HR and payroll software for Indian schools, teaching and non-teaching staff together
A school payroll has two populations that behave nothing alike: teaching staff on academic year contracts, and non-teaching staff on continuous employment with shift patterns. Offrd keeps both in one record, with appointment letters, biometric attendance, payslips and statutory calculation included at ₹50 per active staff member a month.
Last updated 27 August 2026
Two staff populations, one payroll month
Ask a school administrator what makes HR difficult and the answer is rarely about teachers. It is about everyone else. A school of sixty employs perhaps thirty five teaching staff and twenty five others: office and accounts, librarian and lab assistants, transport, security, housekeeping, canteen. Those two groups have different contracts, different working hours and different pay cycles, and they arrive at the same payroll month.
Teaching staff often sit on fixed term contracts renewed each academic year. Non-teaching staff are usually continuous, frequently in shifts, and often the group where paperwork is thinnest. The bus driver who has been on the route for nine years may never have received a written appointment letter.
That gap is now a legal problem rather than an administrative one. Written appointment letters became compulsory for every employee under the Labour Codes that took effect on 21 November 2025, with no exception for support roles or for people who have been there a long time.
What the academic year does to gratuity
This is the detail most schools have not yet worked through. Under the Labour Codes, fixed term employees become eligible for gratuity after one year of service rather than the five that applied before.
A teacher on successive one year contracts is therefore accruing an entitlement each year, calculated on the statutory formula: wages multiplied by 15, multiplied by years of service, divided by 26, subject to the twenty lakh ceiling. If your contracts have been treated as resetting the clock every June, the arithmetic in your books may be understating what is owed.
Offrd computes gratuity from basic pay on the employee record, and the record survives a contract renewal rather than restarting with it. Whether the accrual applies to a particular contract structure is a question for your auditor, but at least the service history is there to look at.
Worth checking at the same time: whether staff who moved between roles, say a lab assistant who became an office administrator, have one continuous record or two separate ones. Two records means the date of joining is wrong on the second, and gratuity is calculated from the wrong date.
Attendance without replacing the machine
Most schools already own a biometric device, and most software vendors would rather you bought theirs. Offrd syncs with fingerprint and facial scanners you already have, and will also take an attendance import from a CSV or Excel file if that is what your machine produces.
For staff the machine does not cover, there are two other routes. QR check in works at a gate or a staff room entrance and needs nothing installed on anyone's phone. GPS check in with a 500 metre radius suits transport crews, outreach teachers and anyone working from a second campus.
Shifts are named schedules with grace periods, which matters for security and housekeeping staff on rotating patterns. Break splits are recorded. Holiday calendars cover national, regional and optional holidays, which is more useful in a school than almost anywhere else, given how many local observances land in an academic calendar.
| Staff group | Usual contract | Attendance route |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching staff | Fixed term, academic year, renewed | Biometric at the staff entrance, or QR |
| Office and accounts | Continuous, general shift | Biometric or QR |
| Lab and library | Continuous, school hours | Biometric or QR |
| Transport crew | Continuous, split shift around routes | GPS check in, 500 metre radius |
| Security | Continuous, rotating including nights | Named shift with grace period, QR at the gate |
| Housekeeping and canteen | Continuous, early shift | QR, with break splits recorded |
Statutory ground a school is standing on
Nothing here is school specific, which is rather the point. The thresholds apply to a school the same way they apply to a factory.
An Internal Committee under the POSH Act is required at 10 or more employees, and a written policy is the practical starting point for constituting one. The policy generator builds one from a questionnaire, along with leave, maternity, conduct and IP policies, rather than handing you a template to adapt.
EPF registration is mandatory at 20 or more employees, with contributions at 12 percent from each side against the 15,000 rupee wage ceiling under Para 26A. ESI applies in most states at 10 or more, at 3.25 percent employer plus 0.75 percent employee up to a 21,000 rupee wage ceiling, though a few states notify the threshold at 20. Professional tax follows the slab of the state your campus sits in, and Offrd resolves that from the PIN code rather than asking you to look it up.
What Offrd does not do is file any of it. ECR to EPFO and 24Q to TRACES stay with your CA or accounts office, who receive payroll exported in EPF return format. Form 16 is assembled rather than filed: Part B is generated from payroll and declaration data, you upload Part A from TRACES, and the two are combined and sent.
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What a school of this size pays
Schools that hire in one burst before the academic year often do better on the pay per document plan. An appointment letter is 10 credits, an onboarding is 15, a payslip is 2 per person, and credit packs start at ₹99 for 10 and fall to about ₹8 a credit on the ₹1,999 pack. Signup gives you 50 free credits with no card, which is enough to put one new appointment through end to end.
Questions from school administrators
- Does a school have to issue appointment letters to every member of staff?
- Yes. Written appointment letters became compulsory for every employee under the Labour Codes that took effect on 21 November 2025. It applies to the physics teacher, the accounts clerk, the bus driver and the housekeeping staff alike, and it does not depend on the size of the school.
- How do fixed term academic contracts work in the system?
- A contract runs from a start date to an end date on the employee record, and the appointment letter states the term. Fixed term employees become eligible for gratuity after one year of service under the Labour Codes rather than the five years that applied before, so a teacher on successive annual contracts is accruing an entitlement that many schools have not yet accounted for.
- Can we keep using the biometric machine we already own?
- Yes. Biometric devices sync into the same attendance record, and you can also import attendance from a CSV or Excel export if your machine produces one. QR check in at a gate and mobile GPS check in are available for staff the machine does not cover, such as transport crews and outreach teachers.
- Does a school need a POSH policy and an Internal Committee?
- An employer with 10 or more employees is required to constitute an Internal Committee under the POSH Act, and almost every school crosses that line. A written policy is the practical starting point. Offrd builds one from a questionnaire rather than storing a template you found elsewhere.
- Do EPF and ESI apply to school staff?
- EPF registration is mandatory for establishments with 20 or more employees, and contributions run at 12 percent from each side against the 15,000 rupee wage ceiling. ESI applies in most states at 10 or more employees, at 3.25 percent employer plus 0.75 percent employee up to a 21,000 rupee wage ceiling. Confirm the ESI threshold for your own state, because a few notify it at 20.
- What does it cost for a school with 60 staff?
- 3,000 rupees a month on the subscription plan, at 50 rupees per active employee, with documents, payroll calculation, attendance and leave included and no minimum headcount. Schools that hire mainly at the start of an academic year often find the pay per document plan cheaper: an appointment letter is 10 credits and packs start at 99 rupees.
- Can support staff who do not use email still be onboarded?
- Onboarding collects Aadhaar, PAN, bank details and UAN from a phone browser, so a driver or a housekeeping staff member does not need a laptop or a work email address. Payslips can be downloaded as PDFs and handed over where email is not practical.
Get the support staff paperwork straight first
Fifty free credits on signup, no card. Start with the group whose records are thinnest, usually transport, security and housekeeping, and issue proper appointment letters this week.
Statutory rates follow published rules from the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and ESIC, and the Labour Codes notified by the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Several thresholds vary by state. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your own position with your CA or legal advisor. Questions to service@offrd.co.