Comparison
mjengoPay vs general-purpose payroll software.
Kenya has good HR and payroll platforms. If your team is salaried office staff, use one of them — genuinely. The comparison worth making is not “which product” but “which shape of problem”: monthly payroll for employees, or site payments for a workforce hired by the day.
When a general payroll platform is the right choice
Salaried employees, monthly cycles, PAYE/NSSF/SHIF filings, leave management, contracts and HR files — that is what general platforms are built for, and they do it well. If that describes your whole workforce, you do not need mjengoPay.
Where construction breaks them
A mjengo runs on vibarua hired at the gate, paid daily or by the piece, across scattered sites, at headcounts that change every morning. Force that into monthly-salary software and you end up running the real payroll in spreadsheets — attendance in a notebook, wage maths by hand, payouts pasted into a bulk M-Pesa file — with the software reduced to record-keeping theatre. The fraud surface (ghost workers, buddy punching, off-site marking) never gets touched, because office software assumes the timesheet is honest.
Side by side
| Need | General payroll software | mjengoPay |
|---|---|---|
| Wage types | Monthly salaries, allowances, formal contracts | Daily rates, piecework, visit-based pay, computed from site attendance |
| Attendance | Office check-in, leave days, timesheets | Clock-in at the gate, verified so only workers genuinely on site get counted |
| Payments | Bank transfers on a monthly cycle | Workers, suppliers, and contractors paid in bulk on the platforms they actually use |
| Fraud surface | Built for trusted salaried staff | Built assuming ghost workers and buddy punching will be attempted |
| Cost structure | Per-employee-per-month subscription | Pay per use — casual headcount that changes daily doesn’t change your bill |
| Site spend | Out of scope | Materials procurement, payments tied to confirmed deliveries, per-site budgets |
Can they work together?
Yes, and often should: plenty of contractors keep office staff on a general payroll platform and run site labour and materials on mjengoPay. The two workforces have different shapes; paying them with different tools is not duplication, it is fit. Start with the product overview or see how an M-Pesa payout run works.
Built for the half of your workforce spreadsheets were covering.
Pay-per-use pricing, no subscriptions. Workers only need the phone they already have.