Moorepay Payroll vs Employment Hero: how we compare across a pay cycle

Which payroll software is right for your business: Moorepay Payroll or Employment Hero?

Payroll shouldn’t feel like a second job, whether you pay ten people or a thousand. Yet it often does. Pay gets more varied, the rules keep changing, questions pile up on payday, and some software adds weight of its own.

More screens, more settings, more to configure. We think payroll should work the other way: the depth built in, and out of the way until you need it. We call it payroll that gets stronger, not heavier.

What that looks like depends on your size. For a small or micro business, it’s payroll that’s quick to run and easy to trust without being an expert, with nothing to outgrow later. For medium and large organisations, it’s control and resilience that scale with you.

That’s how we’ve built Moorepay Payroll. The UK rules are already in it, from tax and statutory pay to pensions and HMRC submissions, so the depth is there when you need it and out of the way when you don’t. It treats payroll as the foundation of your workforce operations.

Short answer: Moorepay Payroll is the stronger choice. It stays simple to run today and keeps pace if your business grows. Employment Hero suits teams that want HR tools and payroll bundled together from day one.

How we’ll walk through it

Let’s follow one pay cycle from start to finish: getting data in, working out the pay, signing it off, paying people, and tidying up.

Along the way, we’ll say when to choose Moorepay Payroll and when to choose Employment Hero. We break it down by business size, because what you need from payroll changes as you grow:

• Small (up to around 100 employees). Fewer people and changes, though pay can still be complex. What matters is payroll that’s easy to run, light on admin and trusted by whoever owns it.
• Medium (100 to 249 employees). More changes, hand-offs and exceptions. What matters is workflows, automation, visibility and expert help, so payroll scales without losing control.
• Large (250 employees and above). Payroll spans more teams, systems and structures. What matters is governance and resilience, backed by scalable, connected technology and specialist expertise.

Getting the data in: which software makes it easier to gather payroll changes and employee data?

Moorepay Payroll is better at getting data in, and getting it in right. It takes more types of input, through more routes, with more checks along the way.

You can capture one-off and recurring pay items, salary changes, timesheets, leave, work locations and payroll reminders. Data arrives by spreadsheet, by scanning paper timesheets, or from connected tools such as Deputy and Workforce. Uploads are matched on employee reference, National Insurance number or payroll ID, so changes land on the right person.

Choose Moorepay Payroll if…

• Small: You’re moving off spreadsheets and want one place to enter changes. A pre-run checklist shows what’s ready before you start. Employees request changes to their own details in the portal and you approve them.
• Medium: You’d rather upload than retype. Bulk upload pay items, leave and timesheets from your own templates, or scan paper timesheets. Cut-off dates for timesheets and leave stop late changes creeping in. Underworked hours are flagged so you can decide how to treat them.
• Large: Managers work within their own departments, with permissions set per work location. Punch clocks connect directly, with automatic breaks, rounding and double-punch prevention.

Choose Employment Hero if…

You want new starters to complete their own onboarding, a kiosk clock-in with a live attendance view, and leave, timesheets and expenses fed into payroll automatically. It works best when you run the wider Employment Hero suite alongside it.

Working out the pay: which software processes UK payroll more accurately?

Moorepay Payroll has the deeper UK calculation engine. It handles tax and National Insurance edge cases, the full set of statutory pay, deductions and holiday pay in more depth than Employment Hero.

That covers tax code history, week 1/month 1 treatment, director National Insurance methods, and HMRC coding notices fetched during the pay run. All statutory pay is calculated, with eligibility checks and overrides. Holiday pay includes average weekly pay, top-ups and rolled-up options.

Choose Moorepay Payroll if…

• Small: You don’t have a payroll specialist, so the software needs to know the rules. You can run Moorepay Payroll alongside your old system first, compare the results and fix any differences before your first live run.
• Medium: Your pay is no longer one salary per person. Overtime, custom allowances, variable hours and mid-period salary changes all calculate correctly. Salary sacrifice and additional voluntary contributions sit alongside pension calculations.
• Large: More people means more edge cases. Attachment of earnings orders calculate automatically, with protected earnings and admin fees. Loans reduce over time and are recovered from final pay. Director National Insurance, construction industry payments and automatic backpay are handled in the same run.

Choose Employment Hero if…

You like building your own pay rules. Its “when this, then that” rule sets for overtime and allowances can be tested before they go live, and its pay run shows minimum wage details. It does mean someone has to write, test and maintain those rules, and you’ll want to check the UK detail underneath covers what your payroll needs.

Signing it off: which software makes it easier to review, resolve exceptions and approve payroll?

Moorepay Payroll gives you the clearer review. Everything that needs your attention sits in one payroll summary, so you can check, fix and authorise in one place. Employment Hero is strong here too, and it’s the one part of the cycle where its approach has real appeal.

The summary shows exceptions, the biggest movers and why they moved, top and bottom earners, new starters, leavers and a department view. If you reopen a finished payroll, every payroll after it reopens automatically, so pension, tax, National Insurance and leave all recalculate correctly.

Choose Moorepay Payroll if…

• Small: You want to know, at a glance, that nothing is wrong. The summary tells you what changed since last time and what looks odd. If you make a mistake, reopen the run and fix it.
• Medium: More people are involved, so you need to see the picture by team. Leave, timesheet and work location requests each have an approval step. Managers approve for their own departments in a dedicated manager view.
• Large: Control needs to be provable. Set access to Write, Read or None for each page, and enforce multi-factor authentication for admins, managers or everyone. Accounts lock after failed attempts and sessions expire.

Choose Employment Hero if…

You want approvals built from configurable workflows that run across the whole HR suite. It’s also a lot to set up..

