It is the last Saturday of the month. Somewhere in your business, someone is sitting with an attendance register, a calculator and a spreadsheet that has been copied forward since 2023. They are working out what everyone is owed. Three days later, an employee will ask why their salary is short — and nobody will be able to explain it without opening the same spreadsheet again.
We have watched this in gyms, salons, clinics and restaurants. Six owners, six different trades, one complaint that never changes: the money is known, the paperwork is not.
Today we are launching MGD Payroll — payroll, attendance and statutory compliance built for Indian businesses where pay depends on attendance, hours and commission rather than a flat monthly salary.
Why We Built a Separate Payroll Product
MyGymDesk has managed members, billing and staff for fitness businesses for years. But payroll kept coming up as a separate problem — and not only from gyms.
A salon owner pays stylists on commission. A clinic pays part-time doctors by session. A restaurant runs shifts. A retail shop tracks hours. Every one of them was doing the same thing: exporting attendance to Excel, calculating commissions by hand, guessing at PF and ESI, and paying a CA ₹3,000–₹5,000 a month to check the arithmetic.
Generic HR software is built for offices with fixed salaries. It does not understand a commission structure that changes per person, or attendance that arrives from a punch rather than a login.
So MGD Payroll is a standalone product. You do not need MyGymDesk to use it.
Payroll That Starts at the Punch
The core idea is that nothing should be retyped.
Your staff mark attendance — manually, from their phone, or synced automatically if you already run MyGymDesk. That attendance becomes working days, overtime and late marks. Commission rules you defined once are calculated against your own session and sales records. Statutory deductions are computed. Payslips are generated and delivered.
One run a month, start to finish, with no CSV export in the middle.
What that removes in practice:
Built for More Than Gyms
MGD Payroll serves any business where pay is variable:
If your team is paid for sessions, shifts or sales, this was built for how you actually pay.
What Your Team Gets
Payroll is not only an owner's problem. Every "where is my payslip" message is a small tax on someone's day.
Employees get their own access:
Managers get one approvals list covering leave, attendance corrections and reimbursements from the people who report to them — so approvals do not all pile onto the owner.
Statutory Compliance, Calculated Every Month
MGD Payroll computes PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS to current Indian rules, every run, on every employee.
It also generates the PF ECR and ESI monthly return files your CA needs — on every plan, including the free one. Filing them on the EPFO and ESIC portals stays with you or your accountant; we produce the file, you file it.
We are careful about how we describe this, because our customers file returns on our output.
Professional tax is calculated per state, so a business with staff across locations is charged correctly rather than uniformly.
Free Forever, Up to Five Employees
Not a trial. A free plan, with real payroll on it.
Most payroll products offer a free tier that stops short of actually running payroll. Ours does not. On the free plan you get the payroll run, PF/ESI/PT/TDS calculation, payslip PDFs, manual attendance, the PF ECR and ESI return files, and employee self-service.
| Plan | Employees | Locations | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 | 1 | ₹0 forever |
| Starter | 10 | 3 | ₹7,999 / year |
| Growth | 25 | 10 | ₹15,999 / year |
| Pro | 50 | Unlimited | ₹24,999 / year |
Prices are exclusive of GST. Three-year pricing is available at a discount, and employee add-on packs let you grow without moving up a plan.
Growth and above add mobile punch with GPS and selfie verification, GMS attendance sync, manager approvals, reimbursements, incentives and commissions, loans and advances, WhatsApp payslip delivery and bank file export. Pro adds investment declarations and Form 16.
See the full breakdown on the MGD Payroll product page.
If You Already Use MyGymDesk
Attendance and session data flow straight into payroll — nothing to export, nothing to reconcile. The trainer who taught nine sessions this week is already counted.
If you are an existing MyGymDesk customer, you can add MGD Payroll to your account directly from your owner dashboard. Your business details carry over; you only choose a plan.
If you use gym management software from us and have been handling payroll separately, this is the gap closing.
Getting Started This Week
Most businesses are running their first payroll within an afternoon.
Conclusion: Month-End Should Be Boring
Payroll is not a growth activity. Nobody opens a gym, salon or clinic because they wanted to calculate provident fund. The best possible outcome is that it happens correctly, on time, and takes almost none of your attention.
That is what we built MGD Payroll to do.
If you are ready to stop running payroll on WhatsApp and spreadsheets, start free today — up to five employees, free forever — or book a demo and we will walk you through exactly how it works for a business like yours.
