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HR software for Meghalaya SMEs: the old way and the Offrd way

Offrd gives Shillong and Meghalaya businesses one platform for offer letters, payslips with PF, ESI, and professional tax, attendance, and HR policies. Pay 99 rupees per document or 50 rupees per employee per month, with 50 free credits on signup and setup in under 2 minutes.

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What changes for a Shillong employer

Meghalaya had 74,087 enterprises registered on the Udyam portal as of 28 February 2026, per a Ministry of MSME reply tabled in Parliament (PIB, 2026). The state's Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy 2024, published by the Department of Commerce and Industries, puts trade, tourism, high value agriculture, and a knowledge based economy at the centre of its growth plan, with incentives running to December 2034. Hotels, homestays, coaching and edtech ventures, IT services, cafes, and clinics. Shillong's employer mix is services heavy, young, and growing.

Every one of those employers runs the same back office, either by hand or with software. Here is the side by side.

The old way

Offer letters copied from last year's Word file, with the previous candidate's salary still hiding in a table cell.
Payroll on a spreadsheet: PF formula here, ESI formula there, professional tax looked up from a forwarded WhatsApp image of uncertain vintage.
Attendance in a paper register at the cafe counter, reconciled at month end from memory and goodwill.
Shops and Establishments renewal remembered in March, two months after the calendar year deadline passed.
HR policies absent until a POSH complaint or an investor's due diligence makes their absence expensive.
Exit settlements computed on the back of an envelope, disputed for weeks afterward.

The Offrd way

The offer letter generator builds each offer from your company profile, with a salary annexure that balances itself to the CTC.
Payroll computes EPF, ESI, gratuity, and the PT line on every payslip. Your CA gets clean exports for filings.
The bundled Atndnz app records attendance with QR check in and GPS, and the month end report writes itself.
Employee records, documents, and registers sit in one searchable place, so renewals and audits stop being archaeology.
The HR policy generator produces POSH, leave, conduct, and IP policies from a questionnaire in an afternoon.
Full and final settlement pulls from the same salary heads as the payslips, with reference IDs and standard deduction heads.

The Meghalaya specifics most software ignores

Professional tax is real in Meghalaya. The state levies it under the Meghalaya Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Taxation Act, and a 2022 amendment, published in the Gazette of Meghalaya, moved the rates out of the Act's schedule and into government notifications. Employers other than government entities must obtain a certificate of registration. The state's online portal for these procedures is megtaxation.nic.in. Because rates now travel by notification, hard coded slab tables in generic payroll tools go stale without warning. Offrd keeps the PT line configurable so your payslips follow the current notification, not last year's blog post.

Registration under the Meghalaya Shops and Establishment Act is mandatory for every establishment, valid for the calendar year, and renewable every calendar year. Minimum wages move too: the Labour Commissionerate published revised rates effective 1 April 2026 on its official notification list. None of this is difficult individually. Collectively it is a steady drip of small deadlines that a one person HR desk in a 30 person company tends to lose track of.

Built for the 5 to 75 person company

Offrd is HR document and operations software for Indian SMEs, used by 4,000+ companies across 350+ cities. The platform covers the full lifecycle: offer, onboarding with Aadhaar, PAN, and bank verification, monthly payslips, attendance and leave, increment letters, and full and final settlement. EPF runs at 12 percent for employer and employee up to the 15,000 rupee wage ceiling, ESI at 3.25 and 0.75 percent up to 21,000 rupees gross, and gratuity follows the statutory formula, all computed inside the product. The ESI and PF compliance guide explains the central rules in plain language if you want the workings.

Pricing has no gristle in it. 99 rupees per document on pay per use. 50 rupees per active employee per month on subscription. 50 free credits when you sign up, no setup fee, no minimum headcount, and the Atndnz attendance app free for paying users. A Shillong cafe with 12 staff and a Tura trading firm with 60 pay in proportion to what they use, which is not how monthly minimum HRMS pricing works.

What Offrd does not do also matters. No OKRs, no 360 reviews, no expense module, no deep recruitment pipeline. Those belong to enterprise suites and enterprise budgets. The honest trade is fewer modules, faster setup, and a price a small business can defend to itself.

Three Shillong scenarios, one back office

A 14 person cafe and bakery runs on rosters and part timers. The owner issues appointment letters once through Offrd, tracks attendance by QR at the counter, and runs payslips on the 50 rupees per employee plan. Renewal of the Shops and Establishments registration stops being a March surprise because the records are in one place and January is on the calendar.

A coaching institute with 25 teachers and counsellors hires in waves before each academic season. Offers go out in batches, increments follow results, and the POSH policy that every institution needs came out of the policy builder's questionnaire in one sitting rather than a consultant's invoice.

