HR in a Coimbatore manufacturing company is rarely one payroll. There are permanent staff on monthly salary, contract workers supplied by a labour contractor, operators on shift allowances and overtime, and, in garment and textile units, tailors and helpers paid by the piece. Most HR software handles the first group well and pushes the rest back to Excel.
Frappe HR, the human resources and payroll app that runs on ERPNext, was built for that mix. Thirvusoft implements it for factories, mills, hospitals, retail chains and offices across Coimbatore and Tamil Nadu, connects it to the biometric devices already on your gate, and trains your HR and accounts teams in Tamil or English.
Attendance from the biometric device to the payslip
Thirvusoft integrates eSSL, ZKTeco and similar biometric devices with Frappe HR, so punches flow into the system without anyone exporting a file. Shift types define start and end times, grace periods and how late marks are treated; the system assigns shifts by roster and works out attendance, half days, overtime hours and absences from the punch log.
Rotating three-shift patterns, night shifts that cross midnight and a weekly off that changes by department are configured, not programmed. When a second device sits at a unit in Tiruppur or Pollachi, the same integration collects it centrally.
- Multiple devices and locations synchronised to one attendance register
- Shift roster with automatic overtime and late-mark calculation
- Attendance requests and regularisation with manager approval
- Location-tagged check-in from the mobile app for field staff and site engineers
Leave and holidays the Tamil Nadu way
Leave policies differ by category of employee: earned leave that accrues with days worked, casual and sick leave that reset each year, and compensatory off for a Sunday worked during peak season. Frappe HR lets you define each leave type, allocate it by policy, carry forward or encash balances, and route applications through the reporting manager.
Holiday lists are set per unit, so a Pongal schedule at the mill and a different one at the Chennai sales office do not clash. Employees apply and check balances on the self-service app; HR sees the whole picture on one leave calendar.
Payroll with PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS
Salary structures are built from components: basic, HRA, allowances, overtime, shift allowance, incentives, and deductions for PF, ESI, professional tax, TDS, advances and canteen. Each component is a fixed amount, a percentage or a formula, so a change in a statutory rate is a single edit rather than a re-work of every employee's structure.
Payroll runs for a period, pulls attendance and leave without pay, computes the deductions, produces payslips and posts the salary journal to the Accounts module by cost centre. Statutory registers come out of the same data, and each employee's salary and tax details for the year are held ready for Form 16.
| Statutory item | How Frappe HR handles it |
|---|---|
| Provident Fund | Employee and employer contributions as formula components; PF register from payroll data |
| ESI | Eligibility by wage ceiling, contribution components, ESI register |
| Professional tax | Slab-based deduction component, applied on the state's cycle |
| TDS on salary | Income tax computed per employee from declarations, deducted monthly, summarised for Form 16 |
| Bank transfer | Bank file or payment entries for salary disbursement |
Contract labour and piece-rate wages
Garment and textile units in Coimbatore and Tiruppur pay part of their workforce on output. Frappe HR with ERPNext records production per worker from job cards or a daily output entry, applies a rate per piece or per operation and generates wages, with attendance still tracked for ESI and PF where they apply. Thirvusoft's textile and garment clients include Kalachar, OXO, Barani and NRG.
For labour supplied by an agency, workers are held under the contractor's group with their own salary structure, so headcount, attendance and cost are visible per contractor and the contractor's bill can be checked against the register before it is paid.
- Piece-rate, hourly and daily wage structures alongside monthly salary
- Contractor-wise attendance and wage registers
- Weekly or fortnightly payroll cycles for wage workers
- Advances and recoveries tracked per worker
Expense claims, appraisals and the employee app
Beyond payroll, Frappe HR covers the everyday paperwork. Expense claims with bill uploads go to the manager and then to accounts for payment. Appraisal cycles use templates with goals and ratings per department. Onboarding and exit checklists, document storage, training records and asset issue are all recorded against the employee.
Employees use the self-service app for payslips, leave, attendance requests and claims. Thirvusoft also builds custom Flutter apps where a company wants its own branding or offline use inside the factory.
Why HR belongs on the same system as accounts
Because Frappe HR is an app on ERPNext, the salary journal, contractor bills, expense claims and loan recoveries post to the same ledger your auditor sees. Cost per department, per shift or per production line comes out of the accounts, not from a reconciliation in Excel. Thirvusoft's HR and payroll clients include UKM, and manufacturers such as Vishal Agro Industries (cattle feed) and Laboni are among the businesses it supports on ERPNext.
It also means that a change in headcount shows up in the management accounts the same month, and that an auditor can trace a salary expense back to the attendance that produced it.