll.
Frequently asked questions
How does professional tax work with employees in many states?
Each employee carries a work-state, and the correct professional-tax treatment applies per state automatically, including the states that levy none.
Do we need biometric devices for remote staff?
No — remote staff punch on web or mobile, and those punches carry into the same payroll run as any office attendance.
How is PeopleDeck priced?
You pay for the headcount you actually run, per month, in rupees. No feature sits behind a higher plan, and seasonal teams pay for the season rather than a licence sized to their peak.
Does PeopleDeck file PF and ESI returns?
It prepares, you file. Contributions are applied at current rates and the ECR and return files generate from each approved run, but filing authority remains with the establishment and its consultant.
What about employees who move without telling HR?
Treatment follows the recorded work state; governance stays a policy matter, but corrections are one dated field away, with arrears computed if needed.
Do reimbursements work remotely?
Fully. Claims travel with receipts from anywhere, routed approvals, payout via payroll: the expense loop was designed for people you never see.
How do investment declarations work with no office to collect forms?
Entirely in self-service: employees declare online, upload proofs from wherever they are, and TDS reprojects from the approved declarations; the January proof-collection chaos becomes a dashboard of pending items.
How do new-state registrations get handled?
The system applies each state's treatment once you employ there; obtaining the registration itself is an establishment task your consultant handles, flagged early, so the first hire in a state never outruns the paperwork.
Your month, minus the spreadsheets.
Per employee, per month: attendance to upload-ready returns.
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