A 40 person IT services firm in Shillong's growing knowledge sector, the same sector the MIIPP 2024 policy is built to expand, uses the full lifecycle: offer, onboarding with verified Aadhaar, PAN, and bank details, monthly payroll with the PT line, and full and final settlement when someone leaves for Bengaluru. The founder reads one attendance report instead of three WhatsApp threads.

Different businesses, same pattern: the paperwork became routine, and the time went back into the business. That is the whole product in a sentence, and it is why the switch from spreadsheets rarely takes more than an afternoon. Upload a CSV of employees, review the generated structures, send the first pending document. If you ever leave, everything exports as CSV and your documents are PDFs you already hold.

Frequently asked questions

Does Meghalaya levy professional tax on salaries?

Yes. Meghalaya levies professional tax under the Meghalaya Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Taxation Act, substantially amended in 2022. Employers must obtain a certificate of registration, and rates are now set by government notification rather than a fixed schedule in the Act. The state's online portal for procedures is megtaxation.nic.in. Confirm the current notified rates with your CA.

Do Shillong businesses need Shops and Establishments registration?

Yes. The Meghalaya Shops and Establishment Act requires every establishment to register. Registration is valid for the calendar year and must be renewed every calendar year. The Act was published in 2004 with a corrigendum reading it as the Act of 2003, and the Labour Commissioner's office administers it.

Are there current minimum wage notifications in Meghalaya?

Yes. The Meghalaya Labour Commissionerate published revised minimum wage rates effective 1 April 2026, under notification No. LE&SD.9/2023/Pt/26 dated 1 May 2026. Check the official meglc.gov.in notification list for the rates that apply to your scheduled employment.

What does Offrd cost for a small Meghalaya business?

99 rupees per document on pay per use, or 50 rupees per active employee per month on subscription. New accounts start with 50 free credits and there is no setup fee. The Atndnz attendance app is bundled free for paying Offrd users.

Can Offrd handle PF, ESI, and Meghalaya PT together?

Yes. EPF at 12 percent for employer and employee up to the 15,000 rupee wage ceiling, ESI at 3.25 percent and 0.75 percent up to 21,000 rupees gross, and a professional tax line per the state's notified rates all appear on one generated payslip.

When a bigger system is the right call

If your organisation runs past 200 people with a full HR team, formal appraisal cycles, and multi level approval requirements written into policy, an enterprise HRMS is the better tool and we will tell you so directly. The same goes if automated statutory filing is your single largest pain, since Offrd hands clean data to your CA rather than filing on your behalf. For the rest, which in Meghalaya means the overwhelming majority of the state's 74,087 registered enterprises, the equation favours the smaller, sharper tool: five modules that work on day one, a price that scales with use, and no module graveyard you paid for but never configured. Sign up, spend your 50 free credits on real documents, and judge the fit on your own payroll month rather than a salesman's deck.

Retire the spreadsheet before the next payroll month

50 free credits on signup. 99 rupees a document after that, or 50 rupees per employee per month. Setup in under 2 minutes.

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Questions? Write to service@offrd.co

Last updated: 12 September 2026

Which offices handle HR compliance for a business in Meghalaya?

Meghalaya sits in East Khasi Hills district. Part of what follows is decided locally and is not the same in the next district, and the rest runs on central law and does not move at all.

District
East Khasi Hills district source
Local body
Shillong Municipal Board (SMB), Bishop Cotton Road, Shillong - office of the Chief Executive Officer source
Professional tax
Levied. Excise, Registration, Taxation and Stamps Department, Government of Meghalaya, under the Meghalaya Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Taxation Act and the corresponding Rules, amended by the Meghalaya Trades, Callings and Employment (Amendment) Rules 2022 notified on 18 January 2023. source
Shops and Establishments
Authority here: Labour Commissioner, Meghalaya, or such other officer as the Labour Commissioner may authorise. Section 3 of the Meghalaya Shops and Establishment Act, 2003 : every establishment shall be registered, the registration is valid for the calendar year. source
Labour office
Labour Department, Government of Meghalaya, Room No. 511, 5th Floor, Additional Secretariat Building, Shillong. Secretary's phone 0364-2223949. The office of the Labour Commissioner enforces the Meghalaya Shops and Establishments Act and Rules along with the Minimum Wages, Payment of Wages, Payment of Bonus, Payment of Gratuity, Contract Labour, Inter-State Migrant Workmen, Trade Union, Child and Adolescent Labour. source
Worth knowing here
The single most important recent change for a Shillong SME. The Meghalaya Shops and Establishment (Amendment) Act, 2025 received the Governor's assent and was published in the Gazette of Meghalaya Extraordinary on 2 October 2025 and came into force from that date. It inserts 'employing five or more employees' into section 3(1), so establishments with fewer than five employees are now outside the Act. source
Unchanged by district
Provident fund, employee state insurance, gratuity, bonus and tax deducted at source are central. An employer in Meghalaya works to the same rates and thresholds as one in Delhi or Chennai.

