Built for this category
Not a generic HR tool with a checkbox for your industry. The workflows, terminology, and reports match how your operation actually runs — because the platform was designed for it from the start.
NGOs & INGOs
HR, Payroll & Grant Reporting for NGOs and INGOs in Africa
Grant-attributed salaries, donor-format reports, project timesheets from the field, and multi-country payroll on one dashboard — built for African NGOs and INGOs answering to PEPFAR, Global Fund, USAID, FCDO and EU auditors.
12
capabilities
12+
African markets
USD
pricing · local currency view
Mobile · USSD · WhatsApp
every device
Grant-based salary attribution
Donor-format reports
Field staff project timesheets
GPS-verified field attendance
Multi-currency payroll engine
Multi-country dashboard
Country isolation by design
Cross-country transfers preserve service
Statutory compliance per country
Tap any capability to see the detail · or scroll for the full picture
Connected to payroll
Every event in this module — attendance, leave, timesheet, equipment, incident, performance — flows automatically into the next payroll cycle. No spreadsheet reconciliation, no double entry.
African by design
Statutory rules maintained for 40+ countries, mobile-money payouts, USSD self-service, WhatsApp delivery, multiple languages, offline-capable mobile app for field workers.
The problems we hear most
If any of this sounds familiar,
If any of this sounds familiar,
you're in the right place.
These are the recurring conversations with buyers in this category. We built the platform to retire each of them.
Every donor wants their report in their format — PEPFAR cost categories, Global Fund modules, USAID line-items, FCDO outputs, EU horizons — and your finance team rebuilds each one by hand at quarter-end.
Field officers in 5 countries split their salary across 3 grants. Your spreadsheet can't track who funded what — and your audit team can't prove it cleanly when the donor visits.
Field staff submit timesheets on paper or WhatsApp. By the time they reach HQ, payroll has already run and you're attributing salary to the wrong project.
Country offices file their own statutory returns to KRA, URA, ZIMRA, ZRA. Headquarters has zero real-time visibility until month-end reports trickle in a week late.
USD-funded grants, local-currency statutory deductions, FX revaluations at month-end. The reconciliation eats two days of your finance team's time every cycle.
Cost-per-beneficiary reporting — your donor wants to see programme cost divided by people served. Without grant-attributed payroll, you can only guess.
A senior officer transfers Kenya → Tanzania → Uganda. Service date breaks. Leave balance resets. Gratuity gets miscalculated. Nobody catches it for 8 months until exit.
Donor audits arrive with 48 hours' notice and demand every payroll transaction with supporting documentation, in donor format. You scramble.
What's built in
Features your team will actually use.
Specific tools for this category — not generic HR repackaged. Each card describes what the feature does and how it fits the way you work.
01
Grant-based salary attribution
Split any employee's salary across multiple grants by percentage or fixed amount. Effective-from and effective-to dates per allocation. Audit-traceable to the day, exportable per donor on demand.
02
Donor-format reports
PEPFAR, Global Fund, USAID, EU, FCDO templates ship out of the box. Generate per-grant payroll cost reports in the exact format auditors expect — no Excel reshaping.
03
Field staff project timesheets
Field officers submit timesheets from a mobile app, online or offline. Each hour is tagged to a project and a grant. Approval workflow runs to the line manager before payroll picks it up.
04
GPS-verified field attendance
Community health workers, M&E officers, and field engineers clock in at project sites via GPS — or via USSD on feature phones. Offline-capable, syncs when connectivity returns.
05
Multi-currency payroll engine
Grant ledger in USD, salaries paid in local currency, statutory contributions in local currency, consolidated reports in USD. Configurable FX policy: spot rate, locked month-end rate, or custom.
06
Multi-country dashboard
Country HR teams manage their own employees and run their own payroll. Global HQ sees consolidated headcount, payroll cost, and grant burn in one place — without breaking country data isolation.
07
Country isolation by design
Country HR in Uganda cannot retrieve a single Kenya payroll record — enforced at the database query layer, not the UI. Regional, country, and global roles are clearly separated and audit-logged.
08
Cross-country transfers preserve service
A programme officer moves Kenya → Tanzania → Uganda. Original service date preserved. Gratuity entitlement bridges correctly. Each country period has its own statutory rules. The transfer doesn't break anyone's benefits.
09
Statutory compliance per country
Kenya PAYE/SHIF/NSSF/Housing Levy. Uganda PAYE/NSSF/LST. Nigeria PAYE/Pension/NHF. Each country office files exactly what their authority expects, with the maths done correctly the first time.
10
Auditor-scoped read-only access
Issue a time-limited read-only login to a donor auditor. Scope to one country, one grant, one date range. Auditor sees what they need; cannot see anything else; access auto-expires.
11
Cost-per-beneficiary reporting
Programme staff cost ÷ beneficiaries served = the metric every impact report wants. Calculated automatically from grant-attributed payroll and your beneficiary counts.
12
Immutable audit trail
Every payroll transaction, every salary change, every approval — logged with user, timestamp, before/after values. Donor audits start with a one-click export, no reconstruction needed.
Why modules aren't enough
Every event is wired to the next.
Most HR systems sell modules as separate products — and then your team spends every month reconciling between them. SmartHR Africa is one system. Each event in this category flows automatically into the right downstream process.
