Your payroll lives in a spreadsheet on someone's laptop. Hundreds of KES entries every cycle, manual PAYE, SHIF & NSSF calculations, no audit trail. Month-end is the same scramble every time.
Kenya HR & Payroll Software — Kenyan Shilling Payslips, PAYE, SHIF & NSSF
From Nairobi tech startups to Mombasa logistics — SmartHR Kenya handles PAYE, SHIF, NSSF, and Housing Levy automatically. Salary disbursement via M-PESA, payslips in English or Kiswahili, and statutory filings ready for KRA every month.
If any of this sounds familiar,
you're in the right place.
The recurring conversations we have with HR, finance and operations leaders in Kenya. SmartHR Africa was built to retire each of them.
When the Kenya gazette changes a statutory rate, you find out from your accountant — three weeks late, after one payroll cycle has already gone wrong and a refund correction is needed.
Staff outside Nairobi — branch, site, field, remote — clock in on paper or via WhatsApp. The data arrives after payroll cutoff. You pay based on what your supervisors think happened, not what actually did.
Statutory filings are a manual export each month. Your finance team rebuilds the same return from the same spreadsheet, every month, because nothing carries forward and nothing reconciles automatically.
Your employees cannot see their Kenyan Shilling payslip, request leave, or update their own details without emailing HR. HR spends half their week on data-entry work the employee could do from their phone.
When an auditor, board member or donor asks for last quarter's payroll cost by cost centre, you owe a 24-hour answer. It takes a week of rebuilding from emails, exports and a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts.
Built for the way your sector actually operates.
Each industry page covers the specific pains, features, and statutory considerations for that sector in Kenya and across Africa. Click through to the one closest to your operation.
NGOs & INGOs
Strong in KEMulti-country payroll, grant attribution, donor-format reports, and field-staff timesheets for African NGOs.
Security Companies
Strong in KEGeofenced clock-in, patrol management, per-client invoicing, equipment tracking, payroll, and a guard ESS portal.
Hospitals & Healthcare
Strong in KEShift rotations, on-call rates, locum contracts, certification tracking for African healthcare.
Schools & Education
Strong in KEAcademic-year contracts, multi-SACCO deductions, licence tracking, multi-campus cost split, and teacher loan management for African schools.
Construction & Engineering
Strong in KESite-gate clock-in, daily-wage payroll, subcontractor management, OSH compliance, and project cost attribution for African construction.
Logistics & Transport
Strong in KETrip-based driver payroll, mobile app, licence tracking, customer billing reconciliation, and cross-border perdiem for African transport.
Kenya Statutory Compliance — Fully Automated
SmartHR Africa calculates every statutory deduction on every payroll run. No spreadsheets, no manual lookups, no compliance risk.
NSSF (National Social Security Fund)
tiered
SHIF (Social Health Insurance Fund)
percentage
Housing Levy
percentage
NITA (National Industrial Training Authority)
fixed
PAYE (Pay As You Earn)
progressive bands
Kenya statutory deadlines, every month.
Typical due day of the month following the payroll cycle. SmartHR Africa generates the return file and reminds your finance team before each cut-off — no missed deadlines, no late-filing penalties.
PAYE
KRA
SHIF
SHA
NSSF
NSSF Kenya
Affordable Housing Levy
KRA
Deadlines drift when the date falls on a weekend or public holiday; the legal cut-off is usually the next working day. Always verify the current month with the authority — and let SmartHR Africa do the filing reminder, the calculation, and the return file for you.
Kenya Salary Calculator 2026
Calculate take-home pay and all statutory deductions. Free, no sign-up required.
Enter Gross Monthly Salary
Monthly gross before deductions
Automate this for your whole team
SmartHR Africa runs compliant Kenya payroll automatically every month.
Start Free TrialBreakdown
Based on the latest Kenya statutory rates we maintain in SmartHR. For payroll exact to the cent — including allowances, reliefs and overtime — talk to our Kenya payroll team.
