The WRU’s revenues for its last financial year are expected to come in well below an initial forecast at £110m

The Welsh Rugby Union is expected to have generated revenues of around £110m in its last financial year, having initially been confident of a figure £7m higher.

The governing body was initially projecting a figure of around £117m, but took a significant hit from lower-than-expected ticket, hospitality and food and beverage sales during last year’s Six Nations and, more markedly, during its autumn international series.

For the current 2026-27 financial year, the union’s chief financial and operating officer, Gavin Marshall, who joined the governing body last November from English Premiership rugby side Bristol Bears, where he was chief executive, is confident of a similar turnover, despite Wales only hosting five men’s internationals at the Principality Stadium compared to seven in its 2025-26 financial year.

As part of a new five-year hospitality and food and beverage partnership with US firm Aramark, he remains confident that a five-year target of growing related revenue from £18m per year towards the £25m to £30m level is achievable.

He said the union was having success in positioning the Principality Stadium as more of a year-round venue, with an increasingly diversified programme of non-rugby events, including concerts and the staging of major football finals. A number of headline events will be confirmed shortly, alongside an already confirmed sell-out concert from classical crossover singer Andrea Bocelli next May.

Aramark has committed an undisclosed capital contribution to support the widening of the hospitality offer at the stadium, including some 14,000 new padded seats on level four, which will replace plastic seats that have been in the ground since it opened back in 1999.

The initial £117m projected revenue figure was outlined by the union’s former chief commercial officer, Leighton Davies, with the support of the wider executive team and board in September 2025. It is not uncommon for firms to have to revise forecasts during a financial year.

Mr Marshall said: “In terms of the numbers, those assumptions haven’t materialised. When you budget, and you miss your budget, you need to understand why and learn from it.”

He stressed it wasn’t a criticism of his predecessor. He added: “It is just an observation and you learn and reflect. There are a number of variables in this business that move materially, like the number of events, attendance, ticket yield, team performance, but ultimately we have to take responsibility for budgeting accurately and we need to focus on that going forward.”

Mr Marshall, who hails from Pembrokeshire, said he could not give an actual turnover figure for the union’s last financial year to the end of June, as the accounts, which will be published next month, were still being audited by Grant Thornton.

However, he said that, based on historic outcomes and taking inflation into account, a figure of £110m could be seen as a responsible assessment.

He added: “The accounts have not been audited yet, so I cannot be specific, but in general terms we have had a challenging year.

“There is substantial cost around generating that revenue, like staging international rugby, putting on events, the cost of delivering hospitality and food and beverage for those events and the cost of the hotel. The cost of sales is around £50m, so we have a gross profit of £60m, a figure that is more relevant than turnover.

“After that we have our overhead costs, the cost of running the stadium and corporate costs of running a business, and the professional and community rugby programme. Those costs are around £30m. That leaves us with an Ebitda of around £30m, and that is a figure we are not too far away from this time.

“But when you get to £30m, we have the cost of community rugby clubs, Super Rygbi Cymru, the servicing of the debt, and we have to find capital expenditure for the stadium. What is left we spend on professional rugby, and that includes the optimum investment we have identified for our pathways, where we have under-invested.”

Four teams not sustainable

The WRU is committed to reducing the number of regions from four to three, with it looking for the Ospreys and the Scarlets to bid for one licence for west Wales. Cardiff, which is WRU-owned, and the Dragons will be invited to take up the other two licences.

He argued that maintaining funding for four regions was not sustainable. However, opponents to the strategy, including the so-called Coalition of the Willing, counter that there is very little difference financially between funding four – although requiring significant benefactor backing – and three regions, with the latter providing increased investment of around £28m over five years to invest in the pathway development of the game.

Mr Marshall said: “Nobody wants to reduce investment in professional rugby for the sake of it. We want successful professional teams in Wales. What we are saying is that we cannot afford the level of investment we are currently making in professional rugby. That argument will be strengthened when we publish our accounts next month.”

He added: “It is an affordability issue and we want our professional teams to be competitive and have the right level of investment, and the current level of investment we cannot afford. We need to have spending on professional rugby at a level where the game can be sustainable.

“Abi [chief executive Abi Tierney] has talked about investment of £20m in professional rugby, but at the moment it is significantly more than that in terms of our investment and it is more like £26m. We cannot afford that level of investment and, where we are at as a business, that is why we need to change.”

The Coalition of the Willing, which includes the founder of price comparison firm Hayley Parsons and former chief operating officer of Hodge Bank and Principality Building Society, Rob Regan, has called on the union to provide in full the business case for three regions and the risk assessment undertaken on the implications of a loss of a region.

