Salario
2025
Simplifying payroll and HR for growing businesses
Designing an all-in-one workforce platform that helps businesses run payroll, stay tax-compliant and give employees easy access to their pay and financial tools.
Overview
One platform for payroll, HR and employee finance
Salario is a workforce management platform for HR, finance and operations teams at startups and SMEs in Nigeria and beyond. It brings payroll, tax and pension remittance, HR operations and employee financial tools together in one product.
As the product designer, I worked on the core payroll experience for admins and the tools employees use to view their pay and access financial services.
[Image: Salario dashboard overview]
Problem
Payroll was manual, error-prone and hard to keep compliant
Many small businesses run payroll on spreadsheets: calculating salaries and deductions by hand, generating payslips one by one and remitting taxes and pensions separately. This made every pay cycle slow, error-prone and stressful.
Employees, meanwhile, had little visibility into how their pay was calculated and limited access to financial support between pay days.
[Image: The spreadsheet-based payroll process before Salario]
Research
Understanding payroll admins and employees
I focused on two main groups: the admins who run payroll, often founders, HR or finance leads wearing many hats, and the employees who receive it. Admins needed confidence that calculations, deductions and remittances were correct every month. Employees wanted clear payslips and easy access to their money.
These insights shaped a product built around automation, accuracy and transparency for both sides.
[Image: User personas for the payroll admin and the employee]
Ideation
Exploring a simpler pay run
I explored ways to reduce payroll to a few confident steps: add employees once, review a pay run, approve and pay. Concepts compared a guided monthly checklist with a single review screen summarising totals, deductions and remittances.
We made the review step the heart of the experience, so admins could catch issues before any money moved.
[Image: Wireframe explorations of the pay run flow]
User Flows
From onboarding to pay day
Key flows included setting up a company and bulk-onboarding employees, running and approving payroll in one click, remitting taxes and pensions, and employees viewing payslips and accessing their earnings.
Mapping these together kept the admin and employee experiences connected while giving each role a focused path.
[Image: User flow for company setup and bulk employee onboarding]
[Image: User flow for running, reviewing and approving payroll]
Interaction Design
Making complex calculations feel simple
I used clear summaries, progressive disclosure and inline validation to make payroll feel manageable. Totals and deductions are visible at a glance, with details available when needed. Status indicators show where each pay run stands, and audit trails make every change traceable.
For employees, I prioritised a clean mobile experience for viewing payslips and managing their money.
[Image: Pay run review screen with deduction breakdown]
[Image: Employee mobile app with payslips and wallet]
Conclusions
What I learned
Payroll is one of the most trust-sensitive tasks a business runs. Designing for it taught me the value of making complex calculations visible and reviewable before money moves.
Future opportunities include deeper HR tools such as leave and performance management, and expanding employee financial products like cards and expense management.
[Image: Final screens for the admin and employee experience]
