Employment Hero vs PeopleHR (Access Group)

Questions to ask when comparing Employment Hero vs PeopleHR

Does PeopleHR include payroll in its HR plans?

No. PeopleHR treats HR and payroll as separate product lines with separate pricing. The four HR tiers do not include payroll. To get HR and payroll together, businesses need to purchase a “Full Suite” bundle, starting at Core+.

Even within the Full Suite, HR and payroll operate as architecturally separate products: PeopleHR for HR administration and Paycircle for payroll processing — both Access Group products, but built and acquired independently. Data must pass between the two systems rather than flowing from a single shared database, and some customers have noted integration issues as a result.

For a lean HR team, this distinction matters. When employee records, salary changes, and leave data live in separate systems, the administrative overhead of keeping them aligned doesn’t disappear — it just shifts from visible to invisible.

Employment Hero is natively integrated. HR and payroll share a single database from the ground up — not connected, integrated. Employee records, contracts, leave balances, and payroll all live in the same platform. When an employee clocks out, that data flows automatically into their timesheet and into the next pay run. No re-keying, no reconciliation, no manual synchronisation between systems.

Is PeopleHR’s reporting sufficient for a growing business?

Not at the entry tiers. PeopleHR’s standard reporting outputs data in raw format — meaning HR teams routinely need to export to Excel and manually manipulate the data before it becomes a usable report. Independent reviewers on Capterra have described the reporting as “very basic” with date formats that “don’t register in Excel so there is a lot of manual manipulation.”

For an HR team that’s already stretched, building reports from raw data is the kind of task that consumes hours with no strategic return.

Employment Hero provides visual dashboards and pre-built reports that surface the metrics that matter — headcount, absence trends, payroll costs, turnover — without requiring a spreadsheet. Custom report builders, filterable by department, location, or contract type, are available at standard tiers. Key reports can be pinned to dashboards for one-click access and scheduled for automatic delivery.

Is recruitment included in PeopleHR?

No. PeopleHR’s Talent Acquisition module (powered by eploy) is listed as an optional add-on at £2 per employee per month across all four HR tiers — it is not included in any standard plan. Businesses that want to manage recruitment inside PeopleHR need to budget and contract for it separately.

Beyond the cost, the recruitment module is a third-party integration (eploy) rather than a natively built component. Some reviewers describe the ATS experience as requiring significant setup effort before it’s usable. When offer letters, right-to-work checks, and onboarding documentation sit outside your core HR platform — or in a bolted-on add-on — someone still has to bridge the gap between candidate and employee record manually.

Employment Hero includes an integrated Applicant Tracking System as part of the core platform. From job post to first-day completion — applications, AI-assisted screening, interview scheduling, offer letters, right-to-work checks, e-signed contracts, and onboarding tasks — all managed in the same system and feeding automatically into the employee record from day one.

How does PeopleHR pricing work in practice?

PeopleHR publishes per-employee, per-month pricing across four tiers, which is transparent in principle. In practice, the headline price understates the true cost for a business that needs more than basic HR administration — and the gap between the entry price and a fully functional deployment is significant.

There is also a setup cost that isn’t captured in the per-employee price. PeopleHR’s workflow automation (Ripple) and reporting require meaningful configuration time before they deliver value. For lean HR teams without the capacity to invest in that setup, the platform may sit underutilised — paying for capability that never gets deployed.

Employment Hero uses transparent per-employee pricing that includes HR, payroll, time tracking, and recruitment as an integrated platform. No add-on architecture. No separate payroll contract. Pay only for active employees in each pay run. Employment Hero also offers free payroll with no employee limits for businesses that want to start there.

Disclaimer: Information is accurate as of the publication date. Pricing claims are sourced from PeopleHR’s published pricing page (peoplehr.com/en-gb/pricing). User experience observations are supported by independent reviews on Capterra and SoftwareAdvice. Product features and pricing are subject to change — verify current details directly with the vendor.