Mr Marshall said he was aware of the public appetite for an Anglo-Welsh league or a British and Irish one. The respective stakeholders in the English Premiership, the governing bodies, CVC and the URC, have been holding exploratory discussions over a possible new league structure.

However, it would need enough of a commercial uplift, starting with a lucrative TV deal, to be appealing to all parties, but most importantly the English Premiership clubs.

Mr Marshall would not be drawn on the nature of any talks or whether he had any involvement. He added: “We are a member of the URC (United Rugby Championship, which the Welsh regions play in) and I want to respect that competition, but I acknowledge the public sentiment on Anglo-Welsh competitions and fully understand why it attracts such interest.

“It is worth noting that we have put in an application to PRW (Premiership Women’s Rugby) for two Welsh women’s teams to play in the English league.”

He said the union had no plans to reduce its headcount. In 2024-25, when the union posted revenues of £106.1m and pre-tax losses of £7.2m, it had a total workforce of 344.

He said: “Our headcount is pretty stable and that will be seen in the accounts, but we cannot cut our way to success. We need to grow our commercial revenues and we are happy with the cost base, which is appropriate for our business, although it is really important to control costs appropriately and we scrutinise every new hire, but we have no plans to run a redundancy programme.”

Its current financial year is the first with the WRU feeling the full impact of giving up equity, along with the other unions, to CVC in the Six Nations. That deal, struck in 2021, gave the private equity firm a 14% interest and rights to a share of commercial income generated by the Six Nations.

Last year the WRU received its last phased payment (£8.5m) for its £40m share in what was a £360m deal. The full impact of the dilution will see the union being around £3m down.

Wales match ticket sales

Mr Marshall said for the current 2026-27 financial year, despite fewer Welsh home rugby internationals, revenues should come in around the same as the last financial year.

He explained: “On the rugby side there will be five games rather than seven, but historically England and Ireland are very strong. We are ahead of where we were previously in terms of those sales. It is really important to have a strong autumn.

“It is still early days in terms of ticket sales for those games. We are really positive about the new tournament structure of the Nations Championship, and having three games to sell in quick succession is probably easier than four, which was a bit of a stretch last year.

“So, we are probably expecting a relatively flat year revenue-wise. We have got fewer games, but we would expect to drive a better yield and we have got some premium games in there with New Zealand, England and Ireland. In terms of events, the calendar for 2027 is looking very strong, with a lot of announcements over the next month or so for events between now and the end of the year.”

The union has increased its number of ticket price categories from three to six for rugby internationals. Mr Marshall said: “Our most expensive tickets are a jump, but we are already sold out. We need to drive increasing yields and I think we can do that with our six categories rather than three. We want to keep it affordable and accessible. We are only selling family tickets in the lower tier to create that family zone.”

On a full ground for the New Zealand game in November, Mr Marshall said: “We are not complacent, but confident.” With regards the other two autumn games against Australia and Japan, he added: “We got a great crowd last year against Japan, with a great family crowd and a great game of rugby. We are looking to replicate a similar crowd to what we had last year, with just over 60,000.

“We have kept the tickets affordable for Japan. The Australia game at 8pm on a Saturday is a challenging time as it potentially rules out families, with a lot of competition on a Saturday night. So we recognise that Australia is the most challenging due to the time, but we haven’t played them for a couple of years and we have got the Stickmen with the half-time show, which has proved really popular previously.”

New concerts and football matches

On the concert market, he said: “We are really happy and have a couple of concerts booked, with discussions ongoing in a really strong pipeline. We are really confident that 2027 will be a great summer for concerts. We have Andrea Bocelli announced and we are expecting that to sell out, with ticket sales really strong for May. We were delighted to get him and it fits in with our strategy of trying to get a broader mix of events here.

“We have been very strong with pop and rock concerts, but having a different genre and financial model for that event, we are really happy with, and we plan to make it a biennial event.

“We have been very successful with concerts, but what we are looking at is attracting elite football to the stadium, like the Community Shield, and we are delighted to secure the Women’s Champions League final in 2029, so we have really identified football as an area of growth.

On getting to £30m over a five-year period from around £18m from hospitality and food and beverage sales at the stadium, while an ambitious target, he is confident it is achievable.

He said: “Yes, we are (confident). So far we have focused on technology-led improvements, with speed of service and e-bars across the stadium, which were a big success at the Community Shield. But that is just part of it. With the deal with Aramark, we have a capital fund to spend to improve facilities.

