Case study: How Sinapis Cut Multi-Country Payroll From a Full Day to Five Minutes

A new hire in Rwanda, days before payroll

The new colleague started close to payroll day. They were based in Rwanda. The finance team that had to pay them sits in Kenya.

A year earlier, that combination would have meant a late first salary, or a scramble to find someone in Kigali who could run the calculation.

"We had to make the onboarding process faster, and Workpay really helped us there," says Cynthia Wanjiku, who handles payroll on the finance team at Sinapis. "We onboarded their details on Workpay and we were able to process their payroll on time."

The employee was paid on schedule and could open their own payslip from day one.

That month is one chapter of a longer change. Payroll at Sinapis used to take a full working day, every month, in a spreadsheet. It now takes about five minutes.
‍

One finance team, three countries, three sets of rules

Sinapis is a non-profit that works with entrepreneurs. It trains founders at idea stage and runs an accelerator programme for businesses that are already established. Its own operations run across Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

Three countries brings three sets of statutory deductions, three filing regimes and three sets of rules that keep moving. The standard answer to that is a payroll person in every market, which adds cost in every country the organisation operates in.

"We would need a local person from the different countries that we are in to help us with processing payroll," Cynthia says. "Once we found Workpay, it really helped us to minimise the costs of having to run payroll in the different countries."

Sinapis went looking for an HR and payroll provider in 2023 and brought all three countries onto one platform.

Excel, one person, and a full day a month

Before that, payroll ran on spreadsheets and on whoever was holding them.

"We used to do payroll on Excel, and it was dependent on the person who is processing payroll," Cynthia says. "So we are human. We are bound to make errors."

In 2022 and 2023 she did the run by hand, reading every employee's details line by line. "Not a big team as much then, but even so, it's still a whole day's work of just doing payroll."

A full working day a month is more than a week of someone's year. The chance of a mistake came back with every cycle, and so did the paper trail.

"Even when you present Excel sheets to an auditor, they already see how much work they are going to have while analysing all the Excel sheets one by one."

Audit season is when a year of record keeping gets read by someone outside the organisation.

When the rules change in a country you are not sitting in

Statutory change is where multi-country payroll usually breaks. Kenya moved NSSF contributions to a two-tier structure under the 2013 Act, and every employer had to apply it, file it correctly and explain it to staff. Rwanda changed its own rates in the same period.

"We moved to the new NSSF Act of 2013, which meant that now we contribute NSSF in two tiers," Cynthia says. "Workpay being able to make that change, notifying our staff and applying it on the system, has really been a success for us. And not just in Kenya. Even Rwanda, when they changed the statutory obligation to 6% of the employee's earnings."

She counts the handling of those moments among the real successes of the partnership.

"The change being effected on Workpay and being communicated to our staff is a big success for us."

Deductions stayed accurate in all three countries as the rules moved, without a payroll hire in any of them.

What the team runs on the platform now

Payroll was the starting point. The scope has grown since.

• Payroll for Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, processed month on month from one place
• Salary advances, requested and approved in the same system
• Leave management for the whole workforce, with employees applying from their own portal
• Expense reimbursements for staff who work in the field

That last one changed the most for people who never log into a finance system. Claims used to travel by email.

"We would do an email on email on email, which would waste a bit of time," Cynthia says.

Now the field team photographs the receipt.

"The ease of just taking a picture of the expense receipts, posting it on Workpay, and then you can get paid on time. That has really helped our employees."

Leave works the same way. "If I log into Workpay, I can see the days that I am remaining with. Then I can plan how my leave will look throughout the year."

When staff post their own expenses and check their own balances, finance stops being the queue everyone waits in. Reimbursements land faster and reconciliation gets cleaner.

From a full working day to about five minutes

"It takes me about five minutes to process payroll," Cynthia says. "It has really saved us on time and record keeping for our staff."

The countries are the same three and the team is the same size. What changed is that nobody retypes employee details by hand. The errors that came with retyping went with it, and the records an auditor asks for now come out of the system instead of out of a folder of spreadsheets.

The part that is not software

Ask Cynthia what she values most and the time saving comes first. Customer support comes immediately after.

"Every time I have an issue, I can quite easily write and someone will reach out and assist," she says. "Even when you call, our relationship manager is there to assist us every single time you have a query."

In markets where deductions change without much warning, someone who already knows your setup answers faster than someone reading it for the first time. Cynthia puts the effect on her own team in one line.

"It is the confidence that our staff also have in the system that we are using."

She describes the partnership in three words. "Compliance, supportive and fruitful."

What other finance teams can take from Sinapis

Sinapis' situation is specific. The pattern is familiar to a lot of finance teams running payroll across African markets.

• Count the real cost of manual payroll. A full working day a month is more than a week of someone's year, before you price in the risk of an error.
• Buy statutory tracking in rather than building it three times over. Distance from a market is where compliance breaks first.
• Put payroll, advances, leave and expenses in one place before you add the next country. Every separate tool is coordination you keep paying for.
• Test the setup against a hire in a country your finance team does not sit in, with a week's notice. If that creates a crisis, the setup is the problem.

Cynthia's advice to anyone weighing the same move is short. "If you are looking to navigate legal compliance in Africa, search out Workpay."

If payroll across several African markets still costs your team a day a month, Workpay can bring your countries onto one platform, apply local statutory rules and run the month in minutes. Book a discovery call to see what your payroll day could look like.

‍