Field timesheets
Donor reports
Hours tagged to grants on the mobile app roll up directly into PEPFAR / Global Fund / USAID / EU / FCDO report formats — no Excel reshaping at quarter-end.
Grant attribution
Payroll
Percentage or fixed-amount splits per employee per grant feed the next payroll cycle automatically, with effective-dated history preserved for audit.
GPS field attendance
Project costing
Community health workers and field officers clock in at project sites — hours flow into per-grant and per-activity cost reports without manual entry.
USD grants
Local-currency payroll
Grant ledger in USD, salaries paid in local currency. Configurable FX policy (spot, locked monthly, or custom) reconciles automatically each cycle.
Cross-country transfer
Continuous service
A programme officer moves Kenya → Tanzania → Uganda. Service date preserved, leave accruals continue, gratuity bridges correctly under each country's statutory rules.
Donor audit request
One-click compliance pack
Filter the audit log by grant and date range, export. The compliance pack arrives in the auditor's email — no week of reconstruction work.
Where this matters most
Live across 12 African markets.
Statutory compliance, local-currency payroll, and salary disbursement options in every market we support. Click through to your country page for in-region pricing, statutory rates, and a calculator.
Yes. Each employee can have any number of grant allocations — percentage or fixed-amount — with effective-from and effective-to dates per allocation. A programme officer might be 60% PEPFAR, 30% Global Fund, 10% EU core for Q1, then shift to 50/40/10 in Q2 when a new grant cycle starts. The full attribution history is preserved for audit, and every payroll cycle produces a per-grant cost report automatically.
Yes — these formats ship as built-in templates. PEPFAR cost categories (Care & Treatment, Prevention, Above-Site, OVC, etc.), Global Fund cost categories per module, USAID line-items, FCDO outputs, EU horizons. Each payroll cycle produces a per-grant cost report in the format the donor expects. Custom donor templates are added with a one-time configuration call.
The grant ledger is in USD. Salaries are paid in local currency. We capture the FX rate used at each disbursement and produce a monthly reconciliation showing USD-burned vs grant-budget. Configurable FX policy: spot rate at run-time, locked month-end rate (most NGOs choose this for predictability), or a custom rate you set.
The mobile app stores timesheet entries, GPS-tagged photos, and clock-in/out events locally on the device. When the device reaches signal (even a weak 2G connection while travelling back to town), everything syncs automatically. Deduplication ensures nothing is double-counted on retry. USSD is supported as a fallback for any feature phone on any network.
Yes. Beyond grant attribution, salaries can be tagged to project codes, activities, geographic regions, or beneficiary cohorts. The cost report rolls up by any dimension. This is what generates the impact metrics most donor reports want: cost per HIV client retained, cost per facility supported, cost per district reached.
Each country office runs its own statutory calculation — Kenya PAYE/SHIF/NSSF/Housing Levy, Uganda PAYE/NSSF/LST, Nigeria PAYE per state/Pension Reform/NHF, etc. Country HR submits to the relevant authority. HQ sees the consolidated view but cannot accidentally trigger a wrong filing for another country.
Country isolation is enforced at the database query layer, not the UI. A Kenya HR Manager logging in cannot retrieve a single Uganda payroll record, even via the API. Regional, country, and global roles are cleanly separated. The Global HR Director sees consolidated views; country teams see their country only.
You set the grant's end date in the system. After that date, no new salary attribution can hit it. Employees previously attributed to that grant automatically get re-allocated to whichever grant or core fund you specify. No accidental over-spend, no manual rebuilds.
Yes. Issue a time-limited read-only login scoped to a single country, a single grant, and a specific date range. Auditor logs in, exports what they need, the access expires automatically at the end of the audit window. No firewall changes, no exposing your full system to a third party.
Typically 5-10 business days per country: data migration from your existing system or spreadsheets, statutory rule verification, training the country HR team. Larger INGOs with 10+ countries usually run a 6-8 week rolling onboarding, with the first 2 countries piloted before the rest follow.
Pricing
Simple USD pricing.
Pay per employee, monthly. Local-currency price on every country page — converted at our locked monthly rate.
Starter
Core HR for growing teams
$10.00
/month base
+ $0.50 /employee/month
- Employee records & profiles
- Leave management
- Web attendance with GPS
- Document management
- Employee self-service portal
- Mobile app access
- Email support
Most Popular
Professional
Full HR + payroll, statutory compliance built in
$50.00
/month base
+ $1.50 /employee/month
- Everything in Starter
- Full local-currency payroll
- Statutory compliance (PAYE / NSSF / NHIF / etc.)
- Performance management
- Recruitment & onboarding
- Expense claims & loans
- Training & certifications
- WhatsApp & SMS notifications
- Priority support
Business
Multi-country operations, full automation
$100.00
/month base
+ $3.00 /employee/month
- Everything in Professional
- Multi-country dashboard
- Projects & timesheets (NGO/donor reporting)
- Biometric device integration
- API access
- White-label option
- Dedicated account manager
- SLA-backed support
See pricing in your local currency on any country page →
See it work on your data.
30 minutes with our team. Bring your countries, your headcount, and the questions your finance and HR leads keep asking — we'll walk you through every module relevant to your operation.