Payroll Outsourcing Services in India. Every Month, Every State, Filed Right.
TMS provides end to end payroll outsourcing and managed payroll services for Indian and global employers that want month-end off their plate. You send inputs by the 25th. Salaries land by the 1st. PF, ESIC, PT, LWF and TDS challans file the same cycle. One senior HR SPOC owns your account. One monthly invoice covers the whole run.
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Short answer: do you need in-house PF and ESIC specialists?
No. With payroll outsourcing, TMS runs your monthly salary cycle and files PF, ESIC, Professional Tax, LWF and TDS for you, in every state you employ in. Your team approves attendance and inputs by the 25th. TMS computes pay, deposits the challans with payment proof, answers employee PF and UAN queries, and applies law changes such as the new PF wage ceiling. If a statutory penalty is caused by a TMS error, we reimburse it.
What Is Payroll Outsourcing, and How Does It Work?
Payroll outsourcing means handing your monthly salary run and statutory filings to a third party payroll services provider that has the software, the state registrations and the compliance staff in-house. TMS becomes that specialist for your India team. We compute pay, deduct and remit PF, ESIC, Professional Tax and TDS, issue payslips and Form 130 (formerly Form 16), and keep audit-ready registers month after month. Some providers call this managed payroll or payroll management services. The scope is the same: payroll processing plus the statutory compliance that goes with it.
The staff still work for you. Their offer letter, appraisal and reporting line stay in your name. What moves off your plate is the pipeline: attendance validation, CTC to net-pay math, challan cutoffs across every state you employ in, mid-year law changes, year-end returns. If you also need to move an existing team onto TMS payroll as the legal employer, that is a separate one-time payroll transfer service.
What Our Managed Payroll Services Include.
Monthly payroll processing
Leave and attendance inputs validated, salary computed, tax deducted, arrears, reimbursements and full and final settlements calculated. NEFT disbursal. Payslips published in the employee portal on payday.
End to end statutory filings
EPF ECR (electronic challan cum return) with UAN updates, ESIC, Professional Tax, LWF and TDS challans filed every cycle across every applicable state, plus quarterly Form 24Q (now Form 138 from FY 2026-27) returns.
Multi-state PT and LWF coverage
Registrations and rate updates maintained across every Indian state. Adding a Bangalore, Delhi or Chennai hire will not trip your compliance calendar.
Employee self-service portal
Payslips, income tax declarations, reimbursement claims and Form 130 download, all self-served. Queries stay off your HR desk.
Year-end and audit support
Form 130 to every employee, Form 138 (formerly Form 24Q) to the department, and audit-ready registers for statutory and internal reviews.
Accuracy guarantee
If a statutory penalty is caused by a TMS error, we reimburse it. Zero penalties in 20 years is the outcome of that discipline.
Payroll Outsourcing Services in India: What Lands in Your Inbox Every Month.
End to end payroll outsourcing should leave you with evidence, not just a salary credit. Every cycle, TMS delivers:
Payslips and salary register
Payslips in the employee portal, the salary register and the bank transfer file for your approval.
Statutory challans and returns
EPF ECR and challan, ESIC contribution, Professional Tax and LWF challans state by state, with payment proof.
TDS and tax forms
Monthly TDS deposit, quarterly Form 138 (formerly Form 24Q) returns and annual Form 130 (formerly Form 16) for every employee.
Full and final settlements
F&F statements for every exit: notice pay, leave encashment, gratuity where due and final tax.
MIS reports
Headcount, payroll cost by department and state, variances against last month and statutory cost, ready for finance.
Employee helpdesk
Payslip, tax declaration and PF or UAN queries answered by the TMS payroll team, so they stay off your HR desk.
Payroll Outsourcing for Every Major Indian Sector.
TMS payroll runs for employers in every regulated Indian sector. The compliance overlay is different in each, and we handle it: shift and OT rules for manufacturing, ESIC thresholds for BFSI back office, statutory bonus and gratuity accruals for pharma, retail wage codes, and IT-specific joining and exit bonuses.
IT and Technology
Product, engineering, GCC
BFSI
Banking, NBFC, Insurance
Manufacturing
Shift, OT, plant payroll
Pharma and Healthcare
Hospitals, R&D, field force
Retail and FMCG
Multi-location, wage code
And more
EdTech, logistics, real estate, media, hospitality, energy, ecommerce and any regulated Indian sector on request
Who Needs Payroll Outsourcing? Five Signals You Are Ready.
