Buyer's guide
If you run a shop, restaurant, or small warehouse in the Philippines, payroll is one of the few things you genuinely cannot get wrong — SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG contributions and withholding tax on compensation all have to be right, every cutoff. This guide is honest about that: dedicated Philippine payroll software is built for exactly this job, and Tallium AI is not a payroll product. What Tallium AI does is run everything around payroll — POS, inventory, e-commerce, and your books — in one app with unlimited users, so the payroll tool you choose has clean numbers to sit alongside.
Key takeaways
Philippine payroll platforms exist because local payroll is genuinely complicated: contribution tables change, 13th month pay is a legal requirement, and BIR forms like 1601-C and the annualisation at year end have their own rules. Tallium AI sits in a different place in your stack — it is the all-in-one accounting, POS, inventory, and e-commerce app that everything else feeds into, and it records payroll as a cost rather than calculating it.
| Feature | Tallium AI | other payroll software in Philippines |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll calculation (gross to net, overtime, night differential, 13th month pay) | Not included. Tallium AI is not a payroll engine — you run payroll in a dedicated tool and record the totals in Tallium AI as an expense or journal entry. | This is their core strength. Good Philippine payroll software handles overtime, holiday premiums, night differential, and 13th month pay against DOLE rules, with updates when tables change. |
| SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG contributions | Recorded as expenses and liabilities in your books; the contribution amounts come from your payroll system. | Calculated automatically from current contribution schedules, usually with the correct employee/employer split and remittance file formats. This alone is a strong reason to buy one. |
| Withholding tax on compensation and BIR payroll forms | Not produced. Tallium AI covers business tax reporting on the sales and purchases side, not employee withholding. | Typically generates 1601-C, the alphalist, and BIR Form 2316 for employees — a real time-saver at year end. Always confirm current rules with the BIR or a local tax professional. |
| VAT and the quarterly VAT return (2550Q) | Built in. Tallium AI tracks VAT on every sale and purchase against your TIN and gives you the figures to file your 2550Q, with the PHP 3,000,000 gross sales registration threshold in mind. | Usually out of scope. Payroll tools track employee taxes, not your business VAT position — you would still need accounting software alongside. |
| POS, inventory and e-commerce | All included in the same app. Sell in-store, track stock across locations, run your online store, and see it land in the books instantly. | Not offered. Payroll software has no reason to touch your tills or your stock, so this stays a separate purchase. |
| Pricing model | Flat USD per unit, billed monthly: shop/store $79, online store $159, warehouse $99, factory $269. Paid from signup, cancel anytime, no free trial. | Almost always priced per employee per month, often with a base fee. Fair for what it does, and it grows as you hire — which is the point of it. |
| User seats | Unlimited users on every plan with no per-seat fees — your cashiers, stock staff, and bookkeeper can all have their own login. | Payroll access is normally limited to admins and HR by design, which is sensible for confidential salary data. Extra admin seats may cost more. |
| AI automation | Receipt scanning, automatic categorisation, and AI insights on margins, slow stock, and cash flow across the whole business. | Mostly rules-based automation focused on payroll runs and compliance calendars, which is what you want for statutory calculations. |
| Marketing and CRM | Included in the same Tallium AI account — customer records, campaigns, and sales history live next to your books. | Not included. Some HR suites add recruitment or attendance modules instead. |
| What you still need to buy | A dedicated payroll tool if you have employees on a payroll cycle. | Accounting, POS, inventory, and e-commerce software — usually from two or three separate vendors, each priced per user. |
The honest verdict
If your main problem is paying staff correctly and on time, buy dedicated Philippine payroll software — it handles SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG, 13th month pay, and BIR payroll forms in a way no general business app should pretend to. If your main problem is that sales, stock, online orders, and your books live in four different places and every extra user costs money, that is what Tallium AI fixes, for one flat USD price with unlimited users. Most Philippine small businesses with a handful of employees end up running both, and that is a perfectly sensible stack — a payroll specialist for the payslips, Tallium AI for everything else.
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