Best Payroll Software for Small Business in Canada (2026 Prices)

The best payroll software for a small business in Canada depends on your crew size and how much you want to do yourself. Wagepoint and QuickBooks Online Payroll are the simplest entry points for 1–15 employees, Knit adds basic HR tools without much extra cost, and Payworks is the pick once you want a person on the phone instead of a help centre article.

Not sure what to fix first? Take the 60-second quick fix and get one fix you can use this week.

Most small business owners put this off until a bounced direct deposit or a CRA penalty forces the issue. By then you have usually overpaid, underpaid, or missed a remittance deadline without knowing it. None of the five tools below take more than an afternoon to set up, and every one of them calculates CPP, EI and tax correctly from day one, so there is no good reason to keep running payroll out of a spreadsheet once you have more than one employee.

What Payroll Software Actually Needs to Do for a Canadian Trades Employer

Before you compare software, know what a Canadian payroll system has to handle. It is more than cutting a cheque.

Every pay run needs correct CPP, EI and federal/provincial income tax withheld and remitted to the CRA by your remittance due date, which is monthly for most small employers and faster once your payroll grows. At year-end, you owe every employee a T4 by the end of February. If someone's pay is interrupted, through a layoff, resignation or leave, you have five calendar days to file a Record of Employment (ROE) with Service Canada, whether or not your software does it for you. Our guide to Canadian small business tax basics covers the remittance side in more depth.

A few provinces add an Employer Health Tax (EHT) once your payroll passes a threshold. Ontario and BC both have one. Quebec runs its own parallel system through Revenu Québec on top of CRA. None of that is optional, and none of it is WorkSafeBC, WCB or WSIB, which is a separate account with your province's workers' compensation board, funded by premiums on your payroll but remitted outside the CRA system entirely. Good payroll software calculates all of it. Only some of it files automatically. Check that before you commit to a plan.

Payroll Software for Small Business, Compared (2026)

Prices below are what each vendor lists on their own site as of October 2026, in Canadian dollars. Payworks does not publish flat pricing, so its row uses a real quote from its own instant quote tool.

1. Wagepoint — Best for a Simple 1–15 Person Crew

Wagepoint is a Canada-only payroll platform used by more than 30,000 small businesses and bookkeepers, by its own count. It offers two plans: Solo at $20 CAD/month plus $4 per employee or contractor, for one payroll run a month, and Unlimited at $40 CAD/month plus $6 per employee or contractor, for as many runs as you need.

Both plans calculate CPP, EI and federal/provincial tax, handle WCB/WSIB reporting and Ontario/BC Employer Health Tax, issue T4s and T4As, and submit ROEs. There is no QuickBooks bundling requirement. It runs standalone and syncs out to accounting software on its own. For a one-truck operation through about 15 people, Wagepoint is usually the cheapest option that still does everything correctly.

2. QuickBooks Online Payroll — Best If You Already Keep Your Books There

QuickBooks Online Payroll (Canada) has three tiers, priced as a standalone payroll add-on: Core at $30 CAD/month plus $5/employee, Premium at $55 CAD/month plus $8/employee (adds time tracking, HR advisory support and same-day direct deposit), and Elite at $80 CAD/month plus $15/employee (adds project tracking, geofencing and a tax penalty protection guarantee). Intuit runs a 90%-off-for-six-months promotion at the time of writing, so your first bill will likely be lower than list price.

The real edge here is not the feature list, it is the posting. If you already run QuickBooks Online for invoicing and expenses, the way most TradeBrain clients do, payroll drops straight into the same ledger with no manual journal entries. If you are not on QuickBooks for your books already, there are cheaper standalone options above, and our guide to setting up an accounting system for a small service business is a good next read before you commit to either.

3. Knit — Best for Payroll Plus Basic HR in One Login

Knit Lite runs $40 CAD/month plus $6/employee for direct deposit, unlimited payrolls, T4s, QuickBooks and Xero sync, new-hire self-onboarding and document storage. Knit Complete runs $50 CAD/month plus $8/employee and adds WCB/WSIB/EHT remittances, mass payroll import, e-signatures and full time-off administration. A Concierge tier, custom-quoted, hands the whole thing to Knit's own payroll team if you would rather not touch it at all.

Knit is worth a look once you are past "just run payroll" and into onboarding your first real hire, which is exactly where most trades businesses get tripped up. Our guide to hiring your first employee in Canada pairs well with whichever plan you land on.