Enter a salary to see the breakdown
SmartHR Kenya Pricing
Local prices in KES (KSh) — rates locked for May 2026
Starter
Up to 25 employees
≈ $10.00 USD/month
≈ $0.50 USD/employee
See full pricingProfessional
Up to 250 employees
≈ $50.00 USD/month
≈ $1.50 USD/employee
See full pricingBusiness
Unlimited employees
≈ $100.00 USD/month
≈ $3.00 USD/employee
See full pricingOperating in multiple countries? Request a multi-country quote →
Kenya HR & Payroll Guides
Step-by-step guidance for Kenya employers
Kenya HR Compliance Checklist for Employers 2026
Staying compliant as a Kenya employer requires meeting recurring monthly, quarterly, and annual obligations. Use this checklist to ensure nothing falls through the cracks in…
Kenya Employment Law: Leave Entitlements & Employee Rights
Employers in Kenya must comply with the national employment law framework, which sets minimum standards for leave entitlements, contracts, termination, and employee rights. This…
Kenya Pension & Social Security: Employer Guide
Beyond income tax, Kenya employers must also contribute to — and deduct from employees — several social protection funds. These cover retirement, health insurance, housing,…
Kenya Income Tax (PAYE) Guide 2026
PAYE (Pay As You Earn) is the mechanism by which Kenya employers deduct income tax from employee salaries and remit it to the tax authority on the employee's behalf. Getting PAYE…
How to Process Payroll in Kenya: Complete Guide
Running payroll in Kenya means more than paying salaries — it means correctly deducting and remitting statutory contributions, meeting filing deadlines, and maintaining records…
Used by Kenya Organisations
"SmartHR Africa has transformed how we manage our teams across six countries. One dashboard gives our global HR team full visibility, while each country HR manager sees only their own data. The multi-country payroll runs seamlessly — what used to take weeks now happens in hours."
"Managing payroll and attendance across our solar energy operations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique used to be a nightmare. SmartHR Africa gives us statutory compliance in each country automatically — no more manual calculations or compliance risks."
Frequently Asked Questions
All 54 African countries are supported on the platform — including the smaller markets that most HR vendors skip (São Tomé, Eritrea, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan). Statutory rules are maintained centrally for each country, so updates to PAYE bands or social-security rates roll out per country without affecting your other markets.
Pricing is set in USD per employee per month and pinned at the start of each calendar month for currency conversion. Your local-currency price shows on every country page; HQ sees the consolidated USD view. There is no per-country setup fee and no per-module upsell — the same plan unlocks the same features everywhere.
Yes. Each country runs its own statutory engine and pay calendar; HQ sees a consolidated headcount and cost view across every market. Country data is isolated at the database query layer — a Kenya HR user (even via the API) cannot retrieve a Nigeria payroll record. See /solutions/multi-country for the full breakdown.
Statutory rates are maintained centrally in the platform — Kenya PAYE, SHIF, NSSF, Housing Levy; South Africa PAYE, UIF, SDL; Nigeria PAYE per state, Pension Reform Act contributions, NHF; and equivalents for every African country. When a gazette publishes a change, the new rate is applied within days, not weeks — and only to that country, leaving every other country untouched.
Yes — directly into M-PESA (Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique), MTN Mobile Money (Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana), Airtel Money, Orange Money (francophone West Africa), Tigo Pesa, and Wave. The payroll system picks the right rail per employee profile and falls back to bank transfer where needed. See our mobile money payroll guide for the comparison across rails.
Typical single-country onboarding is 4–6 weeks from kick-off to first live payroll cycle. Multi-country rollouts run 6–8 weeks with the first two countries piloted, then phased rollout for the rest. See the 90-day migration playbook for the week-by-week detail.
Yes — the employee self-service app (iOS, Android, and a mobile web version) lets staff view payslips, apply for leave, submit expense claims, clock in with GPS, and submit timesheets. It works offline at field sites and syncs when connectivity returns. For workers without smartphones, USSD short codes cover attendance and basic self-service on any feature phone.
The admin and employee interfaces are available in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, and Amharic. Country-specific contract templates, statutory forms, and payslips are localised to each country's official language(s). Additional languages are added on request for enterprise deployments.
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Join hundreds of Kenya businesses running fully compliant HR and payroll on SmartHR Africa.