Find the best payroll software options for Australian businesses. Compare key features, pricing plans, and more to make the right choice for your payroll needs.
Paying your employees on time and staying compliant with employment laws is vital. Luckily for business owners around the world, these processes can be automated through payroll software.
Depending on your industry and your organisation’s size, the best payroll software for your business is likely either Xero Payroll or Rippling. Below, we’ll review these and other top payroll companies in Australia to help you find your ideal solution.
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| Vendor | Starting price | Free trial | SuperStream Certified | Built-in time tracking | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xero Payroll | $15 AUD/mo.* | 30 days | Yes | Yes | Try Xero Payroll |
| Rippling | Custom | None | No | Yes | Try Rippling |
| ADP Australia | Custom | None | Yes | Yes | Try ADP |
| QuickBooks Workforce | $6 AUD/payee/mo.* | 30 days | No | Yes | Try QuickBooks |
| Dayforce | Custom | None | No | Yes | Try Dayforce |
| Employment Innovations | Custom | None | No | Yes | Try Employment Innovations |
| ELMO | Custom | None | Yes | Yes | Try ELMO |
| CloudPayroll | $10 AUD/mo.* | None | No | Yes | Try CloudPayroll |
*Price includes GST.
Plan details up to date as of 11/14/2023.
Xero Payroll is a highly rated payroll solution for small to medium-sized businesses in Australia. It integrates with Xero Accounting, which is one of the most popular bookkeeping solutions on the market.
With Xero Payroll, you can automate payroll calculations, make payments and report payroll details to the Australian Taxation Office in compliance with the STP initiative. The software is also SuperStream compliant, meaning it will automatically and electronically send your employees’ super contributions to their Australian super fund of choice.
Xero’s standalone payroll plans start at $15 AUD per month (includes GST). At that price, you can pay one to four employees.
If you want bundled accounting-and-payroll plans, Xero Accounting plans start at the following prices (includes GST):
Users of Xero’s Premium and Ultimate plans can choose to pay more than the baseline amount of employees included in the plan in increments of 10, 20, 50 or 100 additional workers. For every employee after your 100th, you’ll pay another $2 AUD/month.
Note that Xero supports payroll for up to 200 workers. If you want to pay more people than that, you’ll need to level up to a heftier enterprise-level solution like ADP Australia.
Try Xero Payroll
Integrating your human resource and payroll software can be a challenge, especially if you purchase software from different vendors that don’t integrate with each other. Rippling neatly sidesteps this problem by offering you a holistic, all-in-one HRIS option.
While you can use Rippling payroll as a standalone service, Rippling really excels when you create a custom package with your preferred Rippling payroll, tech, finance and HR modules. The software is also remarkably user-friendly and scalable, growing with you as your business expands from a small two-person operation to a multinational business with hundreds of workers.
Rippling doesn’t list its prices upfront, though it does charge an unspecified monthly base fee along with a monthly per-payee fee. Contact the company directly to request a free software demo and custom quote.
Try Rippling
ADP payroll is one of the most widely recognized payroll solutions in the world, with coverage in over 140 countries. Its award-winning solution has built-in compliance rules for the Australian market. ADP payroll offers a full range of features, including employee self-service, automated online payroll processing and integration with several third-party applications, including ERPs and time-tracking applications.
ADP doesn’t disclose its payroll plan pricing online. You must contact ADP’s sales team for a customised quote.
Scaling up or down is cumbersome as doing so requires a customised setup.
Visit ADP
QuickBooks’ extremely user-friendly software is fully automated to make running payroll in Australia as simple as possible. Employers benefit from QuickBooks Workforce’s low-cost payroll plans and comprehensive, automated compliance updates. Meanwhile, employees benefit from access to the WorkZone app, which they can use to request leave, submit timesheets, track reimbursable expenses and see their pay slips.
QuickBooks Workforce’s basic plan is fairly fully featured in terms of payroll and compliance. The service also has an advanced plan with features like pre-built Awards, access to roster templates and shift-swapping reports and location- or shift-specific budgeting.
Note: QuickBooks Workforce Software is powered by Employment Hero.
QuickBooks Workforce Software has two plans:
Both prices are GST inclusive. While both plans include all automated payroll features, only the Advanced plan includes rostering and time tracking.
Try QuickBooks
Dayforce is human capital management software built to help businesses streamline payroll and HR functions. The payroll tools offer real-time calculations as they are based on a single pay and time engine. This helps minimise the risk of failed data imports or delays in payroll processing. The solution is fully integrated with the ATO to help reduce administrative burden.