4. Payworks — Best If You Want an Actual Person on the Phone

Payworks does not publish flat pricing. It runs an instant quote tool instead. For a 5-employee crew paid biweekly in BC, its own calculator returned $36.25 CAD per pay period for payroll with the self-service app, which works out to roughly $78 CAD a month, before a one-time setup fee and tax.

That is noticeably more than Wagepoint or Knit for the same headcount, and the trade-off is real. Payworks is Canadian-owned, assigns dedicated support, and will remit and file on your behalf if you add its managed payroll tier. It is worth the premium once your crew is growing fast and you would rather have a person catch a mistake than notice it yourself three weeks later.

5. PaymentEvolution — Best for a Very Small or Seasonal Crew

PaymentEvolution bills per pay run instead of a flat monthly add-on. Growth is $0 CAD/month base for up to 3 employees at $4/employee per pay run, plus a one-time $55 setup fee. Business Basic is a $30 CAD/month minimum for up to 25 employees at $3/employee per pay run. Business Plus is a $75 CAD/month minimum for up to 300 employees at $2.50/employee per pay run.

Because you pay per run instead of a flat monthly add-on, this is the cheapest option here for a two- or three-person crew that only runs payroll once or twice a month, or a seasonal trades business that does not run payroll at all in the off months.

A Note on Rise, ADP and the Bigger Platforms

Rise People (formerly paired in the market with Humi, which was acquired by Employment Hero in 2025 and has since published less of its pricing) lists a Start plan at $8 CAD/employee/month plus an undisclosed base fee, with its Grow and Optimize tiers both custom-quoted. It is a genuine HR platform with payroll built in, not the other way around, and it is worth a look once you are hiring fast enough to need recruiting and performance tools alongside payroll. ADP Workforce Now does not publish pricing at all and requires a sales call; it is built for larger or multi-location operations, similar to how Ceridian Dayforce is built for enterprise payroll, and both are overkill for most crews under 20 people.

Which One Fits Your Team Size

• Solo or 2 employees, occasional payroll: PaymentEvolution Growth or Wagepoint Solo. Both are cheapest for low-frequency runs.
• 3–10 employees, paid biweekly or more often: Wagepoint Unlimited or QuickBooks Online Payroll Core. Flat monthly pricing beats per-run billing once you are running payroll every two weeks.
• About to make your first real hire and want onboarding tools too: Knit Complete.
• 10–20 employees, or you would rather hand remittances to a person than a help article: Payworks.
• Already on QuickBooks Online for your books: QuickBooks Online Payroll, for the posting convenience alone, even when it is not the cheapest per-employee rate.

A Worked Example: Five Employees, Biweekly, in BC

Here is what five real platforms actually cost for the same crew: 5 employees, paid biweekly, in British Columbia, priced on each vendor's own site on October 7, 2026.

• Wagepoint Unlimited: $40 + (5 × $6) = $70/month CAD
• QuickBooks Online Payroll Core: $30 + (5 × $5) = $55/month CAD
• Knit Lite: $40 + (5 × $6) = $70/month CAD
• PaymentEvolution Business Basic: 5 employees × $3.00/pay run × ~2.17 pay runs/month ≈ $32.50/month CAD, calculated from their published per-run rate (a $30/month minimum applies)
• Payworks: $36.25 per pay period from their own instant quote tool, which works out to about $78.50/month CAD, before a one-time setup fee and tax

The spread is close to $50 a month for the same five people, which is around $600 a year between the cheapest and most expensive option here, before you have weighed support, HR tools, or how well it talks to your accounting software. That gap is worth more attention than most owners give it. If cash flow is tight enough that $50 a month matters, our cash flow management guide is a useful next stop.

What to Set Up in Your First 30 Days

1. Get your CRA payroll (RP) account number. If you do not have one yet, register for it before your first pay run, not after.
2. Import every current employee and contractor, with their SIN, completed TD1 forms and banking details for direct deposit.
3. Confirm your remittance schedule with CRA. Most small employers remit monthly; this is separate from how often you actually pay your crew.
4. Register with your provincial workers' compensation board (WorkSafeBC, WSIB, etc.) if you have not already. Payroll software can calculate your premiums, but it cannot open the account for you.
5. Run one full pay cycle in parallel with however you are paying people now, old method and new software side by side, before you retire the old one.
6. Set a recurring reminder for CRA remittance due dates and year-end T4 filing. Even software that automates this is worth double-checking for the first few cycles.

If you're not sure which platform fits your business, or you want help getting payroll set up correctly, contact TradeBrain and let's figure it out together.