Questions, answered properly
If something is not covered here, ask the assistant in the corner of this page, or contact the team.
Starting out
Yes. Every plan opens with a free 3-day trial, no card is requested, and no invoice is raised during it. The workspace is the complete product, not a limited demo.
On the last day we raise the first invoice at the plan rate, on the Techsavanna letterhead, and email it to you. Settle it by M-Pesa and the workspace simply keeps running with everything you set up during the trial intact.
Do nothing and the workspace pauses after the grace window on the unpaid invoice. Export your data at any point before or after; nothing is deleted while the retention window runs.
No. Plans are tiered by headcount band rather than billed per head, so adding a few people mid-month does not change your invoice.
No. Provisioning is fully automated, so there is nothing to charge for. There is also no minimum contract on the monthly plans.
Yes, at a discount to the monthly rate. You are invoiced once for the year.
Provisioning and setup
About ten minutes from submitting the form to a live, secured, branded workspace you can sign in to. You can watch each step or close the tab and wait for the email.
No. There is no server to provision, no certificate to install and no software to deploy. The platform stands the workspace up and secures it automatically.
Import from a spreadsheet with guided field mapping. The file is validated for duplicates and missing statutory identifiers, and you see exactly what will be created before committing. Most companies finish in a day.
A subdomain based on your company name with its own TLS certificate. A custom domain can be pointed at the workspace afterwards on request, without a rebuild.
It retries automatically, resuming rather than starting over. If it still cannot complete, our team is alerted, you are emailed, and no invoice is raised for a workspace that did not come up.
Most teams run their first full payroll within the first week. Attendance and leave start accruing from day one, so the first run has real data behind it rather than estimates.
Where your records live
No. Each customer gets a dedicated database and subdomain. There is no shared table holding several companies' employees and no query path between workspaces.
In-region, on infrastructure Techsavanna operates. It is not shipped to another continent for processing, which is what makes Kenya DPA and POPIA residency expectations satisfiable.
You do. Techsavanna processes it on your behalf under a data-processing agreement. We never sell it or repurpose it, and you can export it in full at any time.
Yes, for everybody or for specific roles such as payroll administrators. It applies at login and again before sensitive actions such as an earned wage draw.
Approvals and rejections, payroll submission, password and access changes, loan and advance decisions, grievance reviews and configuration changes, each with actor, timestamp, source address and what changed. Entries cannot be edited or deleted, including by an administrator.
Every report, the audit log and the underlying records export to spreadsheet or PDF from within the product, on any plan, including during the trial.
Getting people paid correctly
Kenya is live and shipped as standard: PAYE with graduated bands and reliefs, NSSF Tier I and II, SHIF, and the Affordable Housing Levy including employer portions. The pack loads at provisioning and is maintained centrally. Other jurisdictions are not shipped yet; Techsavanna builds statutory packs to order, so tell us which country you need and we will scope it.
The pack is updated centrally and your workspace receives the change. Historical periods keep the rate that actually applied, and the statutory report states which rate was used for which month.
Yes. Multi-entity payroll — separate pay calendars, statutory profiles and approval chains per entity, with consolidated reporting across all of them — is set up as part of a tailored plan. Tell us how many entities you run and we will scope it.
An employee requests in the app, it routes for approval, and once disbursed the recovery schedule attaches to payroll and deducts automatically until the balance clears.
M-Pesa disbursement is built in. For staff paid by bank transfer, the approved payroll run exports a complete payment schedule to spreadsheet for upload to your bank's portal. Per-bank batch files and additional mobile-money rails are on the roadmap.
Day to day
Yes, and it is the primary interface for most employees. Clock-ins, payslips, leave requests, approvals, documents and colleague chat all work on the phone, in light or dark, and follow the phone's own theme setting.
A clock-in is recorded locally with its original timestamp and location and syncs when connectivity returns. The delayed sync is visible to whoever reviews it.
Yes. Leave, advances, swaps and expense approvals are all actionable from the app, scoped to what that manager is permitted to see.
That is a core case. Geofenced and GPS-verified clock-ins, rosters with swap requests, and overtime rated by shift rule are all built for staff who never sit at a desk.
Every plan includes email support from the Techsavanna team in Nairobi, and the same platform reliability and security controls. Larger, tailored plans add priority response and a named contact.
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