Keka HR and Payroll – Tremendous Features that ‘Shout Out Loud’!

About Keka

Founded in 2015 by Vijay Yalamanchili, Keka is a cloud-based HR & Payroll Platform. It’s an employee experience platform which not only works in Leave & Attendance Management, but also focuses on Employee Performance Management.

Keka is serving their customers with mainly four products – Process Payroll, Manage Talent, Nurture Talent, and Acquire Talent. Within two and a half years, Keka has acquired clients like Saavn and Upgrad and have won the awards of “Best Payroll Software Award 2017, ‘Hottest Startup of Hyderabad’, etc.

Keka HR and Payroll Software Review

First thing, Keka is mainly designed from two perspectives:

1. Employee
2. Admin or HR Manager

We will understand both these modules, and try to understand important features. Let’s go:

1. Employee Module:

The employee module starts with a beautiful dashboard that gives heads-up of leaves and attendance. Apart from that, it gives you insights into upcoming birthdays, holidays, new employees, etc.

From the dashboard, the employee can go to its profile, where all the details and important information about them is mentioned.

Primary Information, Contact Details, Professional Information, Education, Job Info, Time and attendance, Documents. Every information and detail is displayed there.

One of the most essential things for any HR software is to manage the leaves and attendance of employees. So, let’s jump into the main things now. First, Keka can be integrated with almost all types of biometric devices for attendance records, so you will hardly face any compatibility issues with Keka.

Every employee can see the history of his attendance through his account, just like this:

The software shows both the times – Effective Hours and Gross Hours, so the employee can figure out his performance. Based on this data, he can simply make some informed work style changes.

Employees can request for necessary changes in attendance by simply adjusting log details, and you as an admin can approve or reject the request. Quite Simple!

On the other hand, the system will show symbols like a snail, smiley, and right mark. Snail represents the employee is late for the work, and the smiley is the symbol of a perfect work day! As an HR, you can evaluate your employees by looking at these symbols. On the other hand, employee himself can make some workstyle changes if he sees too much of snails!

The second most important thing in Keka is – Leave Management.

The software gives the balance of employee’s previous leaves, approved leaves, types of leave etc.:

Employees can directly apply for leave, and the reporting manager or departmental head will have the authority to approve or reject the leave. Here, Keka has used some thoughtful things that make the leave management extremely user-friendly. Like, when the employee is applying for a leave, Keka will show all the week off days and holidays, so the employee can make a better decision in applying:

Apart from leave and attendance management, this module will show other details like Team Details, Finance Details, To Do List, Employee Directory, and Engagement.

Another cool thing that Keka does is, show the team member details when the employee selects the date of the leave. The employee can see, who else will be absent on that particular day, so he can make a better decision. Pretty thoughtful!

Apart from leave and attendance management, this module will show other details like Team Details, Finance Details, To Do List, Employee Directory, and Engagement.

Employees can interact with colleagues by asking various questions, sharing learning materials, and responding to surveys. Although, only an admin will have the authority to generate new polls and surveys:

Keka’s employee module creates attractive profiles and provides necessary details of every employee. Through the Directory, members can find contact details of every other member, so the work doesn’t get delayed.

2. Admin Module:

This module is filled with tons of features, for an obvious reason! The admin or a manager has lots of responsibilities. Apart from delivering the personal best, he has to make sure the team is also delivering the best. Hence, Keka’s admin module has lots of great features where Employee Performance is involved.

Few features of this module are in similarity with the Employee module, but it differs with the following new menus:

1. Employees
2. Performance
3. Timesheet
4. Payroll

Let’s have a look at these new menus and try to find how it works:

• Employees:

As an admin or a manager, you must know each and every detail of your human resource, and that’s what this menu does! The dashboard itself is filled with lots of important details, so you can make decisions like:

1. Adding New Employees
2. Bulk Adding Employees
3. Approve Profiles
4. Importing Employee Information with Excel Files
5. Birthdays and Anniversaries
6. Generating 25+ types of reports [Like Employee Login, Employees in Notice Period, Login History, Employee Shift Details etc.]

The analysis feature of this menu lets you see multiple graphical representations which are amazing enough to make logical conclusions:

It shows following types of charts:

1. Total Headcount Vs. Months
2. Hiring Vs. Attrition
3. No. of Login Activities Vs. Time
4. Headcount by Job Title
5. Headcount by Department
6. Headcount by Location
7. Headcount by Attendance Shift
8. Headcount by Gender
9. Employee Age in Years
10. Headcount by Time Type [Part time or Full time]
11. Headcount by Worker Type [Permanent or Contract]

Apart from these features, this menu also gives various details like exit employees, employee offers, and employee directory.

• Performance:

When I was learning about this platform through one of Keka’s executives, I noticed he was very excited to explain this part of the system. After understanding this feature, I knew why. Keka has done a tremendous job in performance improvement, and that’s the reason there’s a separate section for this!

The software has given apex efforts to make the entire system user-friendly, so employees can focus more on their core works. But, these features will add more value to employee efforts! Have a look:

1. Feedbacks:

First, the manager can send direct feedbacks to any employee, with appreciation or advice. He can select the people who can see the feedback. Something amazing like this can be sent to employees:

Feedback is one of the most effective tools for performance improvement, and I really loved the way Keka made the use of various badges like The Rising Star, Legend, All Rounder, etc.

