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Employment Hero and Microkeeper are both Australian-focused platforms that have grown well beyond traditional payroll software. Both cover HR, recruitment, rostering, time and attendance and payroll, but they’ve developed with different priorities, and those differences matter when you’re choosing a platform your business will rely on for years.
This guide covers where each platform stands, where each has a genuine advantage, and how to work out which one is the right fit for your business.
Employment Hero and Microkeeper at a glance
What is Employment Hero?
Employment Hero describes its platform as an AI-powered Employment Operating System, a broad employment ecosystem covering HR, payroll, recruitment, learning, benefits and employee experience. Its HR platform includes employee management, onboarding, compliance, performance management, learning and AI-powered tools. Its recruitment functionality includes applicant tracking, candidate management, job board integrations, talent pools and AI-powered hiring features, with specific capabilities varying by plan.
That breadth is Employment Hero’s most compelling characteristic. For businesses looking for a single platform that covers not just workforce management but also employee development, engagement and benefits, it’s one of the more comprehensive options in the Australian market.
What is Microkeeper?
Microkeeper is an Australian-built workforce management platform designed around the operational side of managing a workforce. Its platform covers HR, recruitment, rostering, time and attendance, timesheets, payroll and superannuation, connected so that information flows from one part of the workflow to the next without manual intervention.
The practical result is that a business can onboard an employee, manage their records and skills, roster them, capture their attendance, compare it against the roster, approve their timesheets and process payroll, all within the same system. For businesses with shift-based workforces, that connected workflow is where the majority of day-to-day workforce administration happens, and where errors are most likely to occur when systems aren’t properly integrated.
HR and employee management
This is an area where Employment Hero has considerable depth. Its HR platform extends into performance management, learning, employee experience and benefits, capabilities that go well beyond what most workforce management platforms offer and that can be genuinely valuable for businesses with a strong focus on employee development retention.
Microkeeper’s HR platform is more focused on connecting employee information with operational workforce management. An employee’s skills affect which shifts they can work. Their leave balance affects their availability on the roster. Their employment details feed directly into payroll. When those connections exist within the same system, HR administration becomes part of the workforce management workflow rather than something that has to be manually reflected across separate tools. For shift-based businesses, that operational integration is where most of the day-to-day value is generated.
Recruitment
Employment Hero has invested significantly in recruitment, with an applicant tracking system, careers page builder, job board integrations, talent pools and AI-powered hiring tools available depending on plan. For businesses where recruitment is a high-volume, ongoing function, that depth is worth taking seriously.
Microkeeper’s recruitment capability is built around connecting hiring to the rest of the workforce lifecycle. Through integrations with platforms like Manatal and Teamtailor, candidates hired in an ATS can be pushed directly into Microkeeper as new employees, triggering onboarding automatically without manual data re-entry. The question for businesses comparing the two is whether recruitment is the primary requirement or one part of a broader workforce workflow that needs to connect seamlessly to HR, rostering and payroll. Read more about Microkeeper’s recruitment integrations
Rostering and scheduling
Both platforms include rostering, but the depth and connectivity differ in ways that matter for shift-based businesses.
Microkeeper’s rostering platform covers employee availability, skills-based scheduling, multi-site management, shift bidding and budget forecasting. For Enterprise accounts, Roster Cycle adds the ability to build repeating shift patterns and apply them across groups or individual employees automatically, a significant time saving for businesses running FIFO within the wider HR, attendance, timesheet and payroll workflow, so a shift on the roster carries through to attendance tracking, timesheet approval and pay calculation without manual steps between each stage.
Employment Hero’s rostering capability is available but less central to its overall platform proposition. For businesses where rostering is a core daily function, particularly those managing large shift-based workforces across multiple locations, that difference is worth examining closely before deciding.
Time and attendance
Both platforms support time and attendance, but Microkeeper offers a broader range of clocking methods, mobile app with GPS, web clocking, facial recognition, fingerprint scanning and NFC, giving businesses the flexibility to use different approaches across different sites and environments. A construction site might use biometric clocking. A retail location might use a tablet kiosk. Field staff might clock via GPS-enabled mobile. All of it feeds into the same timesheet and payroll workflow.
Microkeeper also compares actual attendance with scheduled shifts in real time, so managers can identify discrepancies before timesheets are approved and before pay is calculated, rather than discovering them after the fact during a payroll review.
Payroll and compliance
Both platforms offer integrated Australian payroll with STP, award interpretation and superannuation. Employment Hero’s payroll, which it describes as Intelligent Payroll, can automatically pull timesheets, leave, expenses, hires and terminations into the pay run, reducing manual steps at pay cycle time.
Microkeeper’s payroll engine is similarly connected to the wider workforce management workflow, with hours flowing from approved timesheets directly into pay calculations with the relevant award rules applied. For businesses under complex Modern Awards or EBAs, Microkeeper’s controlled award interpretation allows pay rules to be configured to reflect specific obligations rather than relying on a generic rate table.
On superannuation, both platforms support payday super, which requires contributions to reach employee funds within seven business days of each pay run. The key difference is in implementation: Microkeeper processes super contributions directly from the pay run through its Beam integration, with no separate logins or manual file handling. Understanding how each platform handles contribution errors, rejections and resubmissions under the seven-day window is worth clarifying before you decide. Read more about Payday Super and what it means for your business
Reporting
Both platforms include reporting, but Microkeeper’s custom Report Builder, which lets businesses create reports with drag-and-drop column selection, applied filters and reusable templates, gives payroll and HR teams more flexibility to build the specific reports their business needs rather than working within a fixed set of pre-built options.
Employment Hero’s reporting capability is strong for HR metrics and employee management data, which aligns with its broader platform focus.
Where Employment Hero has a clear advantage
Microkeeper’s strength is the combination of HR, recruitment, rostering, timesheets, payroll and superannuation in a single connected Australian platform, without the complexity that can come with a broad employment ecosystem. It’s designed for businesses that need deep workforce management and payroll functionality, where the roster, attendance and pay run are closely related and need to work together reliably every cycle.
It’s particularly well suited to businesses with shift-based workforces, multiple locations, complex award conditions, or high volumes of casual and part-time staff, where the operational accuracy of rostering, attendance and payroll is more important than employee engagement and development tools.
Which should you choose?
Employment Hero is a strong option for businesses looking for a broad employment ecosystem, particularly where performance management, learning, benefits and employee experience are priorities alongside core HR and payroll.
Microkeeper is a strong option for Australian businesses that want HR, rostering, time and attendance, timesheets, payroll and superannuation connected in one system, with particular depth in the operational workforce management that shift-based businesses rely on every day.
The right choice depends on what your business actually needs. If your priority is a broad HR and employment ecosystem, Employment Hero warrants serious consideration. If your priority is connecting the operational workforce from HR through to payday, with rostering, timesheets and payroll working together reliably, Microkeeper belongs on your shortlist.
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