Comparison

A Zenscale alternative for the plant whose payroll starts at the gate

Zenscale is a Ludhiana-built cloud ERP for manufacturers, "Trusted By 500+ Manufactures" by its own count, and its Payroll module is the one most hosiery, textile and engineering units in Punjab actually use day to day. If you are running Material Management and Production Planning on it, you are an ERP customer and this page is not for you. This page is for the unit that bought Zenscale for attendance and salary, and wants those two things to keep working on the machines already on the wall, with a price that does not move when a second plant opens. Every Zenscale fact below is from zenscale.in as published on 11 September 2026.

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Zenscale sells its Payroll Management module at ₹4,500 a month at standard rates, with published discounts of 75% for units up to 20 employees and 50% for units up to 100, a minimum quarterly payout, and ₹1,000 a month per additional plant. It includes statutory reports, TDS, ESI and PF, piece wages, loans, muster books and a self-service login. AionHRMS is attendance-first: confirmed eSSL, ZKTeco and Realtime terminals push punches to the cloud with nothing installed at the plant, one register spans every unit and brand, shift-wise salary is computed from the punch, and employees get a portal for leave, corrections and payslips. Pricing is free up to 10 employees, then ₹25,000 a year up to 100 employees and ₹50,000 a year up to 500, exclusive of GST, unlimited terminals and plants, invoiced only after the devices are live. Zenscale is the better buy when piece-rate wages, statutory filing and the rest of the ERP must live in one system. AionHRMS is the better buy when the terminals, the multi-plant register and a price that does not scale with plants are the purchase.

Unlimited plants

versus ₹1,000 a month per additional plant, per module

₹25,000 a year

to 100 employees, close to Zenscale's small-industry rate and free below 10

Terminal push

the device reports to the cloud itself; no sync PC at the plant

Paid after go-live

no implementation charge; the integration risk is ours

What Zenscale is, fairly

Zenscale (zenscale.in) is a modular ERP built in Ludhiana for the businesses around it: textile, fashion, food, healthcare, cosmetics, batteries, leather and paper, by its own list. Payroll is one of eight modules alongside Material Management, Production Planning, Financial Accounting, ZenTask, Zen CRM, a B2B portal and Advance Planning. For a manufacturer who wants job orders, bills of material, GST and wages in one login, that breadth is the product, and this page credits it.

The Payroll module's published feature list is long and specific: Automatic Attendance Synchronisation, Statutory Reports, Employee Master, Shift Management, Cost Center, Attendance Processing, Salary Processing, Muster Books, Approvals, Employee Self Care Login, Loan Management, Deductions, Piece Wages, Incentives, Multiple Plants, Arrear, TDS, Overtime Settings, Advance, ESI & PF, Bonus, Gratuity, Exgratia, Holiday Eligibility, Weekoff Eligibility, Payslips, Asset Management, Allowances, plus a web and Android self-care login.
Piece wages, arrears, bonus, gratuity and ex gratia are on that list. Those are exactly the things a hosiery unit pays, and AionHRMS does not compute them.
Geo-fencing ("Set a radius for the attendance so that employees can mark attendance only from the location") and a mobile app to "mark attendance, check leave status, and apply short leaves".
Published pricing, published tiers for micro and small industries, and two published implementation models with the number of sessions written down. Few Indian vendors are that transparent.
If your plant runs production and material on Zenscale, the payroll module's integration with those is worth more than anything on this page.

Pricing: both published, so do the arithmetic

Zenscale's pricing page (11 September 2026): Payroll Management "₹ 4500" "Per Month", "*Minimum Quarterly Payout". "Micro Industries" with turnover up to ₹1 crore and up to 20 employees "Pay Just 25% of Standard Pricing"; "Small Industries" up to ₹10 crore and 100 employees pay 50%; "Medium Industries" above that pay standard rates. "Additional Branch or Plant would be charged additionally at the rate of INR 1000 per month billed annually per module." Implementation is free online (six sessions) or ₹20,000 dedicated with on-site days. AionHRMS is free up to 10 employees, then ₹25,000 a year up to 100 employees and ₹50,000 a year up to 500, exclusive of GST, unlimited terminals and plants, invoiced only after the devices are live. At list, before GST:

