Payroll for Construction and Real Estate Companies in India (2026)

Construction payroll runs on a different logic from office payroll. Workers come and go as project phases progress. Most of the workforce is on daily wages. Some are direct employees, some come through a subcontractor. A site in Pune might have 80 workers in March and 20 in June when that phase ends. The accounts person tracking all of this is usually doing it in a register or a spreadsheet and one missed week creates a dispute at month end.

Real estate companies have the same site workforce problem plus a sales team on commission structures that make TDS estimation genuinely complicated. Both need payroll that handles daily wages, contractors, and salaried staff in one run.

Who’s on the Payroll Roles and What Each One Needs

BOCW = Building and Other Construction Workers Act. CLRA = Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act.

BOCW Cess 1% of Project Cost, Not Wages

Every construction company pays BOCW cess at 1% of total construction cost not wages, the full project cost. A ₹10 crore project: ₹10 lakh cess. It’s usually paid upfront because municipal approvals depend on it. Where it goes wrong: under-declaring project cost, skipping short-duration projects, and not registering contract workers with the state BOCW welfare board. Workers registered with the board get health, housing, and education benefits most contractors skip this because nobody checks until an audit.

Daily Wages and Minimum Wage Different Rates in Every State

A mason on a project in Gurugram earns a different minimum daily wage than the same mason on a project in Bengaluru. Haryana and Karnataka have different rates, updated twice a year January and July. A company running sites in both states and paying the same daily rate everywhere is underpaying workers in whichever state has the higher rate, and violating minimum wage law there.

Skilled workers (masons, plumbers, electricians) and semi-skilled workers (bar benders, shuttering carpenters) have specific scheduled rates per state. Current rates: Minimum Wage by State in India (2026).

Attendance Across Multiple Sites What Actually Works

Paper muster rolls maintained by a site supervisor are the norm. They work until someone disputes a day’s attendance and there’s no verifiable record.

For workers with smartphones: GPS check-in via app. Location verified server-side a colleague can’t check in from home on someone else’s behalf. Waggex geo-location attendance supports individual GPS check-in and supervisor-managed bulk check-in for workers without phones, both feeding into the same system.

For larger sites with 100+ workers: weatherproof biometric devices (eSSL X990 or ZKTeco both IP65-rated) at the site entrance. Store locally, sync when internet is available. Works for remote sites with patchy connectivity.

Contract Labour Liability The Principal Employer Is Not Off the Hook

Most construction sites use subcontractors for specialised work. The contractor runs their own payroll. Under the Code on Wages 2019 and CLRA, the builder is jointly liable if the contractor underpays workers or doesn’t deposit PF and ESI.

Three things to do: (1) Get the contractor’s PF registration number and verify ECR uploads monthly on the EPFO portal. (2) Maintain a register of contract workers at every site name, Aadhaar, contractor name, deployment dates. Required under CLRA for sites with 20+ contract workers. (3) Include a compliance clause in every subcontract wage payment by 7th, PF/ESI deposit by 15th, wage register submission before your payment is released.

Real Estate Sales Commission and TDS Getting the Calculation Right

A sales executive closes two units in one month and earns ₹3.5 lakh in commission on top of ₹45,000 base. The next month: nothing. This variability makes TDS projection difficult. When a large commission hits, the employer needs to recalculate TDS for the remaining months based on revised annual income otherwise the year-end TDS catch-up is significant and the employee is unhappy.

Commission is excluded from PF wages as long as it’s genuinely variable and not paid to everyone uniformly. A ‘sales incentive’ that every team member receives monthly at a fixed amount starts looking like salary and may attract PF. The structure needs to be documented clearly from the start.

Best Payroll Software for Construction and Real Estate

Pricing from public sources, August 2026. factoHR and Saral PayPack are custom-priced contact vendors for current rates.