Zoho People is Zoho’s HR platform for leave, attendance, onboarding, employee records and performance reviews, and it runs separately from payroll. For an NZ HR team evaluating it, the practical question is what day-to-day HR work it actually replaces before anyone asks whether it connects to payroll. Smartmates sets this up for NZ businesses moving off spreadsheets and paper files.

The spreadsheet is the real reason you’re looking at this

If you’re the one chasing leave requests through email, re-keying start dates into three different places, and hunting for a signed employment agreement when a dispute comes up, you already know why a spreadsheet stops being enough. Or maybe you’re past that stage: a previous partner set up Zoho People for you, approvals still route to a manager who left the business months ago, and nobody on your team trusts the leave balances it shows. Either way, the HR person ends up the human version of version control, patching by hand what the system is supposed to handle on its own. That’s the gap Zoho People is built to close, separate from whatever payroll system you run.

Read more: Zoho Recruit Consultant NZ: What Should Be Cleaned Up Before Candidate Data Is Migrated?

What to check before you assume it does what you need

• Map your current leave types (annual, sick, bereavement, parental) and confirm each one can be configured with its own accrual rule, not just a generic balance field.
• List every employee record field your business actually uses today (visa status, qualifications, next of kin, employment agreement version) and check it has a home in the system, not a workaround in a shared drive.
• Decide who approves what. A flat one-manager-approves-everything model breaks down fast once you have team leads and department heads, and getting the approval chain wrong early means redoing it once staff are already used to the old path.
• Work out how attendance is captured on the ground, whether that’s a roster import, a kiosk, mobile check-in, or manual entry, because the method changes how clean the data stays and how much manual checking your office manager ends up doing.
• Check how onboarding actually happens for a new hire today, who sends the employment agreement, who sets up system access, who tells payroll, and whether that sequence is something the new system should own or just record.
• Treat payroll as a separate, later decision. Confirming HR records and leave workflows first means you’re not trying to solve two problems, and two sets of data, in one rollout.

Do it yourself vs bring in a Zoho consultant

Where Smartmates fits once the HR side is mapped out

Smartmates is a Zoho Premium Partner working with NZ businesses to set up Zoho People against their actual leave policies, approval structure and employee records, not a generic template. That starts with a Planning Session, where a senior consultant maps what you’re using now, what Zoho People needs to replicate, and where a previous setup, if there was one, left data in a state that needs cleaning up before anything is migrated. From there you get a written Project Plan Estimate, so you know the scope and the hours before anything is billed. Work is charged hourly from a pre-purchased top-up, with itemised weekly statements, rather than a fixed retainer. For the official product details, Zoho’s own Zoho People page covers current features and editions directly. We work the same way whether you’re coming in as a Zoho People partner evaluating the platform for the first time or already have it running and need a consultant to fix a setup that isn’t holding up.

See also: Book a free Zoho Planning Session

Common Questions on Zoho People Before You Commit

Does Zoho People include payroll?

No. Zoho People handles leave, attendance, onboarding, employee records and performance management. Payroll is a separate decision, often handled through a dedicated NZ payroll provider or a connected system, and it’s worth confirming with a Zoho people consultant how that connection would work for your business before committing to it.

Can Zoho People handle multiple leave types with different accrual rules?

Yes, leave types can be configured individually, which matters once you have more than one employment category, full time, part time, casual, each accruing leave differently. Getting this right from the start avoids having to correct balances later, once staff are already relying on them.

What happens to our existing employee records when we switch?

Existing records, whether in spreadsheets, a previous HR system, or paper files, need to be reviewed and cleaned before migration, not copied across as is. Fields that don’t map directly, a custom qualification tracker, for example, need a decision on where they’ll live in the new system. This is usually where a rollout either stays tidy or quietly inherits the old mess.

Get a Clear Picture Before You Decide

If your HR records and leave process have outgrown what a spreadsheet or your current system can manage, a free Planning Session with a Zoho people consultant new-zealand businesses already use maps out what Zoho People would need to cover for your business, and what it would take to get there properly. You walk away with a written plan, not a sales pitch, and payroll stays a separate conversation until the HR side is actually settled.