A 15-person unit under ₹1 crore: Zenscale ₹1,125 a month, about ₹13,500 a year. AionHRMS: ₹25,000 a year, or free if the unit stays at 10 people. Zenscale is cheaper here and this page says so.
An 80-person unit under ₹10 crore: Zenscale ₹2,250 a month, about ₹27,000 a year. AionHRMS: ₹25,000 a year. Near parity on software; the scope differs, see below.
A 150-person unit: Zenscale ₹4,500 a month, ₹54,000 a year. AionHRMS: ₹50,000 a year (the up-to-500 band).
The same 150-person company with three plants: Zenscale adds ₹1,000 a month for each of the two extra plants, ₹24,000 a year, for ₹78,000. AionHRMS: ₹50,000, unlimited plants.
Where Zenscale's price is fair: it includes statutory payroll and piece wages. Ours computes shift-wise salary and stops there; the gap narrows to what your CA charges to file from our monthly report.

Hardware: "Automatic Attendance Synchronisation" is the line to ask about

Zenscale's pricing page lists "Automatic Attendance Synchronisation" as the first feature of the Payroll module. It does not, on the pages we could load, name device brands or say what runs at the plant to move punches from the terminal into the software. That is the question that decides whether the register survives the day the attendance PC is switched off, and it is worth an email to Zenscale before you decide anything.

AionHRMS is explicit: a confirmed eSSL or ZKTeco terminal is repointed from its own Comm menu to our server over the iClock/ADMS push protocol; a confirmed Realtime terminal over its native protocol. Nothing is installed at the plant, no static IP, no sync PC, no log file.
The machines on Punjab's factory walls are overwhelmingly eSSL, ZKTeco and Realtime, bought from local dealers. Those are the three families we implement. Send the model and serial and we confirm before you commit.
Employee codes carry over. Every template on a terminal is stored against a user ID; keep the same ID on the AionHRMS record and nobody re-enrols. The switch guide covers this step by step.
Lock or unlock a worker on every terminal from the browser, log denied attempts, release a gate remotely where the model supports it. Attendance and access in one register.
Mixed estates are normal here: an eSSL at the dyeing unit, a Realtime at the knitting shed, both bought in different years. Both report into one AionHRMS account.

After the punch: what each side does with it

Zenscale carries the punch into a statutory payroll and, if you have the modules, into costing and production. AionHRMS carries it into a narrower set of things and does each of them with the specific arithmetic of an Indian shift floor.

AionHRMS payroll: per-employee duty times, single or double shift with a separate salary per shift, punches bucketed to the right shift automatically, night shifts on the right date, grace period, late-count threshold, penalty as a flat fine or fraction of a shift, paid leave, advances and loans settled against future pay, monthly payroll report.
AionHRMS employee portal: phone-OTP sign-in, leave requests and manager approvals with leave types, quotas, holidays and weekly offs, missed-punch correction requests, on-screen payslips, documents, and an exit date that switches off login and gate access on the day.
Not built, plainly: piece-rate wages, ESI computation, filing of PF, ESI and TDS returns, bonus, gratuity, ex gratia, arrears, muster books in Punjab's statutory format, and cost centres. PF and TDS deductions can be computed on the payslip, off by default. AionHRMS supports online geofenced mobile punches at enabled company locations; these public calculators are planning tools, not additions to statutory payroll filing.
A split many multi-plant companies run: AionHRMS at the gates, the monthly report into whatever computes statutory pay, whether that is a CA's software or a payroll suite. The partner API exposes attendance by person or organisation over date ranges.

Security and continuity: what each side publishes

On the Zenscale pages we could load on 11 September 2026 we found no statement of hosting region, certifications or data-export format. That is not unusual for a regional ERP and it is not an accusation; it is a list of questions to put in writing to any vendor before your wage data lives there.

AionHRMS states outright: attendance and device-enrolment data on infrastructure in India by default, with Europe available for EU and UK customers where their compliance requires it.
AIONDATA is ISO 9001:2015 certified (quality management, not an information-security standard, and we do not present it as one), CMMI Level 3 appraised, and SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA ready. Readiness, not an issued attestation.
Export format, stated: the monthly payroll report and per-employee attendance are exportable, and the partner API returns attendance over date ranges with scoped keys. If you leave, your punches leave with you.
Ask both vendors the same three questions: where is the data hosted, what is the export format, and what happens to our access if the subscription lapses or the company changes hands.

Zenscale Payroll versus AionHRMS, line by line

Zenscale rows are from zenscale.in as published on 11 September 2026. Where Zenscale's loadable pages say nothing, we say so rather than guess.

