NepalHRM
Industries · NGOs & INGOs

HR & Payroll Software for NGOs & INGOs in Nepal

NepalHRM runs statutory payroll for NGOs and INGOs in Nepal on the Business and Enterprise plans: SSF, PF, CIT and the eTDS file. With the NGO module, switched on for your organisation on request, staff plan each month against their awards, certify a monthly timesheet that goes through your approval chain, and payroll splits each payslip across projects and grants by the time charged.

INGO country officesNational NGOsCommunity organisationsMultilateral & bilateral projectsResearch & policy institutesFoundations & trusts
The challenge

The Four Questions an NGO HR File Has to Survive

Whose award is this salary against, does the effort add up, who signed the time, and where is the evidence. Answer those from the record and the audit is short.

One salary, several funders

A programme officer is 60% on one award and 40% on another. Staff are paid once, but the cost has to land in two places, and a spreadsheet split is rebuilt from memory every quarter.

Effort has to add up

Funders expect the record to cover 100% of paid time across every award and every non-donor activity. A plan that adds up to 120% of a person is the first thing a review finds.

A timesheet somebody signed

The time charged to an award has to be certified by the person who worked it and approved by someone who knows the work, and the signed copy has to stay exactly as it was signed.

Every number gets audited

Donor reviews and statutory audit ask the same question in different formats: show the record behind the figure, who approved it, and the evidence for the day.

With the NGO module

From the Award to the Payslip, on One Record

Switched on for your organisation on request. Donors, effort, daily time, certification and approval come with the module; the payroll steps also need payroll, on the Business and Enterprise plans.

01 · Funding and effort

Donors, awards and cost objectives

With the NGO module, each donor funds one or more awards, and each award keeps its own currency, period, personnel budget and the projects it pays for. A foreign-currency budget shows its NPR value with the rate used and the date that rate was in force. Four built-in cost objectives (administration, shared costs, unfunded time, and leave and holidays) take the time no award pays for.

Level of effort, capped at 100%

With the NGO module, each person carries a dated level of effort on every award and cost objective they work on. The total is checked on every date it covers, and a plan that would put anyone above 100% on any day is refused with the day and the total that broke it. Finance staff or drivers whose cost is shared on an agreed split carry a separate shared-cost key.

Level of effort (LOE): The share of a person's paid time planned for each award or cost objective, written as a percentage. Across all of them it can never pass 100% of paid time.
02 · Time and certification

Workplan, then daily plansheet, then monthly timesheet

With the NGO module, staff plan the month against their awards and their reporting manager approves the workplan. Each working day goes on a plansheet: the activity, start and end time, project and cost objective, with photos or PDFs attached as evidence. At month end the saved days roll up into the monthly timesheet, so nobody types the month twice.

Certification that cannot be edited

With the NGO module, submitting the monthly timesheet is the certification. NepalHRM stores the statement the employee agreed to and its version, exactly what was certified, a SHA-256 fingerprint of it, and the time, IP address and browser. The record is append-only: the database refuses to change or delete it, and a returned timesheet is certified again as a new submission beside the first.

Effort certification (time and effort reporting): The employee's signed statement, after the period, that the time charged to each award is the time actually worked, confirmed by an approver who knows the work.

One to five approval levels, no auto-approval

With the NGO module, HR sets the timesheet approval chain from one to five levels; the default is supervisor approval, then HR verification. Each level resolves to named people, no level is skipped and nothing is approved automatically. Where the only approver at a level would be the employee, the step moves to the top-level approvers you list, such as the executive director.

03 · Payrollon the Business and Enterprise plans

Pay held until the timesheet is approved

With the NGO module on the Business and Enterprise plans, a pay run where attendance affects pay does not pay anyone whose timesheet for the pay window is not yet approved. Everyone else is paid, and the person who ran payroll is told who was held and which month is missing.

Pay priced from time charged

With the NGO module on the Business and Enterprise plans, those pay runs price each day from the hours charged on the approved timesheet instead of from clock punches. A field day with charged hours and no punch counts as present, and late-arrival deductions do not apply. Leave, holidays and approved overtime are paid as before.

A cost split for every pay run

With the NGO module on the Business and Enterprise plans, every pay run has a cost split: each person's gross pay divided across projects and awards by the minutes they charged, rounded so the lines add up exactly to the gross. Finance exports it to Excel, CSV or PDF.

Cost allocation (salary charging to grants): Dividing what a person was paid across the awards and projects their time went to, so each funder carries the share of salary it paid for.
04 · Audit

The donor audit copy

With the NGO module, any employee-month prints as one PDF, in full or by half month: every day's recorded work, a project by day grid of hours, leave, the certification statement word for word, the approval trail, and annexes for the attendance record and the evidence files, each file with its SHA-256 fingerprint. A timesheet not yet verified prints with a DRAFT watermark.

