Payworks vs Avanti Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

Avanti is a cloud-based people management platform that combines payroll, HR and time management, with a particular focus on making payroll processing faster and more accurate. Developed in Canada, where it is best known, the product addresses the time consumed by payroll administrators who reconcile data from spreadsheets, timesheets and separate HR files before each pay run. Avanti tackles this by keeping employee, time and pay data in a single system with a configurable rules engine, so calculations, deductions and statutory requirements are applied automatically. The vendor claims that organisations can run payroll in significantly less time as a result, with fewer manual corrections and a clearer audit trail. The payroll engine handles complex pay rules, multiple provinces, union agreements, retroactive pay, and statutory deductions and remittances, along with year-end reporting such as T4 slips and records of employment. HR functionality includes employee records, onboarding, compensation history, benefits tracking and document management, while time and attendance modules capture hours, manage scheduling and apply overtime and premium rules before passing results to payroll. Employee self-service through web and mobile access gives staff their pay statements, tax forms and leave balances, and lets them submit time and requests. The platform offers workflow automation and configurable approvals, together with reporting and analytics on labour costs and workforce trends. Its configurability makes it suitable for organisations with non-standard pay structures, such as those in healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, construction and the public sector. Avanti is typically adopted by mid-sized Canadian employers that want to bring payroll processing in-house rather than rely on a bureau, while retaining strong compliance and reporting. Implementation support and training are provided by the vendor. Pricing starts from around USD 15, typically on a per-employee basis; there is no free trial and no permanently free version.