2. Goals:

Setting up goals is utmost important whether it is personal or organizational. With Keka, you can set personal goals and also assign various goals to your teammates. Let’s have a look:

You can set up goals with specific details, and assign it yourself or an entire department or the entire organization! You can also set the priority type, so the employees can know the level of importance. The best part – The overall progress can be seen from Library, which looks something like this:

This dashboard is a birds-eye view of all your goals, and any smart manager can figure out the performance of her organization just by looking at this dashboard!

3. Competencies:

Every organization needs certain values and competencies to grow, and Keka has made a special provision for this important subject. In Competencies, the admin can add various competencies which the organization needs like Communication, Teamwork, Time Management, etc.

As an admin, you can create competencies and let your employees know the importance. You can add various behaviors to achieve such competencies. By doing so, you can lead your organization to a better stage. Here’s how you can create competency:

You can also specify competencies as Job Specific or Core Values.

• Timesheet:

Timesheet lets you add multiple projects, clients, invoices, deadlines, etc. In a nutshell, it works as a small project management software for you!

When you create a project, Keka will ask details like:

• Is this project billable or nonbillable?
• Who can manage this project?
• What are the rights you want to provide to that employee?

You can set various tasks in the project, allot specific tasks to a specific employee with a time limit, set up a project flow, set up working hours, set up task hours, etc.

In the Summary section, Keka will show you the progress of your all ongoing projects!

In the Report section, you can download 25+ project related reports!

In the Invoice section, you can find due payments and payment history.

• Payroll:

Payroll is one of the smartest features designed by Keka. For an HR or a manager, it is almost a tsunami time when she has to make sure the salary reaches to the employees. At such time, an HR can make the best out of Keka.

The dashboard of Payroll software will display many important information. Have a look:

The admin can figure out following information on the dashboard itself:

1. Total no. of employees
2. Total calendar days of a particular month
3. No. of employees joined in a particular month
4. No. of employees left in a particular month
5. Total number of users
6. Total number of processed payroll
7. Total payroll cost
8. Total cost of salary
9. Total deductions

Now here’s the point where I was really impressed – Keka has divided the payroll process into six easy steps:

1. Leaves and attendance
2. New joinees and exits
3. Bonus and salary revisions
4. One time payment and deductions
5. Salary on hold & arrears
6. Review all employees

These steps are extremely important in the designing of a payroll. These factors will affect the total salary cost and total deductions. So, Let’s have a close look at these factors and see how Keka performs in it.

The very first step for an HR admin is to figure out the number of leaves and attendance of every individual. In this step, the admin will approve or reject the pending leave requests of employees.

The admin can select the items and approve/reject in mass. The admin can also search for an employee, and make the necessary decision for the request. With such usability, the admin can approve all the leaves within few minutes. And the process of payroll continues…

The next step is to make a decision on Missing Attendance where the admin has to deduct leaves due to missing employee attendance. Actions taken in this step will reflect in the next step i.e. approving the Loss of Pay. Keka will automatically sort the employees who will face LOP, and the admin just have to approve!

An interesting thing here is – You can import an excel file also. So, if you have a separate document of LOP data, you can just upload here, and the work is done!

The next step in the payroll formation is New joinees and Exits. Here, Keka will show you the newly added employees and payable days of the newbie. The admin can take the necessary step for such new joinees.

Here the useful poke is – Keka will also remind you the documents that are remaining to be submitted. This issue is usually faced at the time of welcoming new members where you have to get their original documents. Keka will give you a tiny reminder about missing documents, so you can decide whether move further with this employee or not. The same process is followed by exit employees, and the admin can make the necessary decisions. The end of this step is – Full and Final Statement.

The next step in the payment process is – Bonus and One-time payment. Here, the admin can take the necessary decision whether to pay or not bonus to a certain employee or pay in proportions. As we know by now, the external file can also be imported. Right after this, salary revision can also be seen.

Next step is – One-time payment and deduction. There are various one-time payments like reimbursement or overtime or gratuity. You as an admin can add manually all the entries, and you can import the file as well.

Now, the interesting thing here is, there are some employees with recurring reimbursements or overtime. With Keka, you can fetch the data from last month too! Same way in the following step, you can perform the deductions.

If we move further, Salary On hold and Arrears is the final step. The admin can hold certain employee’s salaries or pay the employee as arrears or mark as void (Never Pay)!

As soon as you complete these six steps, the dashboard will be all green and it will enable the option to generate payroll:

You can run a preview before finalizing the Best payroll software, and finally, you can process the payroll! From the payroll section, you can work with 60+ premake reports on various subjects like provident fund, ESI, statutory, professional tax, income tax reports etc.

Payroll is one of the core reasons to purchase and HR system, and Keka will undoubtedly streamline the payroll process. If you are an HR admin and looking for a user-friendly payroll processor, I don’t see any other choice than this!

Final Sum Up:

If you have come down to this part of the review, you must have known by now that Keka is a beautiful Best HR software with castle rock features. With an amazing interface and usability, Keka wins the heart on the first look! But, when I explored through the features, I really appreciated the efforts Keka has put to develop this Software.

The real test of an HR system is in times like payroll processing or HR audit. This software will undoubtedly stand by your side in those times because it has shortcuts and simple processing. I have hardly seen such user-friendliness on other platforms. I’m totally in love with Keka because there’s hardly anything that has been missed here!

So, In both – Appearance and Functionality, Keka wins the race!

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