Hisab Pagar
Search the Play Store for “hazri app”, “staff attendance” or “hisab kitab app” and you will find dozens of choices. Most look similar in screenshots. The differences show up a month later, at salary time, or a year later, when you change phones. This is a practical checklist for choosing one for a shop, workshop, restaurant or site, based on what actually matters day to day.
First, be clear what you need
“Hisab kitab” covers several different jobs, and apps tend to specialise:
- Customer khata: who owes you money for goods sold on credit.
- Billing and stock: invoices, GST and inventory.
- Staff attendance and salary: haziri, pagar, advances and slips for the people who work for you.
This checklist is about the third. If staff salary is your main headache, choose an app built for it rather than a billing app with an attendance screen added on.
The checklist
1. Does it work without internet?
Attendance is marked at opening time, often in a godown, basement or site with weak signal. An app that needs a connection to save will fail on the busiest morning. Look for one that saves everything on the phone and works fully offline.
2. Is marking attendance fast?
You will do this every single day. Count the taps: ideally one tap per person, plus a way to mark everyone present at once on a normal day. Check that it has the statuses you need: present, absent, half day, paid and unpaid leave, holiday, and week off.
3. Does it handle how you actually pay?
Many businesses have a mix: monthly staff at the counter, daily-wage helpers, maybe a part-timer paid by the hour. The app should support monthly, daily, weekly and hourly pay, and let you set each person’s weekly off (or two), joining date, overtime rate and any late fine.
4. Can you check its salary maths?
Ask the app a simple question: for a ₹15,000 monthly salary in a 30-day month with 2 absences and Sundays off, what does it pay? Then work it out by hand (see how to calculate salary from attendance). A good app tells you how it calculates, so you can explain it to your staff.
5. Advances and payments
Advances are where most disputes start. You should be able to record salary, advance, bonus and penalty separately, with date and mode (cash, UPI, bank), and see the balance due for each person at a glance.
6. Slips and reports
At month-end you want a salary slip per person that you can send on WhatsApp, and a full monthly register you can print or keep. Check what the PDF actually contains before you rely on it; see what a salary slip should include.
7. Backup you control
Phones get lost, stolen and replaced. Ask: if I drop this phone in water tonight, how do I get my records back tomorrow? Good answers are an automatic backup to your own cloud account and a backup file you can export and keep. Test the restore once, before you need it.
8. Your language
If a manager or family member also marks attendance, the app should be in a language they are comfortable with, not only English.
9. Privacy and permissions
Your staff list includes names, phone numbers and salaries. Read where the data is stored (on your phone or on the company’s servers), whether an account is required, and which permissions the app asks for. Be wary of an attendance app that wants access to things it has no reason to need.
10. The real price
“Free” can mean free forever, free for a few staff, or free until the trial ends. Check whether slips, reports, extra staff or backups are behind a payment, and what happens to your records if you stop paying.
11. Phone, computer, or both?
If you do salaries at a desk, or have more than a dozen staff, a desktop version with a full-month view saves time. See managing attendance on a computer.
12. More than one business
If you run two shops, or a shop and a site, check that you can keep them separate inside one app.
Try it for one week before you commit
Add your real staff, mark a full week, enter one advance, and generate a slip. At the end of the week compare the salary figure with your own calculation. If anything surprises you, find out why before month-end, not after.
How Hisab Pagar fits this checklist
We make Hisab Pagar, so read this part with that in mind, and test it against the checklist yourself.
| Checklist point | Hisab Pagar |
|---|---|
| Offline | Works fully offline. Internet is only used for Google Drive backup, the AI summary, and opening WhatsApp. |
| Fast marking | One tap per person; “Present all” and “Holiday” for everyone. Seven statuses. |
| Pay types | Monthly, daily, weekly and hourly, with overtime rate, late fine, multiple weekly offs and joining date. |
| Clear maths | The rules are published in our salary guide. |
| Advances | Salary, advance, bonus and penalty, by cash, UPI or bank, with the balance due per person. |
| Slips and reports | Salary slip PDF shared on WhatsApp; monthly register PDF (muster roll and salary register). |
| Backup | Automatic backup to your own Google Drive on Android, plus a backup file you can export and import. |
| Language | 10 languages: English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Odia. |
| Privacy | No account or sign-up. Staff and salary records are stored on your device, not on our servers. See the privacy policy. |
| Price | Free, with no subscription and nothing to unlock. |
| Computer | Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux with a month-at-a-glance register. |
| Several businesses | Yes, each with its own staff and cashbook. |
When Hisab Pagar is not the right fit
- It is the owner’s register. Staff do not log in or mark their own attendance, and there is no selfie, GPS or biometric check-in.
- It does not calculate EPF, ESI, TDS or professional tax. If your business needs statutory payroll, use payroll software or a payroll service.
- It does not do billing, GST or stock. It does have a simple cashbook for income and expenses.
- The phone app is for Android; there is no iPhone app at the moment.
- The phone and desktop apps do not sync live. You move data between them with a backup file.
If those limits are fine for you, which they are for most small shops and workshops, it may well be all you need. If not, use the checklist above to find something that fits better.
