Start with the work, not the feature list
List the HR tasks that consume the most time each month. For most SMEs this is leave and attendance tracking, preparing payroll, collecting claims and overtime, and answering employee questions. A system should remove those tasks first. Everything else is secondary.
A checklist for comparing vendors
- Malaysian payroll: does it handle EPF, SOCSO, EIS, PCB and HRDF, produce Malaysian payslips and export bank files?
- Structure: can it model your branches, departments and positions, and route approvals accordingly?
- Attendance: does it cover shifts, late reports and, if you have multiple sites, location-based attendance?
- Approvals: who approves what, and can managers see everything waiting for them in one place?
- Access control: can you give employees, managers and HR different access?
- Pricing: is the plan price, what is included, and the per-employee charge beyond that stated plainly, and is SST shown?
- Trial: can you try it with your own data before paying?
- Growth: what changes at 50 or 200 employees — pricing, features, deployment options?
Questions to ask any vendor
- Which features are on which plan, in writing?
- What happens to our data if we leave?
- Which features are not available today? A clear answer is a good sign.
- Can we deploy on our own servers if our policy requires it?
How BukuHR answers these
BukuHR publishes plan eligibility for every feature on its pricing page, includes the first 10 employees in each plan, shows prices before 8% SST, offers a 14-day free trial and lists what it does not do yet. Standalone deployment on your own infrastructure can be quoted separately.
Official sources
General information only. This guide is not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm current requirements with the relevant authority or a qualified adviser.
See what each plan includes and what it costs.
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