What questions should I ask an HRMS vendor before signing a contract?

Before signing an HRMS contract, ask questions across five areas: compliance coverage, pricing transparency, implementation, data ownership, and support. The goal is to surface the costs and limitations that don’t appear in a sales demo.

• Does the system handle statutory payroll (EPF, ESI, TDS, Professional Tax) automatically for every state we operate in, and how are labour-code changes pushed out?
• Is pricing per-employee-per-month, and does it change when we cross 50, 100, or 500 employees? What modules are extra?
• What is a realistic go-live timeline for our size, and who owns implementation and data migration?
• Can we export all our data if we leave, in what format, and what happens to it after termination?
• What are the guaranteed support response times for a payroll emergency, and through which channels?
• Can you share three references from companies of our size and industry, plus security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2, India data residency)?