Keep the payroll you have. Build the part it was never going to do.
Payroll is solved. Gusto, ADP, and Paychex pay people correctly, and replacing one of them buys you nothing. What they do not hold is your onboarding, your policy acknowledgements, your certifications, and your reviews, so those live in a folder and one person's memory. ByteQuix builds that layer around how your company actually runs, on top of the payroll you already have, then hosts and maintains it for a flat monthly fee.
Free 30 minute call. We diagnose, you decide.
Payroll runs fine. Everything around it is a folder.
Between roughly 25 and 75 employees, a company is too big for the shared drive and too specific for the template. Payroll keeps working, so the problem never looks urgent enough to fix, and it grows anyway.
What it costs is not a line on an invoice. It is the day a new hire spends waiting, the certification nobody noticed expired, and the manager who answers the same question for the ninth time.
- Onboarding is a checklist someone remembers.Equipment, accounts, badge, training, paperwork. Nobody owns the whole list, so every new hire loses a day to something that got missed.
- Acknowledgements are unprovable.The handbook went out by email. Whether a given person opened it, and which version they got, is a question nobody can answer when it matters.
- Certifications expire quietly.Licenses, safety cards, and CE credits sit in a spreadsheet with dates in it that nothing watches. You find out when a customer or an inspector asks.
- The same questions reach a person.How much time off do I have, what is the policy on this, where is that form. Every answer is a small interruption to whoever knows.
We build on top of your payroll, not instead of it.
Your payroll provider stays exactly where it is and keeps doing what it does well. We sit with whoever currently carries the HR work, find the parts living in a folder or a head, and build those around your actual process: your onboarding steps, your policies, your renewal dates, your review cycle. Then we host it, watch it, and refine it on a flat monthly fee. Nobody has to change how they work to make room for it.
Sometimes an HR platform is the better buy.
BambooHR, Rippling, Gusto, and Namely are strong products. If your process matches how they model it and you need breadth on day one, buy one. Four situations genuinely call for the platform.
- 01
You need breadth immediately
Applicant tracking, benefits administration, payroll, and reviews all at once, this quarter. A platform gives you every module on day one; a build gives you one workflow at a time.
- 02
Benefits administration is the pain
Carrier feeds, open enrollment, and ACA reporting are compliance plumbing with real penalties attached. The platforms have solved it and stay current with the rules.
- 03
Your process is genuinely standard
If nothing about your onboarding or policies is specific to your company, you are the template customer, and the template is cheaper than anything built.
- 04
You are past about 75 employees
Headcount brings org charts, comp bands, and formal performance cycles. That is breadth, and breadth is what a platform sells.
Small company HR, answered plainly
What does HR software for a small company actually need to do?
Four jobs, and payroll is only the first. Paying people correctly, which Gusto, ADP, Paychex, and Rippling already do well. Getting a new hire productive, which is your equipment, your accounts, your training, and your paperwork. Holding the record, which is policies, acknowledgements, certifications, time off, and reviews. And answering questions without a person in the middle. Most small companies have the first job solved and the other three living in a folder and someone's memory.
Should we replace our payroll provider?
Almost never. Payroll is a compliance problem with tax filing, wage law, and year-end reporting attached, and the providers that do it are good at it. Replacing a working payroll system is expensive and risky for no gain. Keep it, and build the layer above it that your provider does not model.
How much does custom HR software cost for a small business?
The pilot is $800: we build the single HR workflow that costs you the most and run it live for 30 days against an outcome we set with you first. After the pilot it graduates onto the Starter tier at $295 per month, with hosting, maintenance, and refinements included. Full HR platforms typically run $8 to $15 per employee per month, so at 50 employees that is $4,800 to $9,000 a year for a template you still bend your process around.
When is an off-the-shelf HR platform the better buy?
When your process matches the template and you need breadth on day one. BambooHR, Rippling, Gusto, and Namely are strong products, and if you want applicant tracking, benefits administration, payroll, and performance reviews in one place and your workflow fits how they model it, buy one. Custom fits when one or two HR workflows are genuinely specific to your company and the rest of the platform would sit unused.
Does this work at 25 to 75 employees?
That is the band where it fits best. Below roughly 25 people, a shared folder and a payroll provider genuinely is enough. Past about 75 you usually need the breadth a full platform gives. In between is where companies are too big for the folder and too specific for the template, and where one built workflow does more than a platform migration.
What owners read before they call.
When to Build a Custom Employee System
The four operational jobs HR software is really doing, and which of them your payroll provider was never going to cover.
Read the article →Custom Software for Small CPA, HR, and Consulting Firms
If you deliver HR to clients rather than manage your own staff, the build looks different. Start here instead.
See the industry →Turn the Spreadsheet Your Business Runs On Into a Real Tool
If the certification dates and the onboarding checklist still live in a workbook, this is the cheaper starting point.
Read the guide →Small Business ERP Software: Build Only the Parts You Use
The same argument on the operations side: two or three parts of the platform, not the whole span.
Read the guide →Custom Software vs SaaS: What Is the Difference for SMBs?
The plain definitions, and the four signals it is time to consider custom for one specific workflow.
Read the article →