The HR software requirements checklist: what to demand, what to skip
The working document behind our buyer's guide: every line you should put in front of a vendor, sorted into must-have, should-have and ignore-for-now - with the exit questions most checklists forget.
Six to eight must-haves, a short should-have list, and a long ignore list - answered by every vendor in writing before you sit through a demo. The checklist below is written for a UK company of 20 to 150 people. Delete the lines that are not your problem, add your sector's quirks, and send it to your shortlist with the pricing and exit questions left in.
Download the requirements checklist PDF · 3 pages · edit the [bracketed] parts
How to use this checklist
Copy it into a document, spend an hour making it yours - the deleting matters as much as the keeping - and then use it three times: to shortlist (vendors answer in writing), to structure each demo (you drive, against the list, not the salesperson's script), and to decide (score only the must-haves; the rest is tie-break). If a line makes you think "do we actually need that?", move it down a tier. The full method is in the buyer's guide.
The checklist
- Holiday requests, approvals and balances in one place - and the balances agree with the calendar. [Test with your own leave year and part-timers.]
- Sickness recorded at the point it happens, with return-to-work prompts.
- One employee record per person: contract, documents, emergency contacts, equipment - no side spreadsheets.
- Compliance dates that chase themselves: right-to-work expiry, probation ends, training renewals.
- Expenses submitted with receipts and approved into a payroll-ready export. [Skip if expenses live elsewhere and it works.]
- Some way of hearing how people are doing before the exit interview: surveys, feedback, or both.
- Statutory leave types handled as first-class types, not "custom leave" workarounds: maternity, paternity, carer's leave, parental bereavement, neonatal care.
- A right-to-work register with expiry dates and reminders.
- Statutory flexible-working requests as a tracked workflow with the response deadline visible.
- Sickness handling that separates the fact of absence (managers see it) from the reason (HR sees it).
- Subject access: one action exports everything held about a person.
- Retention rules you can set yourself, so leavers' data expires on your schedule.
- A written answer to "where is our data hosted, and in what jurisdiction?"
- A written answer to "who at your company can access our data, and how is that controlled and logged?"
- Two-factor authentication available for every user, not just admins.
- Roles that match reality: employees see their own record, managers see their team, HR sees everyone, finance sees money - and nothing leaks sideways.
- A manager can never see another team's salaries, sickness reasons or survey answers. [Ask the vendor to show you, logged in as a manager.]
- Changes to sensitive data are audit-logged, and the person can see who accessed their record.
- Total first-year cost for our exact headcount, everything included: setup, migration, training, support.
- Is there a seat minimum, and what does the product cost at our size and at 1.5x our size?
- Which of the features in this checklist are extra-cost modules or higher tiers?
- What triggers a price change mid-contract, and what notice do we get?
- How do we leave? We expect: self-service export of all our data, in usable formats, at any time - including after we stop paying.
- What happens if you shut down? We expect a written notice period with export tooling staying up, committed in the contract.
- Who answers support requests - a person or a bot - and what is the median (not target) response time?
- What does the product not do? [A vendor who answers this plainly is a vendor whose other claims you can believe.]
- Performance reviews or one-to-ones, if a named person will actually run them.
- Training records and mandatory-course assignment.
- Rotas or timesheets, if hours drive pay in your company.
- Hiring pipeline, if you recruit more than a few times a year.
- Benefits directory and enrolment records.
- Anything sold as "AI-powered" that you cannot describe as a job you need done.
- Modules for processes nobody runs today: 9-box grids, succession plans, OKR trees.
- Integrations with tools you do not use yet.
- Anything demoed to you that is "on the roadmap". Buy the product that exists.
Scoring a shortlist without fooling yourself
Score must-haves only, pass or fail - a product that fails a must-have is out, however charming the demo. Where two or three products pass everything, decide on the things the checklist cannot capture: how fast the product felt, whether your least technical manager could use it unaided, and what the vendor's written answers told you about the company behind it. Price settles ties, not races - the gap between UK vendors at this size is real but smaller than the cost of choosing a product people refuse to use. Our cost guide covers the arithmetic and our comparison pages cover the vendors.
Frequently asked questions
How many requirements should the checklist have?
Fewer than you think. Six to eight must-haves, a handful of should-haves, and a deliberately long ignore list. A checklist with forty must-haves is a feature grid wearing a disguise - it stops you choosing rather than helping you choose.
Should we send the checklist to vendors before the demo?
Yes - and ask them to answer in writing against each line, including the pricing and exit questions. A vendor who answers plainly has told you something good; a vendor who books a call to 'talk it through' instead has also told you something.
Who should own the requirements list?
The person who runs the processes today - usually whoever manages HR or operations - with ten minutes of input from a manager and an employee, because they see different sides of the same product. Not a committee: committees produce forty must-haves.
What disqualifies a vendor outright?
Failing an exit question: no self-service export of your data, export blocked once you stop paying, or no written answer to what happens if they shut down. Everything else is a trade-off; being unable to leave is not.
Worth reading alongside
Keep reading: All 70 HR guides · 31 free templates · 25 calculators
Run this checklist against us
The demo is open - no form, no call. Every line above has an answer in the product or on our security page, including the exit questions.