The best HR software for a Romanian SME: how to choose, what matters

There is no “best HR software” in the absolute — there is the one that best fits your size, your industry and the level of compliance you need. An SME in Romania does, however, have a fairly specific set of requirements, which quickly rules out a good part of the options on the market. Here is how to filter them.

Why the Romanian criteria are different

An international HR platform can be excellent at recruitment and appraisals, yet know nothing about REGES-Online (the general register of employee records), about the sick leave rates in OUG 158/2005, or about exporting to the accounting program your accountant uses. And these are not “nice to have”: they are legal obligations with penalties attached.

So the zero-level filter for an SME in Romania is: does the platform cover the local obligations? If the answer is no, the rest of the features matter very little.

The modules that matter for an SME

You do not need everything from day one. A reasonable order of priority:

Essential (without them you stay on Excel):

• Time tracking — the daily record required by art. 119 of the Labour Code (Codul Muncii), with methods suited to field, factory floor and office.
• Leave and absences — automatic balances, digital requests and approvals, multiple types (annual, sick, short time off).
• Personnel files — contracts, acte adiționale (addenda to the employment contract), documents, with personal data protected in line with GDPR.

Very useful at 20+ employees:

• Payroll compliant with Romanian legislation, with a clean export to accounting.
• Work schedules / shifts — planning, shifts, rest periods.
• Approvals — a single flow for requests, not emails.

Differentiators as you grow:

• Self-service documents — employees download their own certificates, so HR is no longer blocked.
• Reports — attendance, absenteeism, payroll cost, contracts about to expire.
• Assets and equipment — who has which equipment, with history.
• Internal helpdesk — requests to HR and IT in one place, not on WhatsApp.

The questions to ask any vendor

Write the answers down — they quickly separate salespeople from real solutions:

1. How is time tracking done for people without a smartphone? (If the answer is “through the app”, you have a problem on the factory floor.)
2. Do the recorded hours reach payroll automatically, or do we export manually?
3. How is reporting to REGES done, and how do you guarantee consistency with the data in the platform?
4. In what format do you export to accounting? My accountant uses Saga — does it work directly?
5. Who updates the rates when the legislation changes, and how quickly?
6. Does support answer in Romanian? During what hours?
7. How do you handle personal data? Encryption, roles, retention, deletion.
8. Can I enable only the modules I need right now?

Is it worth giving up Excel?

Excel works up to a point — usually around 15–20 employees, or earlier if you have shifts, several work sites or high turnover. The signs you have outgrown it:

• you spend hours every month reconciling the time records with the payroll register;
• nobody knows exactly how many leave days someone has left without opening a file;
• you found out about an expired contract after it had expired;
• at an ITM (Labour Inspectorate) request, you would need a day to gather the documents.

The difference is not “convenience” but risk: Excel has no audit trail, no single source of truth, and a broken formula tells nobody.

What it costs and what is included

The usual model is per employee per month, with volume tiers. When you compare, add up the total cost of ownership: licence + any hardware (terminal, NFC cards) + implementation/migration + internal administration time. Ask explicitly whether legislative updates and support are included or billed separately — this is where the surprises appear.

Frequently asked questions

What modules should HR software have for a small company? The functional minimum: time tracking compliant with art. 119, leave with automatic balances and digital personnel files. Payroll and reporting become important as you grow.

Which HR software integrates time tracking with payroll? Look for solutions where the link is native, not a manual export/import. Ask specifically whether overtime and absences reach the payroll calculation automatically.

Is it worth an SME giving up Excel for HR software? Yes, as a rule from 15–20 employees, or earlier if you have shifts, multiple sites or high turnover. The main argument is reducing risk (audit, compliance), not just saving time.

Is there HR software built specifically for Romanian legislation? Yes. The difference shows in REGES, in the sick leave rates, in the personal deduction (deducerea personală) and in the export to Romanian accounting programs — areas where generalist international platforms are usually uncovered.

If you are still on Excel, see the signs your company has outgrown Excel; for the general criteria for choosing a platform, see how to choose HR software.

How Workly helps

Workly is built for the Romanian market, with modules that are enabled only when you need them — you start with time tracking and add the rest as you grow, without paying for a whole suite from day one.

The actual coverage: time tracking (kiosk with a rotating QR code and NFC cards for people without phones, plus web and mobile), leave and time off with automatic balances and an approval flow, work schedules and shifts, personnel files with encrypted personal data, Romanian payroll for 2026 with export in SAGA format to accounting, self-service documents (employees obtain their own certificates themselves), cross-module reports, assets and an internal helpdesk. And the Modi assistant answers employees’ everyday questions (“how many leave days do I have left?”) deterministically, with no external LLM — so it cannot invent an answer.

Support is in Romanian, and legislative updates are part of the product, not a separate project.

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Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal or tax advice. Legal obligations may change — always check the framework in force at the official sources or consult a specialist.