The Best Free Payroll Software For Small Businesses

We love Payroll4Free’s robust feature set that’s completely free for businesses with fewer than 25 employees. With Payroll4Free, small businesses can keep costs down without sacrificing tax support, employee time off management, and the ability to pay employees via check or direct deposit. As long as you don’t mind ads, the service is very generous.

Additionally, just because you’re getting a service free of charge, doesn’t mean you’re left on your own. Payroll4Free also offers extensive customer support, including US-based phone support and free account set-up.

Employers that don’t want to deal with depositing and filling out payroll taxes need to pay a $25/month or $250/year fee for Payroll4Free to take care of it for them. However, Payroll4Free does offer free tools as a basic service that you can use to make this process easier.

If you don’t want to rely on your own bank to transfer direct deposit funds to your employees, you will need to pay another $25/month or $250/year for Payroll4Free to complete these transfers using their bank. You can save by bundling Payroll4Free’s tax and direct deposit services for $30/month or $300/year.

The free version of Payroll4Free places no limits on payroll or direct deposit processing and doesn’t require upgrading to a higher-tier plan to enjoy its basic features.

Features that Payroll4Free offers at no additional cost include:

• Multiple Payment Methods: Pay via direct deposit of paper check; print paystubs
• Pay Multiple Worker Types: Pay your employees and contractors at no extra cost
• Employee Management: Employees can view their payroll data via an employee dashboard portal and owners can manage employee time off
• Tax Support: Free tax calculations and forms
• Data Management: Import or export payroll data (into QuickBooks, for example; import time clock data

We love that ExcelPayroll offers a highly customizable foundation for those business owners who have the extra time, know-how, and Microsoft Excel license to get the most out of a spreadsheet-based payroll system.

Once you’ve gone through the setup, ExcelPayroll can handle some impressively advanced payroll operations, including vacation accrual, deductions, paycheck design customization, reporting, custom tax rates, payroll year closeout, and more. Business owners with complex payroll needs and a low payroll software budget will get the most out of ExcelPayroll.

ExcelPayroll itself is free to download, and you don’t need to pay any fees to use its features. Technically speaking, though, ExcelPayroll isn’t completely free since it requires that you purchase a licensed version of Microsoft Office Suite to run Excel.

Microsoft’s 365 Business plan is the cheapest of the cloud-enabled plans that offer the Microsoft Excel application and charges a monthly fee of $6.00 per user. 

According to its program mission, ExcelPayroll strives to create a Microsoft Excel-based payroll application that includes no monthly fees and zero costs attached to using it. Best of all, ExcelPayroll offers a full set of reliable payroll tools, including:

• Payroll Tax Support: Set custom tax rates at the federal, state, and local level; print out W-2 and W-3 tax forms and data
• Customizable Payroll: Set multiple pay rates and schedules, cut checks at any time, customize paycheck designs, pay out supplemental earnings, and set deductions
• Employee Management: Keep up to 1,000 employees in your employee database, set employee status, and track and manage vacation time accrual
• Strong Reporting: Run a wide variety of payroll reports using data entered in ExcelPayroll

Excel Payroll is designed for use by accounting students and very small businesses. Therefore, the creator has placed strict technical limitations on the software that prevent it from being used by larger businesses.

ExcelPayroll’s technical limitations include: limiting the software to 50 active employees, setting the maximum single-employee hourly earnings to $4807.69, and the maximum single-employee annual earnings to $450,300. Non-profits paying more than 57 active employees may reach out to the creator directly to have these limits increased or removed.

We love HR.my as a free payroll software option for small businesses, as it offers the most flexibility for growing businesses, offers a more global payroll solution, and provides an extensive array of free HR features alongside basic payroll.

With HR.my, your small business can add an unlimited number of employees, set custom access roles, manage documents, collaborate in forums, and much more. If your small business pays employees and contractors or is experiencing growth, HR.my offers a solid suite of tools that will help along the journey — without adding any financial strain.

HR.my users may opt to pay a $5/month sponsorship fee in exchange for an ad-free experience, additional file storage, one additional HR role, and early access to new features. That said, the subscription price isn’t compulsory and doesn’t gate any of the service’s core features behind a paywall.

Hr.my accomplishes its free service through crowdfunding from its user community, so you just need to sign up to start using it. HR.my’s free features include:

• Comprehensive Payroll Options: Set custom pay rates, multiple schedule options, custom deductions, set employee status, and track employee time with built-in time tracking
• Employee Management: Employee self-service portal where employees can view and edit records, time off request management and tracking, expense management, document workflows, and scheduling
• HR Tools: Employee collaboration forum, document storage, announcement boards, set custom access roles, and employee credential tracking

We love TimeTrex’s free cloud-hosted payroll software for small businesses that are looking for a solid mix of HR and payroll features. You don’t get a lot of advanced features on TimeTrex’s free plan, but you do get access to all the essentials.

Businesses using TimeTrex can run payroll, track employee time,  and manage employee data from TimeTrex’s platform. There are no limits to the number of employees you can pay on TimeTrex’s free Community plan, so the software can scale with your business.

Timetrex offers a plan comparison online but doesn’t include any further pricing details, so you’ll need to request a quote with them to learn more about which plan makes sense for your business.

TimeTrex supports paid plans which include additional services, such as a mobile app and on-site service in addition to its web portal support. However, customers on TimeTrex’s free plan still have access to the service’s basic features.

TimeTrex offers its most basic payroll features for free under its Community Edition service plan. The TimeTrex Community Edition is exclusively cloud-hosted, doesn’t require any downloads or software installations, and comes with free features such as:

• Run Payroll: Pay employees and contractors via direct deposit of paper check integrated attendance and scheduling
• Employee Management: track employee time and attendance, manage schedules, and manage employee time off
• Payroll Tax Support: Generate tax reports, including For W-2, W-3, 1099, 940, and 941-specific reports; free payroll tax calculator (federal, state, and local taxes)