Why a standalone payroll product
Payroll started inside SeroBooks, where it shares a ledger with the rest of a business’s accounting. That works well if you run your books in SeroBooks. But many Canadian businesses are happy with their accounting software and simply want payroll that gets every province right without per-employee, per-run fees that climb as they grow.
SeroPayroll is that product. It uses the same payroll engine as SeroBooks, released on its own, for Canadian employers of any size from one employee to five hundred. The tagline we wrote for it is the standard we hold it to: payroll for every province, right to the cent.
Every province, by its own rules
Canadian payroll is thirteen sets of rules on top of federal ones. SeroPayroll calculates CPP and CPP2, EI (including Québec’s reduced rate), federal and provincial income tax using the CRA’s T4127 formulas, and QPP, QPP2 and QPIP for Québec. Rates are stored as data, so annual changes are updates, not code rewrites. We reconcile fourteen jurisdictions, including federal, against the CRA calculator.
The parts many payroll products leave to you are built in: vacation pay owed in dollars by each statute, thirteen statutory holiday calendars with thirteen formulas, and overtime and banked time the way each province writes it, from Ontario’s 44-hour week to Alberta’s greater-of daily and weekly test to British Columbia’s two-tier daily overtime.
From pay run to year-end
A pay run in SeroPayroll goes calculate, approve, post, settle. Pay runs cannot be paid twice, and mistakes are reversed rather than edited, so history stays intact. You can run weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly or monthly payroll, add bonus and off-cycle runs, and hold a single employee without holding everyone.
Remittances follow the CRA calendar for your remitter type, including quarterly and accelerated thresholds, plus Revenu Québec’s schedule. At year-end SeroPayroll produces T4 and T4 Summary XML, T4A and T5018 files, and RL-1 slips, with readiness checks before you file and a PIER review that flags under-deducted CPP and EI before the CRA does. ROE .BLK files are ready for ROE Web, with the five-day deadline tracked.
- Timesheets and time clock
- Benefits, deductions and garnishments in priority order
- Employer levies: WCB, WSIB, CNESST, Ontario EHT and more
- Pay stubs with year-to-date totals and masked SIN
- Direct deposit files for the major Canadian banks
- English and Canadian French interface
What it does not do (yet)
We would rather tell you the limits now than have you find them on pay day. SeroPayroll produces a CPA 005 direct deposit file that you upload to your bank (RBC, TD, Scotiabank, BMO, CIBC and Desjardins are supported); it does not move money itself. RL-1 slips are produced as slips only, without electronic transmission to Revenu Québec. And the employee app, where staff can view pay stubs on their phones, is in development.
SeroPayroll is also Canada-only. If you employ people in the United States, payroll in SeroBooks Pro covers federal and state withholding for all 50 states alongside Canadian payroll.
Who SeroPayroll is for
SeroPayroll fits Canadian employers who want payroll done properly without changing their accounting system: restaurants and retailers with hourly staff and holiday premiums, trades and construction businesses with T5018 reporting, professional firms with salaried teams, and multi-province employers who need each province’s rules applied correctly to each employee.
It also fits accounting and bookkeeping firms that run payroll for clients. The Accountant plan covers unlimited companies and employees for one annual price, and roles for Admin, Payroll and Read-only users let a firm and its client share access appropriately.
If you already use SeroBooks Pro, you have payroll in your ledger and do not need SeroPayroll separately. If you use another accounting system, SeroPayroll exports general ledger journals as CSV or IIF-style files so each pay run can be posted once.
Built for the records you keep
Payroll data is some of the most sensitive information a business holds. SeroPayroll’s desktop edition keeps company files encrypted locally with a recovery key, and a cloud sync add-on is available for teams who want to work across machines. Pay stubs mask the employee’s SIN. Every pay run follows an approval step before it posts, and reversals leave a record rather than rewriting history.
SeroPayroll is not affiliated with the CRA, Service Canada or Revenu Québec. It produces the files those agencies accept, and it reconciles its calculations against the CRA calculator, but filing remains your responsibility as the employer, as it is with any payroll software.
Pricing
SeroPayroll uses flat tiers by headcount, with no per-run fees. Starter is $25 USD a month for up to 10 employees. Team is $50 for 11 to 50, Business is $100 for 51 to 100, and Scale is $249 for 101 to 500. Annual plans cost ten months. Accounting firms can manage unlimited companies and employees for $1,200 USD a year. Employees who are only paid need no login.
Every plan has a 14-day free trial. SeroPayroll runs as a Windows desktop app and a web edition, and the same login works across SeroPayroll and SeroBooks.