HR software for startups under 20 people: payroll, records, leave and e-sign, and which tool does which

The split: payroll is a different product from records

Payroll is regulated, country-specific and unforgiving. A missed filing is a fine. That is why the good payroll tools are country-specialised and priced per person with a base fee, and why the "HR" features bolted onto them tend to be thin.

Records, leave, expenses and e-sign are the opposite: the same in every country, needed from employee number two, and badly served by a spreadsheet and a shared drive. Policies that nobody acknowledged, leave balances in someone's head, offer letters signed by PDF and lost.

The practical answer for a startup under 20 is to buy payroll from a payroll company and keep everything else in one people system that the whole team opens anyway.

Payroll: Gusto and Deel

Gusto is the default for US-only startups. It runs payroll, files federal and state taxes, and handles benefits, in three plans (Simple, Plus, Premium) priced as a monthly base fee plus a per-person fee. Gusto's pricing page did not show us the base figures when we checked in October 2026, so take the numbers from the page itself rather than from this post; the page did show a Priority Support add-on at $30 a month plus $3 per person.

Deel is the choice once you employ or contract outside your home country. As of October 2026 the page shows Contractor from $49 per contractor per month, Employer of Record from $599 per employee per month, and US PEO from $125 per employee per month. EOR is expensive but it is the legal way to employ someone in a country where you have no entity, and for a startup hiring a first engineer abroad it is cheaper than a subsidiary.

Neither replaces a people system for a team that also has contractors, part-timers and founders who are not on payroll at all.

The usual mistake at this stage is to pick the payroll provider first and then try to run everything else inside it. Payroll tools hold the people they pay. The contractor in Lisbon on a monthly invoice, the co-founder who draws no salary yet and the part-time designer on a day rate are not in the payroll system, so their leave, their NDA and their expenses end up in email. In a team of ten, that can be a third of the people. The people system has to hold everyone, and payroll has to hold the subset it pays.

The second mistake is to buy an international payroll product for a team that is in one country, because the website says "global". If everyone is in the US, Gusto is simpler and cheaper; add Deel for the first person abroad rather than moving everyone.

Records, leave, expenses, e-sign: BambooHR and Atrix People

BambooHR is the established small-company HRIS. For 25 employees or fewer it is a flat $250 a month on Core, which for a team of 15 is about $16.67 a head. It does records, leave, onboarding, e-sign and reporting well, and payroll is a US add-on with a separate quote. The cost is that it is one more login for a team that already lives in a work tool, and most of its reporting is built for an HR person you do not have yet.

Atrix People is the people module inside the Atrix workspace: profiles with tiered HR records, leave requests with balances and a who-is-out-today view, expenses with approvals, agreements with e-sign, policies with acknowledgement tracking, and generated letters. It is included in every plan, so a team on Builder ($39 a month for 5 seats) or Studio ($149 for 15) pays nothing extra for it. Pay records are the most restricted data in the workspace: reveals are permission-gated and audited.

Atrix does not run payroll, in any country, and has no plan to pretend it does. You export the month's leave and expenses and give them to Gusto, Deel or your accountant. For a startup under 20 that is a five-minute job once a month, and it is the same job BambooHR Core customers do.

What to set up in the first month

1. Pick payroll by country. US only: Gusto. Anyone abroad: Deel for that person, even if the rest stay on Gusto.
2. Put every person in one directory, including contractors and founders, with start date, role and manager.
3. Write a leave policy before the first request. The leave policy template is the one we use; it fits on one page.
4. Turn offer letters and NDAs into templates and sign them inside the people system, so the signed copy is attached to the person, not lost in email.
5. Publish three policies (leave, expenses, security) and require acknowledgement. Nobody reads a policy that is not tracked.
6. Use an onboarding checklist so day one is the same for everyone. The employee onboarding checklist is a starting point.

What to skip until 20 people

• Performance review software. Quarterly one-to-ones in a doc are enough.
• Engagement surveys. You can ask twelve people in person.
• Org chart tools. Draw it in a page.
• Benefits platforms outside payroll. Your payroll provider's benefits module covers it.

Each of these is a seat price per person per month that buys nothing at 12 people.

What you should not skip is the audit trail on sensitive data. Even at eight people, someone will ask who looked at a salary, and "the spreadsheet was shared with the whole team" is not an answer you want to give. A people system that gates pay behind a permission and logs every reveal is cheap insurance; a shared drive folder is not. The same goes for signed agreements: when a contractor disputes a clause a year later, you want the signed copy, the timestamp and the version they signed, attached to their record, not a search through three inboxes.

The last thing to set up before 20 is a monthly export. Leave balances, approved expenses and any changes to employment records, pulled once a month and sent to whoever runs payroll and the accounts. It takes five minutes, it is the handover that makes "we don't do payroll" workable, and it is the first thing an accountant or an acquirer asks for.

FAQ

What HR software does a startup with 10 employees need?

A payroll provider for each country you employ in (Gusto for the US, Deel for international) and one people system for records, leave, expenses, agreements and policies (BambooHR or Atrix People). Skip performance, engagement and org chart tools until 20 or more.

Does Atrix do payroll?

No. Atrix People holds records, leave, expenses, agreements with e-sign, policies and letters. Payroll stays with Gusto, Deel or your accountant, fed by an export from Atrix.

Is BambooHR worth it for a small startup?

At a flat $250 a month on Core for 25 employees or fewer, as of October 2026, it is worth it if you want a dedicated HRIS with reporting. For a team already in a work tool with a people module, it is a second login for the same records.

What is the cheapest way to track leave for a small team?

A people module inside a tool you already pay for. Atrix includes leave with balances in Builder at $39 a month; a standalone leave tracker is usually a per-user fee on top of everything else.

Do I need an HRIS before I have an HR person?

Yes, a light one. The first 20 hires generate contracts, leave and expenses whether or not anyone owns HR. A system the founders can run in ten minutes a week is what stops the shared drive from becoming the HR department.

Next step

See what Atrix People covers, then set up a leave policy before the first request lands.

Sources

Checked in October 2026: BambooHR pricing, Deel pricing, Gusto pricing, Atrix pricing.