Industry: payroll accounting

Software for payroll bureaus — for everything that happens before and after the payroll run

The payroll run itself takes place in edlohn or DATEV and stays there. What costs time in payroll bureaus is the route there and back: clients submit hours and personnel notifications by email, spreadsheet and on paper, queries go round in circles, deadlines are chased by phone, and the results have to be distributed in a GDPR-compliant way. Attek Solutions builds the software for exactly that route — rented, with no upfront investment, from €500 a month.

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Your payroll software stays where it is

First of all, because the question comes up in every intro call: we replace neither edlohn nor DATEV, and we do not advise you to do so either.

Payroll processing belongs in a system-audited program — reporting procedures, contribution statements, certification requirements, ongoing changes in the law. The established systems handle that, and nobody should be tinkering with it.

What these systems do not cover is the running of a payroll bureau: working with thirty, fifty or two hundred clients, each of whom submits differently, is reachable differently and has different particularities. Payroll software was never intended for that — which is not a weakness but a different task.

Why you do not have to wait for their roadmap

There is, however, a second reason why digitalisation stalls in payroll bureaus, and it does lie with the payroll software vendors: system-audited software has to be developed conservatively. Reporting procedures, audits, changes in the law — the same caution you value in payroll processing makes further development slow. A new feature at edlohn or Agenda arrives when it arrives. Until then your process idea sits on a wish list.

That is the real reason for a layer of your own around payroll processing: your digitalisation runs at your pace, not in the release cycle of your payroll software vendor. With us you commission new functions when you need them — not when a vendor prioritises them.

The month of a payroll bureau, as it runs today

The same cycle every month, slightly different with every client:

The submission. Hours arrive as a spreadsheet attachment, new starters as a photo of the personnel form, sick notes by phone, leavers sometimes not at all. Every entry is reviewed, queried, retyped.

The chasing by phone. The 10th is the cut-off date, on the 12th eight clients are still missing. Who has already submitted and who has not is in no system — it is in the payroll clerk's head and in her inbox.

The queries. The social security number is missing, the start date contradicts the contract, the list of hours includes an employee who left long ago. Every query is an email, every answer another reconciliation.

The distribution. After the payroll run, payslips, reports and contribution statements go back — to the client, in part to the client's employees. Often as a password-protected PDF by email, which is laborious and stands on shaky ground in data protection terms.

None of this is payroll processing. All of it costs the time that decides the capacity of the bureau.

The client portal: submissions that arrive instead of being retyped

Clients submit in structured form. Hours, supplements, joiners and leavers, changes — in forms that ask for exactly the details you need. A new record without a social security number cannot be submitted; the query is gone before it arises.

Anyone who submits differently is not left out. Some clients will continue to submit by email or on paper — that is reality, not a failure of the portal. These submissions are recorded in the same case; afterwards everything looks the same to you.

The deadline status is one glance, not an inbox. Who has submitted, who has not, who was reminded and when. Reminders go out automatically — friendly at first, then more insistent, according to your rules per client.

The handover to payroll processing happens without retyping. Checked data is provided in the appropriate format for edlohn or DATEV respectively.

Communication has one place. Queries, answers and notes run bundled per client and per case — one thread that anyone in the team can see and take over, instead of being spread across the inboxes of individual clerks. Whoever stands in reads up in minutes instead of hours.

The return route runs through the same portal. Payslips and reports are made available to the client instead of being sent — with a log of who accessed what and when. On request with a separate login for the client's employees, who retrieve their own payslip themselves instead of having it distributed.

Two views of the same portal

What the client sees

Forms for hours, supplements, joiners and leavers
Which submissions are still missing and by when
Queries and answers per case, bundled
Payslips, reports and contribution statements to retrieve
The personnel files of their employees
The status of onboarding new employees

What their employees see

Their own payslip, retrieved rather than distributed
Their own data entry when joining — personal details, social security number, tax ID, bank details
Their own documents to upload
The employment contract for digital signature

Health data and church tax: why email is the wrong tool here

Payroll data is not just any data. Sick notes and electronic certificates of incapacity for work (eAU) are health data, and church tax reveals religious affiliation — both special categories under Article 9 GDPR, with correspondingly high requirements for processing.