Confirm this before you rely on it. Any of this can change on a notification you will not see. Verify the office with the department, and take advice from your chartered accountant or labour law adviser on what actually applies to you. Treat this as background, not advice. Offrd is independent of every office named above. Checked on 12 September 2026. If a detail has moved since, write to service@offrd.co.

What does Shillong's employer base actually look like?

Meghalaya's cement industry, often assumed to be a Shillong story, is actually documented in two other districts entirely, East Khasi Hills itself shows only a small industrial estate and a share of statewide MSME totals in what we could verify.

Cement plantsEast Jaintia Hills, Ri Bhoinamed but not in East Khasi Hills

The state industries department's own site places its cement plants at Lumshnong in East Jaintia Hills and at Umiam in Ri Bhoi district, not in East Khasi Hills, so we have not attributed this industry to Shillong's own district.

Shillong Industrial EstateShillong10.22 acres

The smallest of the state's six named estates, compared with Byrnihat's export promotion industrial park at 259 acres plus a further 51 acre extension.

MSME achievements, statewideMeghalaya1,345 units registered

Rs 114.56 crore in investment and 5,754 jobs generated between 2013-14 and 2016-17, plus 711 MSME units given financial assistance under the state's package incentive scheme.

Handicrafts reputationstatewide2,325 artisans trained

Under the state's Master Craftsmen scheme between 2013 and 2017, though no turnover or export figure for handicrafts specifically is published, and this is a statewide total rather than an East Khasi Hills figure.

Offices a Shillong employer deals with

District Industries Centre, East Khasi Hills

MSME and Udyam registration for the district.

Labour Department, Meghalaya

Shops and establishment registration and labour compliance.

State GST and Commercial Taxes Department, Meghalaya

GST and commercial tax registration for employers.

Commerce and Industries Department, Meghalaya

State industries department.

Meghalaya Industries

Confirm this before you rely on it. MSME and handicraft figures above are statewide, from the Commerce and Industries Department's own published achievements page, not East Khasi Hills specific. We have deliberately corrected the cement industry's district attribution rather than let a common assumption about Shillong stand uncorrected. Office addresses and contact details can change on a notification you will not see. Verify the office and its current jurisdiction before you act on it, and take advice from your chartered accountant or labour law adviser. None of this is legal or tax advice. Offrd has no connection to the offices named and does not represent them. Checked 12 September 2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us at service@offrd.co.

What attendance record does a small employer have to keep?

A record of days worked, leave taken and days lost for each employee, kept as the month goes on. Under the state Shops and Establishments Act this sits alongside the wage register, and most states now accept it in digital form.

The record serves three purposes at once: the payslip, the contribution returns, and the leave balance that will be encashed when someone leaves. A single source for all three is the point.

attendance regularisation

What goes wrong with offer letters at small companies?

Three things, over and over. The salary in the offer does not match the salary in the appointment letter. The probation clause says three months in one paragraph and six in another. And the notice period is written for the employee only, which makes it harder to enforce than a clause that binds both sides equally.

None of these show up until someone resigns or an auditor asks. By then the letter is signed. Keeping one approved clause set, and generating every letter from it, is the cheapest fix available to a company of twenty people in (mixed) smaller states and union territories.

appointment letter format for India

Frequently asked questions

Where does Meghalaya sit administratively?

Meghalaya comes under East Khasi Hills district. That is the unit the labour department works in, so it decides which office you deal with.

Who collects professional tax from a Meghalaya employer?

Levied. Excise, Registration, Taxation and Stamps Department, Government of Meghalaya, under the Meghalaya Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Taxation Act and the corresponding Rules, amended by the Meghalaya Trades.

Does a fully remote team still need an attendance record?

Yes. The obligation attaches to the employment, not to the office. A remote team still needs days worked, leave taken and loss of pay recorded, because the payslip and the contribution returns are built from those figures.

EPFO and ESIC Offices for Meghalaya

Offrd handles the calculation and documents. These are the government offices for registration, inspections, and escalations.

EPFO Office
RO, Shillong — Regional Office, 2nd Floor, Bsnl Bhawan, Opposite Of Lady Hydari Park , Barik, Shillong,meghalaya-793001
ESIC Office
ESIC office data is not available for this region.