The audit evidence pack

With the NGO module, one download gathers what an auditor asks about one person on one award over a period: job description, contract, recruitment file, timesheets and certifications, payslips, cost allocation and leave record, in a zip with an index PDF and a manifest. A section with nothing in it is listed as missing, with the reason, so a gap is visible instead of silent.

What stays with finance

What NepalHRM records, and what it leaves to finance.

The cost split is a report you export to Excel. It is not posted to your accounting system, and budget versus actual, indirect cost recovery and the funder's own financial report template stay with your finance team. Timesheets run on calendar months; the donor audit copy also prints the matching Bikram Sambat months.

  • Cost split per pay run, exported to Excel
  • Donor audit copy and evidence pack as files
  • Calendar-month timesheets
  • The funder's template stays with finance
For every NGO

Projects, Contracts and Statutory Payroll

What an NGO runs on NepalHRM with or without the module: the project structure, the contracts that follow the funding cycle, and payroll on the Business and Enterprise plans.

Projects beside department and branch

A project carries a status, dates and a focal person, and staff are booked to it for a fixed NPR amount or a percentage of salary over a dated window. Staff still receive one salary and one payment.

SSF, PF, CIT and eTDS

On the Business and Enterprise plans, statutory deductions calculate on the current IRD slabs and produce the eTDS file, with payslips and the bank transfer file for the disbursement.

USD contracts, priced to NPR

On the Business and Enterprise plans, staff on a USD or other foreign-currency contract are priced to NPR at NRB rates fetched daily. Tax is worked out on Nepal's resident slabs for everyone in the run.

Fixed-term contracts that close themselves

Fixed-term, probation, internship, consultancy and part-time contracts each carry an end date and signed scans. A daily sweep moves a contract past its end date to Expired.

Volunteers kept on the record and off payroll

Mark an unpaid intern, volunteer or advisor as off payroll and they keep a full record, with contract and documents, while every pay run leaves them out.

Leave rules that follow the funder

A leave policy can apply to everyone or only to named departments, roles, locations or people, so a project team on donor terms is not forced onto the head office entitlement.

Before you choose

Questions to ask any NGO HR system

Ask every vendor on your shortlist the same eight questions, us included, and ask to see the answer on screen rather than on a slide.

  1. 1Does it cover 100% of paid time?
  2. 2Is the certification stored unchanged?
  3. 3Is approval required, with no auto-approval?
  4. 4Does payroll hold for missing timesheets?
  5. 5Is there a cost split per grant?
  6. 6Does the audit copy carry approvals and evidence?
  7. 7Is the award currency stored with its rate date?
  8. 8Does it use Nepali or calendar months?
NGO & INGO FAQ

Questions from HR and Finance in Development Organisations

No. It is switched on per organisation for teams that run donor-funded programmes, so it does not appear in the free trial.

Yes. With the NGO module, a person carries a level of effort on each award they work on, plus the built-in cost objectives for administration, shared costs, unfunded time, and leave and holidays. Each row is dated, and the total is checked on every date rather than summed, so a 60% award that ends in Ashad and a 60% award that starts in Shrawan are both accepted, while two that overlap by even one day are refused.

With the NGO module, a workplan at the start of the month, approved by their reporting manager. Then a plansheet for each working day: what they did, from when to when, on which project and award, with photos or PDFs as evidence. At month end the saved days become the monthly timesheet, which they certify and submit. The NGO screens are available in Nepali.

The certification cannot. Each submission stores the statement the employee agreed to, its version, exactly what was certified and a SHA-256 fingerprint of it, and the database refuses to change or delete that record. If an approver returns the timesheet, the employee corrects it and certifies again, which adds a second certification beside the first.

With the NGO module on the Business and Enterprise plans, a pay run where attendance affects pay holds anyone whose timesheet for the pay window is not approved. Everyone else is paid as normal, and the person who ran payroll is told who was held and which month is missing.

Three things, with the NGO module: the cost split of each pay run exported to Excel, the donor audit copy of each person's month as a PDF, and the audit evidence pack for one person on one award. The report in the funder's own template, budget versus actual and indirect cost recovery are not built, and stay with your finance team.

Timesheets run on calendar months, and the donor audit copy also prints the matching Bikram Sambat months. If your payroll runs on Bikram Sambat months, one pay window spans two calendar months, so payroll waits until both months' timesheets are approved. For that reason we suggest paying NGO staff on calendar months.

See One Award Run From Plan to Payslip

Bring one award and two or three staff who charge time to it. We will walk through a month of timesheets, a held payslip and the cost split. The NGO module is switched on per organisation, so it is not part of the free trial.

  • Switched on per organisation
  • Payroll on Business and Enterprise
  • NGO screens in Nepali
  • Free onboarding