“We are looking to develop level four as a real premium experience, including replacing around 14,000 seats on level four with new padded ones

“The seats are just part of it, with investment in the concourse and the whole area to create a premium experience around level four. We are also looking to increase our hospitality capacity and have different types of hospitality that we can offer. We are confident that these things will help us drive food and beverage revenue, but also ticket yield.”

As part of its strategy to create an all-year-round venue, the union has opened a new riverside bar (with a licensed bar) on the River Taff walkway side of the Principality Stadium.

The Parkgate Hotel

Mr Marshall said the Parkgate Hotel, next to the Principality Stadium, continues to perform strongly. The union owns a 75% stake in the hotel, with the remainder held by Cardiff-based property development firm Rightacres.

In its last audited financial year to the end of June 2025, the hotel, next to the Principality Stadium, posted revenues of nearly £13m, with a profit of £498,000. The hotel was financed with a £45m funding deal with L&G, repayable over 45 years.

With cash of more than £1m, Mr Marshall wouldn’t be drawn ahead of the accounts being published as to whether the union has now received its first dividend from the hotel. He added: “It is trading profitably and we are really pleased with its performance. It was always seen as a long-term investment rather than a short-term cash exercise. The objective is to create long-term value by the investment.

In 2024-25 the union had a net debt position of £124m. Mr Marshall said; “The focus is on ensuring that our debt is affordable and we maintain liquidity and do not constrain our ability to invest in rugby. Our debt levels are pretty stable in terms of the facility with Goldman Sachs and HSBC, but also the facility with Parkgate (around a £45m lease finance with L&G) and our debentures.”

He said that the union had not explored, although previous regimes did, a possible securitisation against future income from stadium events or a sale-and-leaseback deal. While it would provide significant upfront capital, it would have to be repaid with a profit margin for an institution or institutions prepared to do a deal.

Mr Marshall said: “There is a real cost around debt, so it is not something we are considering at the moment. What we are focusing on is getting value out of our assets, and what we are focused on is growing the events business from the stadium and driving more revenue and profit.

“We recognise that we need to broaden the mix of events. There is effectively a rental payment, but also the upside of food and beverage income, which is a similar financial arrangement to concerts.”

In January the union struck a new £60m funding deal, with a revolving facility element that can flex up and down when required, and £5m specifically for capital expenditure projects, with HSBC and Goldman Sachs. In what is a three-year deal around half was deployed by the WRU to refinance loans with the Welsh Government and NatWest. The facility has added to the overall debt position, but is carrying a lower interest rate than the previous debt deals.

Mr Marshall: “We are on better terms and will still have headroom in that facility, but the more we eat into it, the higher the interest payment.”

On striking a long-term deal with its funders he said: “It would be wrong to disclose confidential discussions around different options, but Goldman Sachs and HSBC are great partners and we hope they will continue to be beyond this period.”

The stadium zip wire

Last year the union terminated its partnership with Wire & Sky as operator of its stadium roof walk and zipwire attraction Scale. The attraction, using CVC monies, cost around £5m. Its performance was extremely disappointing and was failing to cover operational costs.

However, Mr Marshall said he is confident that new operators, Welsh firm Zip World, will turn things around. He said: “It is still early days with the new operator and we have not had the first full year yet, but we are seeing increased revenue and it is worth saying that in terms of customer feedback that is very strong.

“We know that people who are using it are enjoying it and are happy with the product. It is growing, but yes the original model didn’t perform as we hoped and we have to be open about that and acknowledge that, but we

The British Business Bank and NatWest have agreed to invest in funds run by Phoenix Court, the UK venture capital firm, in a deal its co-founder described as a “watershed moment” for domestic investment in start-ups.

The state-backed lender will commit £50m. NatWest, HSBC and M&G are investing alongside it and did not disclose the size of their commitments, but said the total would run to “several hundreds of millions”. It is the first time NatWest has invested in a venture capital fund. HSBC and M&G have backed earlier Phoenix Court funds.

Saul Klein, co-founder of Phoenix Court, said: “The UK innovation economy is absolutely steaming ahead. This is a watershed moment to have four major institutions, including some of the high street banks, coming together to demonstrate the scale of the opportunity. Hopefully this is the moment when we can start to see more domestic capital crowding in, and more British allocators backing our innovation economy.”

UK start-ups raised $17bn in the first half of this year, according to HSBC, more than France, Germany and Sweden combined. HSBC’s figures show only 30 per cent of the capital in funding rounds above $100m came from the UK, falling to 16 per cent in rounds above $250m, as shown in the record half-year funding figures.

