SQL Payroll vs Actpay: Best Payroll Tool for SMEs

SQL Payroll: Compliance Depth for Your SME

SQL Payroll’s core value is the statutory payroll run. When you process the month, the system recalculates EPF (KWSP) by band, recomputes PERKESO and EIS against the current ceiling, re-derives PCB (MTD) from the latest tax schedule, and captures HRDF levy for employers registered with HRD Corp. The output is not just payslips — it generates year-end Form EA and the employee database needed for Form E in one pass, ready for your accountant to review before filing to HASiL.

The operational win for a busy finance operator: no manual table updates. SQL distributes current contribution schedules via patched payroll releases. And if your SME runs SQL Account on the same workstation, the payroll journal auto-posts into the GL. That removes the classic transcription step where a clerk retypes net pay and EPF amounts from payslip PDFs into accounting entries.

ActPay: The Leaner Malaysian Budget Counter

ActPay is the no-frills alternative. It covers the baseline salary run: basic pay, allowances, overtime, unpaid-leave proration, EPF, PERKESO and EIS computation, plus payslip printing and an export file for bank upload. It is a Windows desk installer, not a cloud-hybrid product, and it targets micro-SMEs that still run payroll on spreadsheets but want statutory calculations to be consistent.

Its main saving is the license fee, which lands well below SQL’s pricing, and the bank file upload to Maybank2E and CIMB B2B works cleanly for a standard salary disbursement. The trade-off appears at year-end: no native accounting link beyond a generic Excel export, so the finance operator does manual journal entry. Form EA requires manual assembly from the payslip records, and HRDF figures must be extracted separately. Essentially, ActPay trades software cost for extra staff hours.

EPF, SOCSO, PCB: Putting Both Systems to Test

Set both tools on the same month-end scenario — 20 employees, 3 expats, 2 foreign workers with levy deductions, one director drawing no EPF. Here is what SQL Payroll generates automatically:

– EPF contribution list with KWSP category codes and the upload file for Caruman

– PERKESO and EIS form 8A (Borang 8A) with the employer reference numbers

– PCB/MTD deduction list and the monthly tax deduction summary for LHDN

– HRDF levy summary, itemised per employee, for the e-Lewi/HRD Corp submission

ActPay computes the EPF and PERKESO bands reliably, and its MTD schedule handles the standard Prev-Y basis. But the moment you add foreign-worker levy slabs or multiple remuneration codes per employee, the configuration window becomes manual. There is no built-in HRDF summary, so levy totals are taken out of the payslip register by hand. Year-end is where AcPay hurts most: EA forms are not auto-generated, so each employee record must be flagged and printed manually before the annual return.

Licensing, Upkeep, and Support in Klang Valley

SQL Payroll is licensed per company, per installation, typically with a one-year maintenance contract. A single-company deployment with the full feature set runs around RM 3,800 to RM 4,500, and maintenance renewal is roughly 15–18% of the license per year. Its dealer network is established across PJ, Shah Alam, Penang, and Johor, so support tickets in Klang Valley normally get a same-week response from a certified reseller.

ActPay’s license falls in the RM 1,500 to RM 2,500 range depending on the modules chosen, with no per-company complexity and no bundled accounting suite. Support, however, is thinner — you work through the vendor’s WhatsApp or email line or your assigned reseller, and onsite assistance outside the main KL office is harder to schedule. For a small operation in SS2 or a Puchong shoplot, that usually means waiting for remote diagnosis before anyone physically checks the machine.

Final Pick for a 20-Staff Malaysian SME

Take SQL Payroll if your monthly run touches more than two statutory categories, you carry expat or foreign-worker staff, and your accountant does quarterly book closing. The journal integration into SQL Account alone pays for the price difference by removing GL data-entry work every single month.

Take ActPay if you are a micro-SME with fewer than ten run IDs, a flat overtime policy, and an operator who is comfortable rebuilding the EA schedule in Excel each year. It is a cap of doing the job rather than a full payroll department, and it should be re-evaluated at the 15-employee mark — that is precisely when the manual year-end work starts costing more than the saved license fee.