For many growing companies, payroll doesn’t break overnight. It slowly starts leaking—until it becomes too big to ignore. That’s exactly what happened at a mid-sized IT services company in Bangkok (name anonymised), with around 60 employees. For a while, their internal setup worked: two HR staff managing everything from hiring to payroll using Excel alongside a basic payroll tool. But growth changed the game. By late 2022, after hiring 15 more employees, the cracks started to

For many companies, payroll starts with Excel. It’s flexible, familiar, and works—until it starts slowing everything down. At some point, the same system that once felt efficient begins creating more work than it saves. When Excel Starts Working Against You Most teams don’t switch systems because they want to. They switch because the cracks start to show: • Multiple files, multiple versions, no single source of truth • Manual inputs for OT, leave, and adjustments • End-of-mon

Most payroll problems don’t announce themselves. They show up quietly—until they don’t. A missed update. A wrong OT entry. A delayed submission. Individually, they seem manageable. But in the second half of the year—when hiring ramps up, salary adjustments increase, and reporting pressure builds—these small issues start compounding. And when payroll breaks, it doesn’t stay in HR. Where Payroll Starts to Go Wrong Across many growing organisations, the same patterns appear. 1.