Finance and HR leads who have outgrown spreadsheet payroll
You still run payroll in Excel or a starter tool, and every month feels manual. Move to a payroll service provider that gives you audit-ready output.
Multi-state employers juggling different PT slabs
Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana each have their own Professional Tax and LWF logic. One provider maintaining all states removes the state-by-state calendar burden.
Global firms standardising India payroll
Your headquarters wants one India payroll process. TMS integrates with Deel, Rippling, Workday, BambooHR, Keka, GreytHR and ZingHR so the global HRIS stays your single source of truth. No Indian entity yet? Our Employer of Record service employs your India team for you.
Companies opening new state locations
New office in Pune, Hyderabad or Noida. New Shops and Establishments Act, new PT slab, new LWF. TMS adds it to the next filing cycle instead of you setting up from scratch.
Startups and SMEs approaching a statutory threshold
Crossing 10 employees brings ESIC and gratuity into play, and 20 employees brings PF. For a growing startup or SME, an outsourced payroll partner keeps the transition clean.
Outsourced Payroll vs In-House vs PEO in India.
| Factor | Outsourced payroll (TMS) | In-house payroll | PEO / Professional Employer Organization |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the cycle | TMS payroll team | Your HR and finance | Shared, PEO plus your team |
| Statutory filings | Filed by TMS across every state | Filed by you, state by state | Filed by the PEO |
| Fixed monthly cost | Per-employee tiered fee | 1 to 3 FTE salaries plus software | Usually percent of payroll, higher |
| New state expansion | Included in the fee | Fresh PT and LWF setup per state | Included, at PEO cost |
| Compliance liability | Sits with TMS | Sits with you | Shared |
| Best for | Employers wanting month-end back | Single-state teams under 10 employees | Employers wanting full HR lifted |
A useful rule of thumb: outsourcing payroll pays back once you cross 10 employees or two states. In-house makes sense only for a very small single-state team. A PEO usually costs more than outsourced payroll for the same statutory scope, so choose PEO only when you want HR fully lifted, not just payroll.
Payroll Outsourcing or Payroll Software: Which Do You Need?
Payroll software does the maths. Payroll outsourcing does the maths, the filings and the follow-up when rules change. The right choice depends on who you have in-house.
| Factor | Payroll software | Payroll outsourcing (TMS) |
|---|---|---|
| Who enters and checks inputs | Your HR team | Your team approves, TMS validates |
| Who tracks law changes | Software updates rates; your team applies them | TMS applies them to your structure |
| Who files PF, ESIC, PT, LWF, TDS | Your team | TMS, with payment proof |
| Employee queries | Your HR desk | TMS payroll helpdesk |
| Best for | Teams with an in-house payroll expert who has time every month | Teams that want payroll and compliance handled |
Already use HRMS or payroll software? TMS can work on your existing tool or take inputs from it, so you keep the system your employees know.
Payroll Outsourcing Companies in India Only Cover Some Cities. TMS Covers All of Them.
TMS is a payroll outsourcing company that runs compliantly in every Indian state. The heaviest volumes come from Mumbai and Delhi NCR for finance, sales and marketing headcount. Bangalore is the biggest corridor for engineering and product payroll. Hyderabad and Pune drive Global Capability Centres and tech hiring. Chennai is strong for SaaS and support. Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Coimbatore handle back office, plant and manufacturing payroll. Every city sits under its own Professional Tax slab, Labour Welfare Fund rate and Shops and Establishments Act, and we file locally on your behalf.
We also serve payroll across: Gurgaon, Kochi, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Trivandrum, Mysore, Nashik, Indore, Vadodara, Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, Bhopal, Guwahati, Ranchi, Dehradun, and more.
From Kickoff to Steady Monthly Run. Five Steps.
Kickoff
Employee master, statutory IDs, salary structures collected.
Configure
CTC, flexible benefits and tax logic set up in the payroll engine.
Parallel run
First one or two months validated against your existing process.
Monthly inputs
Attendance and variables approved in the portal by the 25th.
Process and file
TMS computes, disburses via NEFT, publishes payslips, files challans.
Payroll Data Security and Confidentiality.
Payroll holds the most sensitive data a company has: salaries, bank accounts, PAN, Aadhaar-linked UAN and tax declarations. In India this is personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, so whoever processes it on your behalf must protect it and use it only for your payroll.
Before you hand payroll to any provider, ask for these in writing:
- Who can see your data. Named access for the people who run your payroll, and nobody else.
