HR and payroll, built in Malawi
Leave in a WhatsApp thread. Payroll in a spreadsheet. Neither one lives with the employee.
People, leave, expenses, equipment and payroll on one employee record. Priced and paid in kwacha.
No card to start. Bring your staff list in from a spreadsheet.
Monday morning, as a manager sees it
| Who | Request | Dates | Days | Balance after | Clash | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thoko BandaSenior Accountant | Annual leave | 14 to 18 Aug 2026 | 5 | 7.5 | None | ApproveDecline |
| Tamandani GondweField Technician | Annual leave | 17 to 21 Aug 2026 | 5 | 2 | Overlaps Thoko Banda | ApproveDecline |
| Chikondi PhiriOperations Lead | Expense claimFuel and tolls, 3 receipts | 02 Jul 2026 | MWK 84,500 | Not applicable | None | ApproveDecline |
The balance after and the clash are worked out before you decide. Approval follows the manager relationship, not the department. Anyone without a manager routes to HR.
Who is out
The clash was visible before anyone asked.
Every approved request lands on one team calendar, so a manager sees the gap in August before two field technicians book the same week.
Operations, August 2026
What is inside
Five things, one record.
Change someone’s manager once and the approval chain, the org tree and next month’s payslip all follow.
People
The record exists before the person does
Set their position and manager, send the invitation, attach equipment before day one. The account links itself on acceptance.
Requests
Leave and expenses run the same chain
One queue, balances worked out before the decision, and an audit trail on every override.
Payroll
No tax rate is written into the code
Deduction rules are data you supply: fixed amounts, percentages or progressive bands. A budget change is a new dated row.
Equipment
Custody, not a stock list
Every laptop and handset carries its own history: who holds it, since when, and in what condition.
Hiring
The candidate becomes the employee
A public job board, an applicant pipeline, and a hire that becomes an employee record without being typed twice.
Hire to payslip
Typed once, at the very start.
The name a candidate types on the application form is the name on their first payslip.
Payroll
Kwacha first, and no rate written from memory.
Luwawa ships no PAYE band, pension rate or threshold. Rates are dated tables you maintain, so any payslip recomputes against the rates that applied on its pay date.
A payslip, illustrative figures
Earnings
| Basic salary | 1,850,000 |
| Housing allowance | 120,000 |
| Transport allowance | 65,000 |
| Gross pay | 2,035,000 |
Deductions
| PAYE | 618,400 |
| Pension, employee | 100,000 |
| Salary advance | 32,000 |
| Total deductions | 750,400 |
Access
An IT admin issues the laptop and never sees the salary.
Seven roles, each with its own reach. Nobody sees a salary because they happen to be an administrator.
- Owner
- Everything, including billing and closing the company down.
- HR admin
- People, leave, expenses, payroll, compensation and banking.
- IT admin
- Equipment, invitations and accounts. Never compensation or banking.
- Hiring manager
- Their own jobs and applicants, plus approvals for direct reports.
- Recruiter
- The hiring pipeline only.
- Employee
- Their own record, requests, documents, payslips and equipment.
Bank details are encrypted at rest and never shown in full again after entry. Every reveal is written to an audit trail, and a change notifies the employee by email.
Ahead
Malawi now. A second country is additive.
Nothing Malawi-specific lives in the payroll runner. A country brings its own deduction pipeline and report shapes as a pack, so the next market is configuration, not a rewrite.
Starting on your own
Create the company, invite your staff, run this month.
For ten to two hundred people. Import the staff list from a spreadsheet and set your leave types on the way in.
Moving a bigger team
Several departments, payroll history, a staged rollout.
We map your deduction rules, load historic pay runs, and bring departments across one at a time.