10 Best Canadian Payroll Software for CAD Businesses in 2023

Deel is a global HR solution with global payroll features that companies can run even without supervision. This software can run payroll in over 90 different countries worldwide, including Canada, while also streamlining operations, and eliminating problems with handling taxes, local compliance, and benefits.

Deel's payroll software helps Canadian businesses stay compliant with relevant Canadian regulations. Canadian businesses won’t have to worry about taxes, compliance, government declarations, and calculations as Deel will handle everything for them.

Companies can get their entire team operational with Deel in just a month, which is impressive since other payroll providers often take many months to finish the payroll setup process. Subscribing to one of Deel’s plans with payroll functionalities can help Canadian businesses expand and hire more talent abroad while ensuring compliance with all relevant regulations by being able to handle taxes, provide benefits, and handle local, legal, tax, and accounting expertise.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include an easy-to-use platform that unifies EOR (employer of record) services, contractor payments, and payroll management. Deel’s in-house payroll team processes payroll directly and provides end users with support to resolve any issues within your payroll process. In addition, Deel can help you offer localized benefits for staff based within Canada or any other location they support.

Integrations include Ashby, BambooHR, Expensify, Greenhouse, Hibob, Netsuite, Okta, OneLogin, Quickbooks, SCIM, Xero, Workday, and Workable. They also have an API that supports additional custom integrations as well.

Pricing for Deel is a flat rate and varies depending on the country you're based in and the type of plan you select. They offer three plans: Direct Employees, Contractors, or EOR Employees. Payroll handling features are only available in the Direct Employees and EOR Employees packages.

Papaya Global is a global payroll platform offering smart, simple, and streamlined payroll solutions for many companies worldwide, including ones in Canada. Their global payroll platform supports 160+ countries and comes with payroll, compliance, benefits, and HR features that are suited for global businesses. Using this solution allows companies to comply with Canadian regulations, including SOC2.

Using Papaya Global, Canadian businesses receive a robust payroll solution that handles their local payroll needs, plus the added ability to hire talent abroad while also ensuring that they comply with all relevant regulations. New customers will be able to go live with the platform quickly, get 360-degree visibility on their workforce spending, and boost productivity and performance when using their solution.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include numerous payroll automations for payroll calculations, tax filing, compliance, equities, and time and attendance tracking. Businesses can also access all their data from one intuitive dashboard, giving them a comprehensive view of their entire workforce. From there they can request standardized reports and handle risk-free payroll payments without leaving the platform.

Integrations are available with most financial tools, as well as with BambooHR, Expensify, NetSuite, SAP SuccessFactors, and Workday.

Pricing for Papaya Global varies depending on the end user’s use case and country. They charge a setup fee per location, a cycle fee per employee, and a year-end fee for tax filing. Papaya Global does not charge any additional fees.

Payroll is, by nature, complicated. Humi aims to take the guesswork out of payroll and HR software by making their interface as intuitive and easy-to-use as possible. HR info such as hires, terminations, vacation usage, and benefits are integrated with payroll processing, making dual entry a thing of the past. Employees can also access self service pay stubs, vacation requests, and benefits inquiries, and easily receive direct deposits.

Humi provides an excellent option for Canadian businesses or teams with HR in Canada because T4s, Records Of Employment (ROE), Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) remittances, and Employer Health Tax (EHT) applications are automatically included in the platform. Multi-province payroll makes it easy to manage employees across the country. And Humi’s tax engine is specifically designed for Canadian regulations, making any audit and compliance efforts that much easier.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include automatic T4s and ROEs, records and reporting, EHT calculations, direct deposit, self-serve pay stubs, multi-province payroll, benefits, and automatic CRA remittance.

Integrations include Greenhouse, Voila!, Workable, Xero, and Zapier.

Pricing for Humi is based on your number of employees and how many modules you’d like to integrate into your program. A free demo is available prior to signing up.

ADP Workforce Now is an all-in-one cloud-based platform that offers functionality like time tracking, benefits, HR, talent, and payroll management. Since you can manage your entire workforce from their single dashboard, you’ll never again have to waste time toggling between platforms to find what you need. This solution also boasts enterprise-grade data security and comprehensive privacy practices.

ADP’s single dashboard reduces manual data entry by pre-populating data across workflows in real time, so you can enter information once and move on to more important tasks. Proactive error detection sends alerts to reduce mistakes and ensure accurate payroll processing.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include automated online payroll processing, a self-serve app for employees, in-house payroll experts, time tracking, HR data management tools, and tax calculation and remittance tools.

Integrations include accounting solutions like Quickbooks, Wave, and Xero, ERPs like Oracle, SAP, and Workday, time and attendance solutions like Clock Shark, Deputy, and Dolce, and recruiting and onboarding solutions like GoodHire, Sapling, and Zip Recruiter.

Pricing for ADP Workforce Now is available upon request and is based on the size of your organization and the features you’d like integrated. They do not provide a free trial option.

QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting software designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances. It offers a range of features, including invoicing, expense tracking, and payroll management. As a user of QuickBooks Online, I've found it to be a reliable and user-friendly tool that has helped me keep track of my business finances with ease.

QuickBooks Online provides direct deposit options for your employees, making it easy to pay them on time and securely. You can also set up custom pay schedules to accommodate different payment frequencies, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Another standout feature is the ability to generate T4 slips and other year-end tax forms for your employees. This makes tax season much less stressful, as you can easily provide your employees with the necessary documents for filing their taxes.