“It’s not as if the capital isn’t there, but we would love more of that capital to be domestic,” Klein said. “It’s a real shame that the people benefiting from the growth of our innovation economy historically have not been British savers, or British beneficiaries.”

Klein, who has previously urged UK pension funds to back domestic tech scale-ups, said the fund would aim for a threefold return. It will mainly target the capital shortfall at the scale-up stage, but will look across all growth phases.

Paul Thwaite, chief executive of NatWest, said capital was not the only problem for start-ups, and that large investors could also provide “the expertise and networks that innovative businesses need to grow”.

“Too often, promising British businesses look overseas for the capital and support they need to reach the next stage,” Thwaite said. “If Britain wants to compete for the industries and jobs of the future, we need to get better at backing our most promising companies with the capital, connections and confidence to scale here in the UK.”

The British Business Bank was set up by the coalition government in 2014 to use state funds to support fast-growing businesses. The Labour government has raised its total financial capacity to £25.6bn, from £15.3bn, giving it a target of investing about £2.5bn a year. Ministers have told it to direct more than 60 per cent of its funds at scale-ups and given it more scope to invest alongside private-sector organisations. The bank has already put more than £600m directly into UK scale-ups.

Leandros Kalisperas, chief investment officer at the British Business Bank, said the announcement was “a milestone in the development of the BBB’s activity”, describing the bank as “a physical convener” as well as a deployer of capital.

The bank is also trying to co-ordinate a £1bn scale-up fund with leading pension funds. “Every week some of the largest pension funds in the country are coming together to consider how … to invest a billion pounds in scale-ups,” Kalisperas said. “That has never happened before.”

Institutional investors have been wary of start-ups and scale-ups because of their higher risk profile, regulatory barriers and a lack of expertise among investors. In May 2025, 17 workplace pension providers signed the voluntary Mansion House Accord, agreeing to invest at least 10 per cent of their funds in private markets by 2030. It followed the 2023 Mansion House Compact, which set a 5 per cent target.

Kalisperas, who previously worked in pension funds, said there were “many good reasons” why institutional investors had been slow to move into venture capital, and that there was “clearly so much more to do”. He said: “The institutional base in this country doesn’t know about venture.”

He said the bank needed to “showcase” its activities by “sharing our due diligence and information with domestic capital”. Of the reluctance to date, he said: “that’s almost the past.”

About the author

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Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

The first time I hired an employee, I made her fill out her W-4 by hand, emailed her offer letter from my personal Gmail, and tracked her PTO in a spreadsheet tab I labeled “vacation??” I found out three weeks later that I’d never actually set her up for direct deposit. She was very patient about it. I was not proud of myself.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about growing a small business: the moment you hire your first employee, you’ve also hired yourself as an HR department. Payroll, tax withholding, benefits, onboarding, time-off requests, compliance with labor laws you didn’t know existed, it’s all yours now, on top of everything else you were already doing.

So is dedicated HR software worth paying for, or is a well-organized spreadsheet good enough? I spent weeks digging through pricing pages, user reviews, and a fair amount of conflicting third-party pricing trackers to find out and to land on the tools that are actually worth a small business’s money in 2026.

The best HR software for small business, at a glance

• Rippling — best all-around HR platform for teams that want room to grow, from roughly $8/employee/month plus a base fee (custom quote required)
• Gusto — best for payroll-first small teams, from $49/month plus $6/employee/month
• BambooHR — best dedicated HR/HRIS platform, from $10/employee/month (or a $250/month flat rate for 25 or fewer employees)
• Homebase — best for hourly and shift-based teams, free for one location with up to 10 employees; paid plans from $30/month
• Zoho People — best for affordability, free for up to 5 employees; paid plans from $1.50/employee/month
• Justworks — best PEO for benefits without an in-house HR team, from $50/month plus $8/employee/month for payroll-only, or $79+/employee/month for full PEO service
• Deel — best for hiring and managing a global or remote team, core HR platform free; global payroll from $29/employee/month
• OnPay — best value for the features you get, from $49/month plus $6/employee/month

What makes HR software worth paying for?

