We Processed Our First 1,000 Payslips
What we learned from processing our first 1,000 payslips. The edge cases, the surprises, and what we got wrong.
We hit 1,000 payslips processed this week. Not a huge number. But every one of them taught us something about how Kenyan businesses actually run payroll.
Here’s what we learned.
Most Teams Are Smaller Than We Expected
We built for 5-50 employees. The average team size on Kazisafi right now is 12. Most of our users are running payroll for teams of 8-20 people.
These are businesses that enterprise software ignores and that spreadsheets barely serve. They don’t need 200 features. They need five things to work perfectly every time.
Salary Structures Are Messy
We assumed most employees would have a clean gross salary. Deductions come off the top, net pay goes to the bank. Simple.
Reality: allowances everywhere. Transport allowance. Housing allowance. Airtime allowance. Leave allowance. Some taxable, some not. Every company has a different combination and everyone is convinced their structure is the standard one.
We spent more time on allowance handling than on any other feature. It still needs work.
Payroll Day Is Stressful
We track when people run payroll. The pattern is clear: most payroll runs happen on the 25th-28th of the month. And most of those happen in the evening.
That tells us something. Payroll isn’t a calm morning task. It’s the thing you do after everything else, often under deadline pressure, often worried about getting it wrong.
That’s why speed matters more than features. Nobody wants to explore a dashboard at 9pm on the 27th. They want to click, review, approve, done.
Employees Care About Payslips More Than We Thought
We built the employee portal thinking it would be a nice-to-have. It turned out to be the feature employers mention most.
Before Kazisafi, employees would message their manager or HR asking about deductions, leave balances, or payslip details. Every month, the same questions. Now employees check the portal themselves.
One user told us the employee portal saved them more time than the payroll automation itself.
What We Got Wrong
We underestimated how much handholding the first payroll needs. The product works, but the first run is where confidence is built or broken. We’re working on making that first experience smoother.
We assumed people would import employee data. Most of our users type in each employee manually, even when they have a spreadsheet. They don’t trust the import. We need to earn that trust with better validation and previews.
Our reports weren’t detailed enough. Kenyan accountants want to see everything. Every line item, every calculation, every subtotal. Our first report templates were too minimal. We’ve been adding detail ever since.
What’s Next
We’re building toward a point where running payroll takes less than 10 minutes for any team size. We’re not there yet, but 1,000 payslips in, we understand the problem better than we did on day one.
The next 1,000 will be faster.