QuickBooks Online is highly suitable for managing contractors around the globe with the ability to track contractor expenses, generate and send contractor invoices, and efficiently handle contractor payments through the platform. With QuickBooks Online, businesses can accurately categorize contractor transactions, manage their contractor database, and generate contractor-specific reports for simplified financial management. The platform's user-friendly interface and comprehensive contractor management tools make it a powerful solution for effectively organizing, tracking, and managing contractor-related activities.

Standout Features and Integrations

Features include automatic tax calculations, which means you don't have to worry about manually calculating taxes and deductions for your employees. This is a huge time-saver and helps ensure accuracy in your payroll process. QuickBooks Online also offers robust reporting features that help you analyze your payroll data and make informed decisions about your business. You can generate reports on payroll expenses, and employee hours.

Integrations include over 400 business apps like Rewind Backups, Knowifiy for Customers, Plooto, Expensify, Fathom, BigCommerce, Verify, Insightly CRM, Mailchimp, and others. 

Pricing starts at $24/month CAD or $30/month USD. It comes with a 30-day free trial.

If you’re a current Xero user with simple payroll needs, this add-on is an excellent option. While Xero is quick to mention that larger teams with more complex payrolls may need to integrate a third-party app, small teams in Canada with only a few employees will find this functionality offers everything they need.

With the payroll option, Xero users can manually input vacation leave, hourly rate, hours, and taxes, and calculate deductions. To run payroll that is recurring, you’re able to copy a previous pay run and make changes to keep it current. Pay stubs can also be emailed or printed directly from Xero.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include simple online pay runs, pay records, salary and wage payments, and vacation leave.

Integrations include Capsule CRM, DEAR Inventory, Deputy, Expensify, EzzyBills, HubSpot, Tradify, and WorkflowMax. It’s worth noting that Xero also integrates with a number of the other software named in this list, in case you’re an existing Xero user but your needs are beyond what their payroll functionality can offer.

Pricing for Xero begins at $17 per month and plans are based on the extent of your needs. Xero also offers a free trial.

Ceridian Dayforce is a recognized HCM leader with a team of in-house compliance experts who remain continuously on top of regulatory changes. You can also offload day-to-day benefits administration and payroll entirely to their team, freeing up your time to focus on other tasks. This payroll software is an excellent solution for Canadian companies who plan to scale internationally, given that Ceridian supports payroll delivery in more than 160 countries. 

Ceridian’s consolidated pay and time engine simplifies the payroll process while increasing accuracy with real-time calculations. Ceridian will manage and file taxes on your behalf, aligning with all provincial and federal regulations. Employees can also access their pay stubs and tax information directly with their self-serve feature. 

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include talent management, real-time audits, smart benefits, workforce management, managed payroll, and streamlined HR tools.

Integrations include CIBC SmartBanking for Business and QuickBooks.

Pricing for Ceridian Dayforce is available upon request, and a 60-day free trial is available.

Restaurants have very specific payroll needs, and Push Operations has developed a software to meet them. This fully integrated cloud-based payroll software boasts clients in Canada like Wendy’s, Boston Pizza, A&W, and Denny’s. Push operations allows users to streamline hours into payroll, saving time that would normally be spent manually inputting time calculations for employees serving a variety of shifts.

Push Operations can be used as a standalone payroll software, or you can take advantage of all the features as a comprehensive employee management suite. Push will calculate and pay taxes on your behalf, assist you in pulling T4s and ROEs, and can pay your employees by direct deposit or cheque. Push makes it easy to pay employees who have multiple rates (like overtime) and will monitor split shift premiums and minimum tip top-offs.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include regulatory compliance, onboarding, self-serve pay stubs, time tracking, real-time payroll reporting, and one-click payroll processing.

Integrations include Avero, CTUIT, Focus POS systems, Greenline POS, HIK Vision, Par, Squirrel Systems, Ultipro, and Upserve.

Pricing for Push starts at $11 per employee, per month for their Starter + Payroll plan. A free demo is also available. 

Collage aims to provide best-in-class payroll services to Canadian businesses by combining the expert knowledge of HR professionals, benefits experts, and in-house tech wizards. Backed by a venture launchpad called Diagram, Collage has built the platform to deliver a cutting edge solution that will evolve the landscape of Canada’s fintech industry. 

Collage offers unified HR and payroll including benefits integration. Clients are assigned a dedicated CPA-approved payroll manager who is available to answer questions about your organization’s specific needs. This means that when tax season rolls around, you can rest assured that your adjustments, returns, T4s and reconciliations will be completed on time, and in compliance with the current regulatory requirements.

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include year-end processing, unified HR and payroll, automatic calculations, compliance with Canadian regulations, extensive reporting, and dedicated payroll managers.

Integrations are not mentioned in Collage’s materials, but their platform does integrate with some benefit providers.

Pricing for Collage begins at $8 per user per month, and a variety of add-on features can be purchased a la carte. A free demo is also available.

Easypay has been providing payroll services to Canada’s small to mid-sized businesses since 1985. Within this payroll software, users can serve any combination of hourly, salary, or commission-based employees, and pay them on a number of different schedules including weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, and monthly by both cheque or direct deposit. The Easystub feature also enables employees to view and download pay stubs and T4s. 

Easypay allows you to print individual or batched ROEs, and it will calculate EI, CPP, and tax for all provinces. Year-end reports like T4 and RL-1 can be filed directly through Easypay. There are no limits on the number of employees you can manage within the system, allowing this platform to grow with you as you scale. 

Standout Features and Integrations:

Features include direct deposit, self-serve pay stubs and T4s, extensive audit and reporting capabilities, automatic deductions, benefits, and multi-departmental costing.

Integrations include Adagio, Sage300 ERP, SAP, and QuickBooks, among others. 

Pricing for Easypay starts at $439 per year. A 45-day free trial is also available.