Partners bill hours. HR should not cost any.
A firm of partners, associates, articled trainees and support staff, with tax season or a trial date that nobody may miss. ZekoHR runs leave, documents, letters and payroll without a dedicated HR person, free for a year.
Up to 50 employees free for 12 months. No card, no sales call.
What the office manager carries alone
Trainees, associates, partners
Articled trainees on stipend, associates on CTC, partners on drawings, all in one spreadsheet. Separate employment types, salary structures and roles keep each correct and visible to the right people.
Leave during filing season
Everyone wants the week after the deadline and nobody can have the week before. The team calendar shows approvers who is already off, and the balance is on the request.
Letters from last year's file
Appointment, confirmation, increment and experience letters are edited by hand with the wrong date. Letter templates with merge fields produce PDFs and store them on the record.
Run by the office manager, trusted by the partners
An afternoon to set up. Leave and holidays, documents with verification, letters from templates, policies with acknowledgements, and payroll with pre-flight checks that a partner can review before finalising. The audit log shows every change.
- Leave balances on the request, team calendar for approvers
- Letter templates for appointment, confirmation, increment, relieving
- Payroll with pre-flight checks and TDS declarations
- Audit log with before-and-after values for every change
Illustration of a firm's leave calendar during filing season and a letter batch.
How firms set it up
People by type
Add partners, associates, trainees and support staff with the right designation and salary structure. Partners can be Admins; the office manager an HR Manager.
Letters and policies
Load your letterhead into the templates, set the merge fields once, publish the firm policies and collect acknowledgements.
Payroll a partner can check
Collect TDS declarations in the window, run the draft, review the register, finalise and publish. Rollback is there if a line is wrong.
When ZekoHR is not the right choice
You need timesheets and client billing
ZekoHR is not a practice-management tool. Billable hours, matter codes and client invoices stay in your practice software.
You want performance reviews in the system
There is no review-cycle module. Keep the appraisal in the partners' meeting; store the letter and notes on the record.
Before you decide
Common questions
Can articled trainees be on a stipend rather than a salary?
Yes. Create a salary structure for stipends with the components you need; trainees run in the same payroll with their own structure and employment type.
Do partners need to use it?
Only to approve, if they approve. A partner as Admin sees everything; a partner who does not want to log in can leave approvals to the office manager.
Can we block leave before a filing deadline?
Not as an automatic rule. Approvers see the team calendar and balance on every request and decide with that in view; a policy acknowledgement makes the expectation explicit.
Is it overkill for a 12-person firm?
Possibly. Under about ten people a disciplined spreadsheet works, and our comparison says so. The free year means finding out costs nothing.