	AionHRMS	Zenscale Payroll (published, Sept 2026)
What it is	Attendance-first HRMS: terminals, cloud register, shift payroll, employee portal.	Payroll module of a manufacturing ERP; seven sibling modules.
Stated fit	Any workplace with a gate; 10 to 5,000 staff.	Manufacturers; micro, small and medium tiers by turnover and headcount.
Pricing	Published: ₹25,000/yr ≤100, ₹50,000/yr ≤500; free ≤10.	Published: ₹4,500/mo standard; 25% and 50% tiers; minimum quarterly payout.
Extra plants	Unlimited, included.	₹1,000 a month each, per module, billed annually.
At 150 staff, 3 plants	₹50,000 a year.	≈ ₹78,000 a year (₹54,000 + 2 × ₹12,000).
Biometric devices	eSSL, ZKTeco, Realtime; the device pushes to the cloud.	"Automatic Attendance Synchronisation"; brands and method not stated on loadable pages.
Phone-based capture	Online geofenced punches at enabled company locations; no offline phone capture.	Geo-fencing radius; mobile app attendance and short leave.
Statutory and piece wages	PF and TDS deductions (optional). Not built: ESI, filing, bonus, gratuity, piece rates.	TDS, ESI & PF, Bonus, Gratuity, Exgratia, Piece Wages, Arrear, Muster Books.
Leave and self-service	Leave apply and approve, corrections, payslips, documents in the portal.	Approvals, Employee Self Care Login (web and Android), short leaves from the app.
Hosting and export	India residency stated; exports and API documented.	Not stated on loadable pages; ask.
Right choice when	The terminals, the multi-plant register and a flat price are the purchase.	Piece wages, statutory filing and ERP integration are the purchase.

Frequently asked questions

Is AionHRMS a good alternative to Zenscale Payroll?

For biometric attendance across plants, shift-wise salary from the punch, and an employee portal, yes, with a flat annual price that does not add ₹1,000 a month per plant. For piece-rate wages, PF, ESI, TDS, bonus and gratuity inside the same product, and for integration with Zenscale's material and production modules, Zenscale has what AionHRMS does not. Decide which of those is the thing you are actually buying.

How much does Zenscale cost compared with AionHRMS?

Zenscale publishes ₹4,500 a month for Payroll at standard rates, ₹2,250 for small industries up to 100 employees and ₹1,125 for micro units up to 20, with a minimum quarterly payout and ₹1,000 a month per additional plant per module. AionHRMS is free up to 10 employees, ₹25,000 a year up to 100 and ₹50,000 up to 500, unlimited plants, invoiced after the devices are live. Below 20 employees Zenscale is cheaper; at 100 the two are close; at multiple plants AionHRMS is cheaper.

Does AionHRMS do PF, ESI and TDS like Zenscale?

No. AionHRMS computes shift-wise salary from attendance and produces a monthly payroll report; statutory computation and filing are done by your CA or a payroll product from that report. Zenscale lists TDS, ESI & PF, bonus and gratuity in its Payroll module. If those must be inside the same login, that is a point for Zenscale or for a payroll suite.

Can we keep the biometric machines we used with Zenscale?

Almost certainly. eSSL, ZKTeco and Realtime terminals, which is what most Punjab plants have, can be repointed to AionHRMS from their own settings menu with nothing installed at the plant. Keep the same employee codes and nobody re-enrols. Send the model and serial and we confirm before you commit. The switch guide covers the steps.

We heard Zenscale may be closing. Is that true?

We do not know, and we do not publish rumours about other companies. On 11 September 2026 zenscale.in was live and listed as an active product on third-party directories. If you have received a notice from Zenscale, the practical advice is the same as for any vendor change: export your employee master, attendance and payslips first, then run one parallel pay cycle on the replacement. Our switch guide lists exactly what to export.

Does AionHRMS handle piece-rate wages for hosiery and knitting units?

No. AionHRMS computes salary from shifts and punches: duty times, late rules, paid leave, advances. Per-piece or per-dozen rates are not computed. A unit paying piece rates should keep that calculation in Zenscale, in its ERP, or with its accountant, and can still use AionHRMS for gate attendance and the monthly attendance report that feeds it.

Attendance and salary that keep working on the machines you have

Send your terminal models, plant count and headcount; we confirm compatibility and quote in writing before anything changes.