BRILLIANTHR
BrilliantHR — HR & Payroll Suite
Employee master data, establishment control, biometric attendance, leave, appraisal and a payroll engine that produces correct PAYE, NHF, NSITF, ITF and pension schedules every month.
What BrilliantHR is
BrilliantHR is a human resources and payroll platform for Nigerian organisations that carry a real establishment — ministries, departments and agencies, state civil service commissions, tertiary institutions, hospitals, banks and large private employers. It holds one authoritative employee record, controls the nominal roll against an approved establishment, captures attendance biometrically, manages leave and appraisal, and runs a payroll engine that computes gross-to-net correctly under current Nigerian statute. It is bought by directors of administration, heads of human resources, and finance directors who are tired of a payroll spreadsheet nobody can fully explain.
The problem is control. Where payroll runs on spreadsheets, the nominal roll drifts from the approved establishment, employees appear who cannot be traced to an appointment letter, allowances are applied inconsistently, statutory deductions are computed by hand and remitted late, and a variation entered in one month quietly persists for a year. Every payroll audit in that environment turns into an archaeology project. BrilliantHR makes each of those a controlled transaction: an employee cannot be added without a post, an allowance cannot be applied without a rule, and a variation cannot be posted without an approver.
The payroll engine is the part clients test hardest, so we built it to be tested. It computes Pay-As-You-Earn under the consolidated relief allowance rules, National Housing Fund contributions, NSITF employee compensation, Industrial Training Fund liability, and contributory pension at the employer and employee split you configure, then produces the remittance schedule each authority actually wants — including the pension fund administrator file layouts. Loans, cooperative deductions, salary advances and union dues are handled with balance tracking, so a deduction stops by itself when the balance reaches zero.
Public-sector clients particularly value the IPPIS-style variation control: every change to the payroll — appointment, promotion, transfer, suspension, retirement, salary step, allowance — is raised as a dated variation, routed for approval, applied to a specific pay period and retained permanently. Month-on-month payroll movement can then be explained line by line, which is exactly what an internal auditor or the office of the accountant-general will ask for.
Functional modules
Nine modules covering the employee life cycle from appointment to retirement, with payroll at the centre.
Employee Master Data
Core record
One record per employee holding personal details, qualifications, appointment history, next of kin, bank and pension details, documents and photographs, with change history retained permanently.
Establishment & Nominal Roll
Control
Define approved posts by department, grade and step, tie every employee to a funded post, and expose vacancies, over-establishment and unfunded positions before they reach the payroll.
Biometric Time & Attendance
Presence
Capture clock-in and clock-out on fingerprint or facial terminals across multiple locations, work offline and reconcile later, and feed absence and lateness directly into payroll rules.
Leave Management
Absence
Configure annual, casual, sick, maternity, examination and study leave with entitlements by grade, route applications for approval, track balances and carry-over, and record relief arrangements.
Performance Appraisal
Development
Run annual performance evaluation reports or objective-based appraisal, with self-assessment, supervisor scoring, moderation by a review panel, and a documented outcome that feeds promotion, posting and training decisions.
Payroll Engine
Gross to net
Compute salaries, allowances and arrears against configurable salary structures, then produce PAYE, NHF, NSITF, ITF and pension schedules with the remittance files each authority accepts.
Loans & Cooperative Deductions
Deductions
Register loans, salary advances, cooperative savings and union dues with opening balances and tenors, deduct automatically each period, and stop deductions when the balance is cleared.
Variation Control
Governance
Raise every payroll change as a dated, approved variation in the IPPIS style, apply it to a named pay period, and produce a month-on-month movement report that explains each naira of difference.
Self-Service & Payslips
Employee portal
Let employees update contact details, apply for leave, view entitlements and download payslips, with distribution by secure portal, e-mail or SMS notification when a payslip is released.
