Navigation

All Countries

Solutions

Multi-Country Operations Enterprise & White-Label Field Workforce

Industries

NGOs & INGOs Security Companies Hospitals & Healthcare See all industries → Platform & Modules Salary Calculators Pricing Blog
East Africa

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.

Income Tax: PAYE (5 bands, up to 35%) Social Security: NSSF Tier I & II Health Insurance: SHIF (2.75%) Housing Levy: 1.5% employee + 1.5% employer
Panoramic view of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya — SmartHR Africa supports HR, PAYE payroll, SHIF, NSSF and Affordable Housing Levy compliance for Kenyan employers.
Kenya
KES
Currency
Nairobi
Capital
5
Statutory
English
Language
What we hear from HR teams in Kenya

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.

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.

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.

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

Employee + Employer

SHIF (Social Health Insurance Fund)

percentage

Employee

Housing Levy

percentage

Employee + Employer

NITA (National Industrial Training Authority)

fixed

Employee + Employer

PAYE (Pay As You Earn)

progressive bands

Employee
Income Tax: PAYE (5 bands, up to 35%)
Social Security: NSSF Tier I & II
Health Insurance: SHIF (2.75%)
Housing Levy: 1.5% employee + 1.5% employer
Monthly filing calendar

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.

9 of next month

PAYE

KRA

9 of next month

SHIF

SHA

9 of next month

NSSF

NSSF Kenya

9 of next month

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 Trial

Breakdown

Gross Salary KSh
Total Deductions - KSh
Take-Home Pay KSh
Total Employer Cost KSh

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

Open full Kenya salary calculator →

SmartHR Kenya Pricing

Local prices in KES (KSh) — rates locked for May 2026

Starter

Up to 25 employees

KSh1,300 /month base

≈ $10.00 USD/month

+ KSh100 /employee/month

≈ $0.50 USD/employee

See full pricing
Most Popular

Professional

Up to 250 employees

KSh6,500 /month base

≈ $50.00 USD/month

+ KSh200 /employee/month

≈ $1.50 USD/employee

See full pricing

Business

Unlimited employees

KSh12,950 /month base

≈ $100.00 USD/month

+ KSh400 /employee/month

≈ $3.00 USD/employee

See full pricing

Operating in multiple countries? Request a multi-country quote →

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."

Routeways Technologies
Technology & Field Services

"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."

Litetech
Solar Energy

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.

Ready to Automate Kenya Payroll?

Join hundreds of Kenya businesses running fully compliant HR and payroll on SmartHR Africa.