Breathe

Breathe is HR software for the company that keeps its people records in a filing cabinet and its leave in a spreadsheet, and knows it should not. Employee records, leave requests and approvals, sickness tracking, documents with acknowledgement, simple performance check ins and a company calendar cover the core of what a growing SME actually needs, presented plainly enough that nobody requires training.

The pricing model is its sharpest edge: flat tiers per company rather than per employee. Micro covers up to ten people for 24 pounds a month, about R565. Starter covers up to twenty for 44 pounds, Regular up to fifty for 99 pounds, about R2,330, and Pro up to a hundred for 175 pounds. For a forty person company that flat R2,330 undercuts nearly every per seat competitor, and costs stay predictable as you hire within your band. Annual billing shaves roughly a further 15% off.

Breathe is a British product and it shows in the defaults: holiday entitlement logic and public holidays arrive UK flavoured and need configuring for South African leave rules, and there is no employment equity or skills development reporting. South African companies using it, and a fair number do, value the simplicity and the flat bill over deep localisation, and configure BCEA style leave manually. A 14 day trial makes it easy to test whether that trade suits your business.