- How data moves. Secure upload or integration for inputs and outputs, not open email attachments.
- A data processing agreement. What is processed, for what purpose, and how long it is kept.
- Breach handling. How you will be told, and how fast, if something goes wrong.
- Exit. How your data is handed back or deleted when the contract ends.
We are happy to walk through these with your IT and legal teams during the proposal.
How to Choose a Payroll Outsourcing Company in India.
Most payroll service providers look alike on a sales call. These questions separate them:
- Do you cover every state we employ in? Ask for the PT and LWF registrations they maintain, not just a city list.
- What is the fee, and what is extra? Per employee per month, with F&F, arrears, new joiners and year-end forms included or listed.
- What are the cut-offs and the SLA? Input deadline, salary date and filing dates, in the contract.
- Who pays if you make a mistake? Look for a written accuracy commitment on penalties caused by the provider.
- How do you handle Labour Code and rate changes? Ask how the last change (the PF ceiling or ESIC on wages) was applied for clients.
- Can we switch mid-year? A parallel run of one or two months shows they can take over without a missed cycle.
For a wider view of the market, see our guide to the top payroll outsourcing companies in India, and for fees, the payroll outsourcing cost guide.
India Payroll After the Labour Codes. Where Compensation Has to Shift.
India’s four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, consolidating 29 earlier central labour laws into four unified codes covering wages, social security, industrial relations and occupational safety. The biggest change for a payroll manager is the single definition of wages: if allowances outside basic pay and DA are more than half of total remuneration, the excess is added back to wages. Structures that ran on a low basic plus a wide allowance layer now carry higher PF, ESIC, gratuity and encashment costs. ESIC coverage is also checked on these wages, not on gross pay, since 21 November 2025, and the PF wage ceiling rose to Rs 25,000 a month from 17 September 2026. Every run is also checked against the current state minimum wage, as states revise rates and dearness allowance during the year. State level rules are still being notified at different speeds, so what applies to Karnataka on the 1st may not apply to Tamil Nadu the same day.
TMS reworked every active client’s salary structure when the codes moved in. State notifications are tracked continuously and rolled into the next filing cycle, so employers do not have to chase gazette updates. Zero statutory penalties in 20 years is the outcome of running compliance as a core practice, not a monthly checklist.
HR and Payroll Outsourcing: Services That Pair With Payroll.
Payroll rarely sits alone. Joiners, exits, salary revisions and statutory registers touch HR every month, which is why many employers look for HR and payroll outsourcing from one partner. TMS can run payroll on its own, or together with the compliance, staffing and HR advisory work around it, with one SPOC across all of it.
Statutory Compliance
PF, ESIC, PT, LWF, gratuity and Labour Code filings as a standalone service.
Learn more →HR Consulting
Salary benchmarking, policy design, PoSH, and organisation-development advisory.
Learn more →Payroll Outsourcing vs In-House Cost Calculator
3-year total cost of ownership for a company your size. Compare running payroll in-house against outsourcing it. Includes software, FTE, penalty risk and audit overhead.
When It Makes Sense to Outsource Payroll, and When to Wait.
- Outsource once you cross 10 employees or two states. The compliance load compounds with each new state PT and LWF registration.
- Outsource if you want a clear payroll SLA. Inputs by the 25th, salaries by the 1st, challans on their due dates, every month, owned by one SPOC.
- Outsource if you want month-end back. Founders and HR leads typically reclaim 3 to 5 workdays per month after switching to a payroll processing outsourcing partner.
- Outsource when you are standardising payroll across group companies. One provider gives finance a single audit surface across every subsidiary.
- Stay in-house if you have 5 employees in one state. A cloud payroll tool plus a couple of hours a month may still be cheaper than an outsourced fee at that scale.
- Choose PEO instead only when you want full HR lifted. If you also want benefits admin, hiring, exits and grievance handling under one contract, that is PEO scope, not payroll outsourcing.
Client result
Pharma · Payroll OutsourcingCompliant payroll for 300 medical representatives
- ✓Salaries paid by the 1st of every month
- ✓Zero payroll errors in the first 12 months
- ✓Expense claims settled within 7 working days
Frequently Asked Questions About Payroll Outsourcing in India.
What is payroll outsourcing and how does it work?
Payroll outsourcing hands your monthly salary processing and statutory filings to a third party payroll services provider. TMS receives attendance and variable inputs by the 25th of each month, computes pay and tax, disburses salaries via NEFT by the 1st, publishes payslips in an employee portal, and files PF, ESIC, PT, LWF and TDS challans by their statutory due dates.