An inbox in which such details sit as attachments, are forwarded and end up in distribution lists cannot meet these requirements structurally. A password-protected PDF changes little about that if the password is in the next email.

A portal solves this structurally: access only for authorised people, encrypted transmission, every access logged, deletion periods implemented rather than promised. For a payroll bureau this is doubly relevant — as an obligation of its own and as an argument towards clients whose data protection officers are increasingly looking closely.

The digital personnel file: an offer you make to your clients

Here the direction reverses. So far it has been about what the system saves you. The personnel file is something you offer your clients — as part of your service, without the client having to buy or roll out software of their own.

New employees enter their own data. The client reports a new starter, the system sends the new employee a link. They enter their data themselves — personal details, social security number, tax ID, bank details — and upload their documents. Mandatory fields are mandatory; what arrives is complete.

Documents are read and checked, not retyped. Uploaded documents are evaluated by text recognition and AI-assisted checking: do the details in the document match the data entered, is anything missing, is the tax ID plausible? The clerk reviews the anomalies — not every document.

Contracts are signed digitally. The employment contract goes to the employee through the system and comes back signed — with proof of who signed and when. Which signature level is required for which type of contract is configured per document type.

The file is there afterwards — and stays maintained. Contracts, documents, certificates and changes are held per employee in structured form, with an access model, a log and implemented retention and deletion periods. For the client this replaces the ring binder and the file share; for you it means that the data you run payroll with comes out of the file instead of out of an email.

What that means for your bureau: You no longer differentiate yourself through the price of the payroll run, but through a platform your clients use day to day. A client whose personnel processes run through your portal does not change payroll bureau over five euros per payslip.

Taking on clients without three weeks of email traffic

A new client today means: master data form out, incomplete back, follow-up questions, powers of attorney, access credentials, migration of the old data. Three weeks in which the client forms their first impression of your bureau.

As a defined process in the system: the client fills in a guided form, mandatory fields are mandatory, documents are uploaded instead of emailed, and the processing status is visible to both sides. What has to happen when a client leaves — closing access, handing over documents, setting retention periods — runs as the same mechanism in reverse.

What this means for capacity

The metric a payroll bureau depends on economically is the number of clients per payroll clerk. It does not grow through faster typing, but through the disappearance of work that is not payroll processing: retyping, following up, queries, distributing.

Conservatively estimated, a bureau with fifty clients spends many hours per month on exactly these steps. If they are structured and automated, capacity arises for new clients — with the same team. Given the current situation on the labour market for payroll clerks, that is often the only realistic route to growth.

How it works

01
Intro call, 30 minutes. You describe your problem. We tell you honestly whether custom software pays off for you or whether off-the-shelf software is the better choice.
02
Personal demo. Instead of slides you get software: we take a problem you described in the intro call and show it to you as a working application. That way you judge from your own case whether the effort is worth it, before you sign anything.
03
Requirements workshop. We go through your workflows until we have understood them completely. Free of charge.
04
Signing the contract. After the requirements workshop you receive a fixed monthly price for your requirements, and we sign the contracts.
05
First productive version after one to two months. This is when you start paying — not before.
06
Operations and continued development. Your workflows now run automatically and your team gains time for the business. We take care of operations, maintenance and support.

The process in detail — including what you contribute yourself →

The alternatives compared

Criterion	Email and spreadsheets as before	Add-on modules from payroll vendors	General-purpose portal solution	Attek CSaaS
Structured submission with mandatory fields	no	in part	generic	tailored to your processes
Clients that keep submitting by mail/paper	—	poorly covered	poorly covered	recorded in the same case
Deadline status across all clients	inbox and memory	in part	no	provided for
Automatic reminders under your own rules	no	limited	limited	provided for
Handover to edlohn/DATEV without retyping	no	yes, within their own ecosystem	no	provided for
Article 9 compliant distribution with logging	no	in part	in part	part of the solution
Digital personnel file as an offer to clients	no	in part, within their own ecosystem	no	part of the solution
Employee onboarding by link with digital signature	no	in part	no	provided for
AI-assisted capture and checking of documents	no	no	no	provided for
Access for the clients' employees	no	in part	rarely	provided for
Reflects your particularities per client	yes, by hand	no	no	yes
Upfront investment	none	licence	licence	€0
Ongoing costs	working time	per client/module	per user	€1,000–1,500+/month, everything included