Dayforce doesn’t disclose pricing for its payroll plans online. Contact the sales team for a custom quote.
Try Dayforce
If you don’t have the time or resources to run payroll in house, an outsourced payroll company like Employment Innovations is one possible solution. The company offers an end-to-end payroll service, which means Employment Innovations tackles tasks like paying your employees on time, maintaining compliance with employment laws, submitting the correct reports to the ATO and following all STP processes.
Employment Innovations also tackles award interpretation, which means establishing your employees’ award classification per standards set by Fair Work Australia. If you want outsourced HR along with your outsourced payroll, Employment Innovations offers several HR plans to support small and midsize businesses across the country.
Employment Innovations requires interested parties to request a custom quote.
Employment Innovations
ELMO is a top cloud-based payroll, HR and employee management solution for Australian businesses. Like Rippling, ELMO offers more than just payroll: As a more thorough HRIS solution, ELMO offers a full suite of payroll and HR tools along with optional learning management, performance management, onboarding and recruiting features.
ELMO’s human capital management solution requires prospective customers to request a free quote.
Try ELMO
CloudPayroll is a cloud-based payroll software geared towards small businesses in Australia. While the payroll service does have plans geared toward small, midsize and big businesses, its MICRO plan for the smallest of small businesses sets CloudPay apart.
Whether you go with CloudPayroll’s MICRO plan or one of its more fully featured plans for bigger businesses, you can sync the software with popular third-party apps like Xero Accounting and Timesheets. Thanks to CloudPayroll’s multiple plans and expansive integrations, it’s easy for small businesses to scale up with the software as they grow.
CloudPay’s microbusiness plan, MICRO, starts at $10 AUD per month (including GST) for up to four payees.
The service’s small-business plans are charged by the number of employees you pay and the frequency of your payruns. (For instance, paying one employee once a week costs $9.95 per pay run, GST and bank fees not included.) Other plans require a custom quote, including CloudPay’s outsourced payroll plan and its premium plan for midsize businesses.
For a cheaper option, you can sign up for the premium plan but take over management of your own superannuation payments. Interested customers should get in touch for a custom quote.
Try CloudPayroll
This review only includes payroll software that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) lists on its register of payroll software products.
These products are not necessarily endorsed by the ATO, but their inclusion on the register means they meet basic security standards as established by the Digital Service Provider (DSP) Operational Security Framework (OSF). As a result, these software companies are authorised to send payroll and tax data straight to the ATO on your behalf using a Super Gateway or Sending Service Provider.
Along with conforming to DSP Operational Framework standards, all of the payroll software on our list meet the following requirements:
Most, but not all, of the products we reviewed are also SuperStream Certified by the ATO.
Read our payroll methodology page to learn more about our research methods and review standards.
To find the best payroll service for your Australian organisation, we recommend signing up for a free trial with a provider like Xero. If the payroll provider you’re most interested in doesn’t offer a free trial, they likely offer a free demo, so visit their site for a walkthrough or call to schedule a custom demo.
We also recommend looking through the ATO’s payroll software product register as well as the SuperStream Certified product register. You should never trust a payroll software company that isn’t verified by the ATO or that doesn’t stay up to date with the most recent phases of the STP initiative.
Finally, remember that each payroll software option has its own unique pros and cons. This list of top payroll software in Australia can give you a good start, but don’t make a final decision about which software is right for you until you’ve experienced a detailed demo or software trial.
Xero is one of the best payroll software options for Australian businesses. Its fully automated payroll service integrates with Xero’s fantastic accounting solution as well as with more third-party business apps than nearly any other payroll provider.
However, while Xero might be the right payroll software choice for some Australian businesses, it might not be right for yours. Other options include CloudPay, Rippling, ADP Australia and more.
Xero and ADP Australia are two of the most popular payroll companies in Australia, but there are hundreds of other software options on the market. As long as your payroll service is recognised by the ATO, you can use it to run payroll in Australia.
To run payroll in Australia, start by finding the right payroll solution for your business. Some small businesses can keep costs low by choosing affordable payroll that automates and simplifies in-house payroll. Other businesses might prefer to turn their payroll tasks over to an outsourced payroll company.
Whichever payroll service you choose, it should walk you through the steps you should take to run payroll in Australia, which include the following:
Kylie McQuarrie has been writing about small businesses, payroll, and finance for ten years. While wrapping up her master's degree in English, she simultaneously leant her writing to small businesses struggling to reach customers in Canada, the US and Australia. She's been pursuing a professional writing career with a focus on business payroll and accounting ever since.