Can a payroll service handle PF and ESIC so we do not need in-house specialists?
Yes. A payroll outsourcing provider with in-house compliance staff computes PF and ESIC every month, files the returns and deposits the challans, and keeps the registers ready for inspection. With TMS, your team only approves the monthly inputs. UAN updates in the PF return, and employee PF and UAN queries, are handled by the TMS payroll team.
How much does payroll outsourcing cost in India?
Indian payroll outsourcing fees are typically tiered by headcount. TMS ranges from around Rs 100 to Rs 500 per employee per month depending on team size. Employer statutory contributions pass through at actuals on top. Send your headcount and states for a specific proposal.
Who are the top payroll outsourcing companies in India?
Established Indian firms with in-house statutory teams include TMS, TalentPro, ADP India, Adecco, Excelity, Ramco, Hinote and PaySquare. Global platforms include Deel, Rippling, Multiplier and Wisemonk. For India-only payroll, an India-native provider usually gives faster response, senior ownership and lower total cost than a global platform.
How do we send monthly payroll inputs?
Excel upload, direct API integration, or through your HRIS. TMS is live with GreytHR, Keka, ZingHR, Workday, BambooHR, Rippling, Deel and SAP SuccessFactors. Inputs are approved in the portal by the 25th of each month.
What if a statutory error causes a penalty?
If a statutory penalty is caused by a TMS error, we reimburse it. That accuracy guarantee is why our 20-year statutory penalty record is zero.
Can we outsource payroll mid financial year?
Yes. Mid-year migration is fully supported. TMS runs your first one or two months in parallel with your existing process, reconciles every calculation, and goes live on the next cycle. No need to wait for April.
Do you handle employees across several states?
Yes. TMS maintains multi-state Professional Tax and Labour Welfare Fund registrations across every Indian state. When you open a new office in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Pune, Hyderabad or Chennai, the state PT and LWF are added to the next filing cycle.
What is managed payroll?
Managed payroll is another name for payroll outsourcing: a provider runs your monthly payroll processing and statutory filings on your behalf, while employees stay on your books. TMS manages the full cycle, from attendance and leave inputs to payslips, PF, ESIC, PT, LWF and TDS filings.
Payroll outsourcing or payroll software: which is better?
Payroll software suits teams with an in-house payroll expert who has time every month to enter inputs, apply law changes and file returns. Payroll outsourcing suits teams that want the processing, filings and follow-up handled. Many TMS clients keep their HRMS and let TMS run payroll and compliance on top of it.
Is employee data safe with an outsourced payroll provider?
It should be. Payroll data is personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Ask any provider who can access your data, how inputs and outputs move, how long data is kept, and how a breach would be reported, and get it in a data processing agreement.
What reports do we get every month?
Payslips, the salary register and bank file, statutory challans with payment proof, TDS returns when due, full and final statements for exits, and an MIS report on headcount, cost and variances.
How is payroll outsourcing different from payroll transfer?
Payroll outsourcing runs the monthly salary and statutory cycle for your own employees, on your books. Payroll transfer, sometimes called Employer of Record, moves employees onto the TMS entity so TMS becomes the legal employer. Choose outsourcing if you already employ the staff. Choose payroll transfer if you do not want to open an Indian entity.
Who TMS Is.
Team Management Services (TMS). Indian payroll and HR outsourcing firm since 2006.
TMS is an Indian HR outsourcing and statutory compliance firm operating since 2006. Today 8,500 employees sit on TMS payroll across all 28 Indian states and 100+ cities. The TMS Compliance Practice handles PF, ESIC, PT, LWF and Labour Code filings for 450+ employer clients. Zero statutory penalties on record in 20 years. Core services are payroll outsourcing, statutory compliance, Employer of Record, third party contract staffing, IT staffing and HR consulting. Head office in Mumbai. Website: tmservices.co.in.
Related Guides & Resources
Explore our related guides on payroll outsourcing and compliance in India:
- In-house payroll vs outsourcing
- Moving employees to third-party payroll
- Code on Wages: impact on payroll
- PF compliance guide for India
- Payroll compliance health check
- Payroll Outsourcing Services in India: Benefits & Costs
- How to Choose the Best Payroll Outsourcing Company
- What Is Payroll Processing? A Step-by-Step Workflow
- Payroll Compliance Guide: Deductions & Due Dates
- The Ultimate Guide to Payroll Outsourcing in India (2026)