When you do not need this

A bureau with a handful of clients that submit reliably and consistently does not need a system of its own. With a small budget and standard cases, the built-in tools of your payroll software and a tidy inbox are enough.

Talk to us as soon as you want to grow or capacity gets tight. Chasing by phone and retyping tie up staff time that grows with every client — and per-user licences do the same. A system of your own costs from €500 a month — the price depends on the scope of functionality, not on the number of users; €1,000–1,500 is typical. It makes growth possible without having to find staff in the same proportion. A client portal is at the same time a service you can offer instead of providing it on the side.

Frequently asked questions

Who develops custom software for payroll bureaus in Germany?

Attek Solutions GmbH from Berlin develops custom software for payroll accounting bureaus and provides it on a rental basis — with no upfront investment, with operations and continued development included in the monthly price. The focus is on the processes around payroll processing: client portal, data submission, deadline control and distribution. The payroll run itself stays in edlohn or DATEV.

Does this replace edlohn or DATEV?

No. Payroll processing belongs in a system-audited program and stays there. We build the layer before and after it — submission, checking, deadlines, distribution — and hand over checked data in the appropriate format.

How does the connection to edlohn and DATEV work?

Checked transaction and master data is provided in the format your payroll software can import; results from the payroll run are taken over for the distribution. Which route is actually available depends on your system and your access rights and is determined in the workshop.

Is a client portal GDPR-compliant when health data is processed?

It can be built that way — and is structurally superior to email in doing so: access only for authorised people, encrypted transmission, logging of every access, implemented deletion periods. Sick notes and church tax attributes are special categories under Article 9 GDPR; the assessment of your specific processes lies with your data protection officer, the technical implementation with us.

What about clients that keep submitting by email or on paper?

There will be such clients, and the system is designed for it. These submissions are recorded in the same case as portal entries — with the same checks and the same deadline status. The portal does not have to be accepted by all clients to pay off.

Can our clients' employees retrieve their payslips themselves?

Yes, on request with a login of their own. That relieves you and the client of the distribution and is cleaner than sending it by email.

What does custom software for a payroll bureau cost on a rental basis?

Between €1,000 and €1,500 a month, with a lower limit of €500. No setup fee, no upfront investment, no hourly rates. First productive version after one to two months.

Can we offer our clients a digital personnel file without them buying software of their own?

Yes, that is one of the strongest use cases. You provide the personnel file as part of your service; operations and continued development lie with Attek Solutions, and the client needs no software contract of their own. New employees enter their own data through a link, contracts are signed digitally, documents land in the file in structured form — and you run payroll with data that has already been checked.

Can uploaded documents be checked automatically?

Yes. Documents are read out by text recognition and checked with AI support against the details entered — for completeness, consistency and plausibility. Anomalies go to the clerk, the rest runs through. Processing takes place within the EU and under a contractually governed data processing agreement.

Why not wait until edlohn or Agenda offer the function?

Because system-audited payroll software is developed conservatively for good reason — and your process idea sits there on a wish list whose order you do not determine. With a layer of your own around payroll processing you commission functions when you need them; two changes per month are already included in the rental model.

How do we introduce this without disrupting day-to-day operations?

Step by step: first a pilot group of clients, in parallel with the previous route. Only when the process holds do further clients follow. A cut-off date on which everything is switched over at once is not necessary — and would not be advisable with deadline-driven processes either.

Tell us how your clients submit today.

In the intro call we go through one monthly cycle and tell you where most of the capacity is sitting. 30 minutes, free of charge.

Book an intro call

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+49 1525 9120406 info@attek.eu