HR software for real-estate firms
Sales-commission handling, site-staff attendance, PF and ESI applied, and payslips across offices and project sites.
What does HR software for real-estate firms do?
It runs attendance, leave and payroll for real-estate firms — applying PF, ESI and TDS to every payslip and generating upload-ready return files, while handling what makes this industry different: commissions and site staff. PeopleDeck prices this per employee, per month.
Commissions and site staff
Real-estate payroll swings with sales commissions while site staff clock attendance at projects across the city. Both belong to the developer's payroll — society and RWA staff don't.
Real-estate payroll swings where other industries hold steady. The sales team's month is commission-geometry — slabs that step up on booking values, spiffs on inventory the developer wants moved, clawbacks when a booking cancels before registration. The site side is steadier but scattered: engineers and supervisors clock attendance across projects, and their cost must land on the right project's books because every project is its own profit centre, often its own RERA-accounted entity. And the boundary matters: the society staff and RWA employees of completed projects are not the developer's payroll, however often their salaries transit the developer's accounts during handover. PeopleDeck computes the commission geometry from booking data, lands site attendance on project cost centres, and keeps the developer's establishment cleanly bounded, which is exactly the shape a RERA-era audit expects to find. The pattern holds across cycles: in launch quarters the system earns its keep computing commission volume, and in slow quarters it earns it again — keeping clawbacks, site costs and accruals clean enough that the lean months close as quickly as the fat ones.
How PeopleDeck runs it
- ✓ Sales-commission slabs computed into the monthly run
- ✓ Site-wise attendance for project staff
- ✓ PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS applied to every payslip — upload-ready return files, never filed on your behalf
- ✓ Self-service payslips, Form 16 data and leave balances for every employee
A month in real-estate payroll
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1
Commission structures encoded, not remembered
Slabs, spiffs and clawback rules live as effect-dated structures. When the scheme changes for the new tower's launch, the new rules apply forward and the old rules keep defending old payouts.
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2
Bookings become commission inputs
Approved booking data (value, project, sales credit) enters as structured input. Commissions compute per the applicable slab, with splits where sourcing and closing differ, and every rupee traces to a booking reference.
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3
Sites close on project cost centres
Each project site's attendance closes against its roster; engineers moving between projects mid-month split their cost by recorded days. Project-wise people-cost lands where RERA-separated books need it.
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4
The run computes both worlds
Fixed salaries, commissions and site wages compute together; clawbacks net against current-month commissions with the original booking cited; PF, ESI, PT and TDS apply; payslips itemise every commission line; statutory files generate per establishment.
A worked example
A sales executive on ₹30,000 fixed closes bookings worth ₹2.1 crore in a month where the slab pays 0.4% up to ₹1.5 crore and 0.55% beyond: commission computes to ₹93,000, itemised booking by booking. TDS reprojects for the spike: the system spreads the projection rather than shocking one month. Two months later a ₹40-lakh booking cancels before agreement: the ₹1,600 clawback nets against that month's commissions, citing the original booking, and the executive's payslip shows the arithmetic instead of a mysterious deduction. Meanwhile a site engineer who spent 14 days at Project A and 10 at Project B lands 58/42 on the two projects' cost reports: the split the auditor asks about, answered by attendance records.
At the portfolio level, the same run answers the CFO's standing questions: people-cost per project against budget, sales-cost ratio per tower launch, and commission liability already earned but not yet paid: the accrual the auditor asks about at year-end. Because each figure traces to bookings and attendance, the numbers hold up in the project review and the audit alike.
Figures are illustrative, for mechanism only; your structures and rates will differ.
Key terms in real-estate payroll
Commission slab
The stepped rate structure on booking values. Encoded with effect dates and computed from booking references, it turns the sales team's most contested number into a shown calculation.
Clawback
Recovery of commission on cancelled bookings, netted against current earnings with the source booking cited. Undocumented clawbacks are the sector's most common payroll dispute; cited ones rarely survive as disputes.
Project cost centre
The per-project ledger destination for people-cost. RERA-era accounting separates projects; payroll must land attendance-backed cost on the right one by construction, not allocation guesswork.
Is PeopleDeck the right fit?
Built for you if
- ✓ Sales commissions run on slabs, spiffs and clawbacks
- ✓ Site staff work across multiple projects and their cost must split
- ✓ Projects keep separated books under RERA accounting
- ✓ Channel-partner payouts must stay outside payroll, cleanly
- ✓ Cancellations currently produce commission arguments
Not the fit if
- ✕ You want a CRM or inventory-management system. This consumes approved bookings, it doesn't manage the funnel
- ✕ You want society and RWA staff on the developer's payroll — post-handover staff belong to the association's establishment
Mechanism deep-dives: the payroll engine · attendance & leave · statutory compliance
Switching without a bad payday
Developers switch at a quarter boundary, sales team first because commissions are where the disputes live. The current scheme is encoded, the trailing scheme kept for pipeline bookings, and one cycle runs in parallel against the CRM-and-spreadsheet workings. The parallel month reliably surfaces the sector's classics: slab boundaries applied inconsistently, clawbacks tracked in someone's notebook, TDS shocks on good months. Each becomes a rule with an effect date.
Site payroll follows project by project, each site's roster and rates encoded as it migrates, cost centres mapped to the project ledgers. Within a quarter the developer has what RERA-era governance actually wants: commission payouts that cite bookings, project costs that cite attendance, and an establishment boundary that keeps the developer's payroll, channel-partner brokerage and society staff in three separate, defensible places. The habit to keep: no commission input without a booking reference: the day exceptions creep in, the audit trail starts leaking.
Not your industry?
Managing a housing society or RWA instead? That staff belongs in EstateDeck.
Running a school or college? Staff payroll belongs inside your ERP: SchoolDeck staff payroll or CampusAlly payroll.
Related industries
Frequently asked questions
What does HR software for real-estate firms include?
Attendance and rosters, leave, onboarding to full-and-final, and payroll with PF, ESI and TDS applied to every payslip, plus commissions and site staff handled natively. Employees get self-service payslips.
How are sales commissions taxed?
Commissions enter the run as taxable pay components, so TDS is computed on the true monthly total, no year-end surprises for the sales team.
How is PeopleDeck priced?
Per employee per month, in rupees. You pay for the headcount you run, no module bundles, no per-site fees.
Does PeopleDeck file PF and ESI returns?
No; it applies PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS and generates upload-ready ECR and return files. Filing stays with you or your consultant.
How are channel-partner commissions kept separate?
Channel partners are vendors, not employees; their brokerage belongs in accounts payable with its own TDS section. Payroll computes only employee commissions, and the boundary is structural.
Can commission schemes differ per project or tower?
Yes — structures attach per project or launch with effect dates, so parallel schemes run simultaneously and each payout cites the scheme that computed it.
What happens to TDS when commissions spike?
The projection recomputes on actuals and spreads the liability across remaining months: the executive feels a managed adjustment, not a one-month shock, and year-end reconciles clean.
Do site workers on daily wages fit the same run?
Yes — daily-wage site labour computes from muster days beside salaried staff, with PF and ESI on qualifying wages, and their cost lands on the same project cost centres.
Can it handle joint-venture projects with shared staffing?
Yes — JV project sites run as cost centres whose people-cost reports can split per the JV's agreed basis, while employees stay on whichever entity actually employs them.
Payroll for real-estate firms, without the spreadsheets.
Per employee, per month: attendance to upload-ready returns.
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