HR & Payroll Services

Beyond running the monthly salary calculation, it covers statutory registration (PF, ESI, professional tax, Shops & Establishment), monthly payroll processing and payslip generation, TDS deduction and filing, PF/ESI/PT compliance filings to deadline, and employee lifecycle administration — onboarding, exits, full-and-final settlement and gratuity calculation. The compliance layer around payroll is usually the part a newly set-up foreign-owned entity lacks in-house, not the salary math itself.

Under an EOR arrangement, the third-party provider is the legal employer of record for statutory purposes — used when a foreign company wants to hire in India before it has its own entity. With a payroll service provider, your own Indian entity remains the legal employer, and the provider only handles payroll processing and compliance administration on your behalf. Most foreign companies use an EOR-style arrangement briefly during market entry, then move to direct hiring under their own subsidiary, with a payroll provider running payroll, once the entity is incorporated.

Not immediately — an EOR-style arrangement can let you hire before an entity exists, which is useful for testing the market or bringing on a first small team quickly. But it's typically a transitional measure: once headcount or timeline justifies it, most foreign parents incorporate their own subsidiary (see our company registration guide) and hire directly, since an owned entity gives full control over IP assignment and employment contract terms and removes the per-employee EOR markup as the team grows.

PF registration becomes mandatory at 20 employees; ESI registration becomes mandatory at 10 employees in most states. Many employers register earlier anyway, since crossing either threshold mid-year still requires registration from that point, and retrofitting compliance onto an already-running payroll is more disruptive than registering upfront.

The four consolidated Labour Codes — the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code — took effect on 21 November 2025, replacing 29 separate central labour statutes. Central rules have been notified, but state-level rules are still being finalised at different paces across states, so the practical wage-definition and procedural requirements applicable to a given payroll should be checked against that state's current rules rather than assumed fixed. This is exactly the kind of ongoing monitoring a payroll provider is built to track on your behalf.

It depends on headcount, entity complexity and how many states you're operating in — operating across multiple states adds professional tax and Shops & Establishment complexity that affects the scope of work. Most providers, including AU Corporate, price per employee per month rather than a flat fee, so an accurate quote needs your actual team size and locations — talk to us and we'll size it against your specific setup.

Last-drawn salary is prorated to the exit date, unused leave is encashed per policy, gratuity is calculated and paid if the employee has completed 5 years of service, TDS is trued up against the employee's actual annual income, any outstanding dues or recoveries are netted off, and a relieving/experience letter is issued — all reconciled and paid out within the company's or state's statutory settlement timeline.