BrilliantHR in numbers
61
Employers live
Public and private
148,000
Employees on payroll
Across all deployments
₦31.6bn
Monthly payroll processed
Peak month, FY2025
99.95%
Hosted uptime attainment
Managed services, FY2025
Editions and licensing
BrilliantHR is licensed on a per-employee annual band. Prices include hosting in Nigeria, statutory rule updates when the law changes, platform releases and standard support. Biometric terminals are supplied separately.
| Edition | Employee band | Modules | Annual licence (per employee) | Implementation fee band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Up to 250 employees | Master data, leave, payroll, payslips | ₦9,600 | ₦1,500,000 – ₦3,500,000 |
| Professional | 251 – 2,500 employees | All nine modules, biometric attendance, self-service | ₦6,400 | ₦4,000,000 – ₦14,000,000 |
| Enterprise | Over 2,500 employees | All modules, variation control, multi-entity consolidation, integrations | ₦4,200 | ₦12,000,000 – ₦60,000,000 |
| Minimum annual charge | Any edition | Applies where the per-employee total falls below the floor | ₦1,800,000 | Not applicable |
Included in the licence
These are part of every subscription and are not charged separately.
- Statutory rule updates whenever PAYE, NHF, NSITF, ITF or pension rules change
- Remittance file layouts for the major pension fund administrators
- Unlimited employee self-service accounts
- Payslip distribution by portal, e-mail and SMS notification
- Parallel-run support for two payroll cycles before cutover
- Nightly encrypted backups with 30-day retention
- Segregation of duties between preparer, reviewer and approver
- Full audit trail on every variation and payroll run
- Data export in CSV and Excel at any time, without charge
- Support desk access on +234 803 047 9666
How we implement BrilliantHR
Payroll is unforgiving, so the implementation is built around a parallel run. A mid-sized employer typically goes live in ten to sixteen weeks.
Requirements workshop
One week with human resources, finance, internal audit and the union where one exists. We document the salary structure, allowance rules, grade and step tables, deduction policies, approval hierarchy and reporting obligations.
Configuration
Salary structures, allowance and deduction rules, establishment schedule, leave entitlements, appraisal forms and approval workflows are configured and demonstrated back to you before any employee data is loaded.
Data migration
Employee records, appointment histories, opening loan and cooperative balances, leave balances and year-to-date payroll figures are loaded and reconciled. Every record that fails validation is listed for your decision, never silently dropped.
Integration
We connect payment file generation to your bank, post the payroll journal into your accounting or treasury system, wire up the biometric terminals, and build any schedule format a regulator or pension administrator requires.
Training
Separate sessions for payroll officers, human resources officers, approvers, internal audit and self-service end users. Payroll officers additionally sit a competency check before they are allowed to run a live cycle.
Parallel run
Two full pay cycles are computed in BrilliantHR alongside your existing process and reconciled to the naira. Differences are investigated one by one, and the cause of each is documented and signed off.
Go-live
The first live cycle is run with our payroll specialists present. Legacy spreadsheets are archived read-only, and the statutory schedules are produced from BrilliantHR from that month onward.
Hypercare
Two further pay cycles under enhanced support with a named engineer, daily availability during the payroll window, a review of the first variation report, and formal handover to the standard support desk.
Questions buyers ask
Can BrilliantHR be installed on our own servers?
Where is payroll data stored, and does that meet the NDPA?
Does it work where connectivity is poor?
Will it integrate with our accounting system and our bank?
What support cover do we get around the payroll window?
Do we get the source code, and what if we want to leave?
Is training included, and can our officers be certified?
Free 30-day sandbox with a parallel pay run
We will load one month of your existing payroll into a private BrilliantHR sandbox and run it against our engine at no cost, then give you a line-by-line reconciliation against what you actually paid. It is the fastest way to see whether your current statutory computations are correct. Contact [email protected] or call +234 802 913 8013.
Put your payroll under control
Ask for a written quotation against your headcount, or book a working session with our human capital systems team in Kano, Abuja or Lagos.