Employers may have a standalone sexual harassment policy or a broader anti-harassment policy.

Paying people: which software is better at HMRC submissions, payments and payslips?

Moorepay Payroll shows you more of what happens after you press go. You can see what you’re sending to HMRC, what came back, and who can see which payslip. Employment Hero is good at payment files and mobile payslips, and it reports on submissions too, but we show you more before you send.

Every Real Time Information (RTI) submission, whether a Full Payment Submission or an Employer Payment Summary, can be previewed before it goes. You can download the raw file and track the request, response and status. If HMRC returns an error, you see it and can resubmit. Payslips go out as a portal link or a PDF, and PDFs can be encrypted with the employee’s date of birth or National Insurance number.

Choose Moorepay Payroll if…

• Small: You want to send payroll and trust it went through. Preview each submission before it goes, and see HMRC’s response in plain view. Pay your team straight from payroll, now or on a schedule. Employees get payslips by portal or encrypted PDF.
• Medium: Your finance team wants the numbers in the right place. Journals map debits and credits to your ledgers, with split rules and cost centres, and connect to Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent. Pension contributions go to Nest, Smart Pension and The People’s Pension.
• Large: Every run leaves a trail. Payroll history holds each run’s status, summary, reports and payslip sending in one place. Each HMRC submission keeps its raw file, response and error history, and you can compare it with the previous one.

Choose Employment Hero if…

You want payslip alerts by email and text, a BACS payment file, and links to a wide range of accounting packages, including Sage, FreshBooks and Zoho Books. It’s worth comparing what each one lets you check before a submission goes to HMRC.

Tidying up: which software handles compliance, corrections and reporting better?

Moorepay Payroll is better at keeping you compliant and proving it. It covers more UK payroll obligations and gives you better tools to fix problems after the run.

That includes Employment Allowance claims, Small Employer’s Relief, statutory pay recovery, auto-enrolment assessment and postponement, opt-out refunds, construction industry scheme returns, attachment of earnings and a guided process for closing a PAYE scheme. A year-end checklist walks you through it.

Choose Moorepay Payroll if…

• Small: You don’t want to learn the compliance calendar. The year-end checklist tells you what to do and in what order. If you’ve switched provider mid-year, previous earnings and totals to date are held, with a checklist to reconcile against HMRC’s figures.
• Medium: You need to find differences quickly. A pay item comparison flags what changed against the previous period. Pension groups update every employee at once, apart from anyone with a custom contribution.
• Large: You need the process to protect itself. Payroll won’t run if an auto-enrolment reassessment lapses without a qualifying scheme in place. Payroll ID continuity warnings guard against migration mistakes. Each HMRC submission can be compared with the one before it.

Choose Employment Hero if…

You want to build custom reports, see pay run variances, and keep an audit trail across the whole personnel file. If your compliance needs are straightforward, that may be enough. Check how it handles the finer points, such as closing a PAYE scheme, before you commit.

By now, you might be asking yourself…

You’ve seen how the pay cycle plays out. These are the questions that usually come next.

Is Moorepay Payroll better than Employment Hero?

For UK payroll, yes. Moorepay Payroll is stronger on calculations, compliance, pensions, HMRC submissions and reporting. Employment Hero is stronger on HR records, manager self-service, pre-payroll controls, multi-entity set-up and its public API.

Which is better for a small business?

Moorepay Payroll, if you want accurate pay without needing payroll expertise. Statutory pay and holiday pay are calculated for you, and you can run alongside your old system first.

Is Moorepay Payroll a good choice for mid-sized businesses?

Yes. At 100 to 249 employees, payroll brings more changes, queries and exceptions, so you need workflows, automation and visibility to stay in control. Moorepay Payroll feeds timesheets, leave and manager approvals straight into payroll, flags exceptions before you sign off, and keeps pay schedules and permissions under control. Employment Hero is worth a look if HR tools are your main need. If payroll is, ask how much of the checking and exception handling it leaves to you.

Which is better for a large business?

It depends on what you need to protect. Moorepay Payroll is stronger on payroll risk control: access hardening, compliance checks, submission history and recalculation. Employment Hero is stronger if you run many legal entities under one HR suite or need an open API for your own developers.

So which should you choose?

Choose Moorepay Payroll if you want a payroll you can build on. It’s built for UK rules, it checks your work as you go, and it holds up as your people, pay and structure get more complex. Choose Employment Hero if you want HR and payroll tools bundled from day one and you’re happy to configure the pieces yourself.

Part of the pay cycle	Choose Moorepay Payroll if you want…	Choose Employment Hero if you want…
Getting the data in	More input routes, bulk uploads, scanned timesheets and cut-offs	Self-service onboarding and a live attendance view
Working out the pay	Deep UK tax, statutory pay, deductions and holiday pay	Rule sets you build and test yourself
Signing it off	One summary to review, with access controls to match	Configurable approval workflows across the suite
Paying people	Full sight of HMRC submissions, payments and payslip security	A BACS payment file and mobile payslips
Tidying up	Compliance depth, year-end guidance and migration checks	Custom reports and HR-wide audit trails

As you grow, the question changes. Small teams need payroll they can trust. Medium teams need control as pay gets more varied. Large teams need payroll that protects itself. Moorepay Payroll answers all three. Employment Hero’s biggest advantages, in multi-entity set-up and its open API, matter most if you have the people to build on them.

Want to see how it works for your size of business? Talk to us about a demo.

This comparison is based on information available to us as of October 2026 and may not reflect later changes. Employment Hero is a trademark of its owner and is used here for identification only. We’d welcome corrections to moorepaymarketing@zellis.onmicrosoft.com.