Not every small business needs the same things from an HR tool, but there’s a fairly short list of jobs it has to do well once you’ve got even a handful of W-2 employees:

• Payroll and tax filing. This is the one area where “just use a spreadsheet” stops being a viable option. Miscalculate a withholding or miss a filing deadline, and you’re not dealing with an annoyed employee — you’re dealing with a government agency.
• Benefits administration. Health insurance, retirement plans, workers’ comp — even if you’re not offering much yet, you’ll want software that can grow into this rather than force a total platform switch later.
• Onboarding and self-service. New hires should be able to fill out their own tax forms and direct deposit info online, and existing employees should be able to check their own pay stubs and PTO balance without emailing you about it.
• Compliance support. Labor laws vary by state, and sometimes by city, and they change often enough that “we’ll figure it out” is a real risk, not just an inconvenience.
• Room to grow. The tool that fits 3 employees shouldn’t require a full migration at 15. Add-on modules beat a hard ceiling.

I weighted these picks toward platforms that nail the basics cheaply, since most small businesses don’t need, and shouldn’t pay for enterprise HR complexity.

One more thing before we get into it: HR software pricing is a genuine mess to research. Almost none of these companies publish a single, stable rate card, and the numbers shift by a few dollars between the vendor’s own pages and whatever third-party tracker you check next. I’ve used each company’s most recently published figures below. Treat them as a strong starting estimate, not gospel, and confirm the current number before you sign anything.

1. Rippling

Best for: small businesses that want room to grow into IT and finance tools later

Pros:

• Combines HR, IT device management, and finance in one system
• Powerful no-code workflow automation (“if this happens, do that”)
• Modular pricing means you pay only for what you use

Cons:

• No published starting price you can fully trust — everything requires a custom quote
• No free trial, only a sales demo

Rippling’s whole pitch is that HR shouldn’t live in a silo. Its “Rippling Unity” platform starts with core HR, employee records, onboarding, time off, org charts and then lets you bolt on payroll, benefits, IT device provisioning, and even company card and expense management, all sharing the same employee data. That’s the actual differentiator: when someone’s hired, Rippling can automatically provision their laptop and software access in the same workflow that processes their first paycheck. Fire someone, and it can pull that access back just as fast.

The flexibility comes at the cost of a straight answer on price. Rippling’s own materials cite the core platform at around $8 per employee per month, though the base monthly fee attached to that number has shown up as anywhere from $35 to $40 depending on which page you land on and payroll, benefits, and IT are all separate add-ons priced on request. For a 50-person company running HR, payroll, and benefits together, published estimates land somewhere in the $15–$25-per-employee-per-month range, though your mileage will vary considerably.

If you’re a five-person team that just needs payroll and PTO tracking, this is probably more firepower than you need. But if you can already picture needing device management or multi-entity payroll a year or two out, the sales call is worth your time.

Rippling pricing: From roughly $8/employee/month plus a monthly base fee; full pricing (payroll, benefits, IT) requires a custom quote

2. Gusto

Best for: small teams that want payroll handled correctly and don’t want to think about it again

Pros:

• Unlimited payroll runs and automatic federal, state, and local tax filing on every plan
• Transparent, published pricing, a rarity in this category
• Easy to set up without outside help

Con:

• HR features stay fairly basic until you reach the Premium plan, and multi-state payroll requires upgrading to Plus

Gusto built its reputation on making payroll boring in the best possible way. Run payroll, and it calculates and files the taxes; W-2s and 1099s show up automatically at year-end, no separate accountant conversation required for the basics. The Simple plan covers single-state payroll and a self-service portal where employees can view pay stubs and manage their own benefits enrollment.

Where Gusto asks you to pay more is HR depth. Plus ($80/month plus $12 per employee) adds multi-state payroll, time tracking, PTO policies, and next-day direct deposit — the stuff most growing teams need within their first year anyway. Premium ($180/month plus $22 per employee) adds access to certified HR experts and compliance alerts, which starts to look less like software and more like an HR hotline with a payroll system attached.

If payroll accuracy and tax compliance are the actual headache, not performance reviews or org charts, Gusto is the least complicated fix.

Gusto pricing: Simple, $49/month + $6/employee/month; Plus, $80/month + $12/employee/month; Premium, $180/month + $22/employee/month

3. BambooHR

Best for: businesses that want a dedicated HR system without folding in IT or finance tools

Pros:

• Clean interface that doesn’t require weeks of onboarding to learn
• Solid applicant tracking built in, not bolted on
• Automatic volume discounts as headcount grows

Cons:

• Payroll, benefits, and time tracking all cost extra
• Pricing climbed in 2026, with a new top-tier Elite plan landing at $25 per employee per month

BambooHR is HR software built by people who apparently remember what it’s like to actually do HR. Employee records, time-off requests, onboarding checklists, and reporting all live in one dashboard that reviewers consistently describe as easy to pick up without training, a real advantage when you’re also the one training yourself. Core (from $10 per employee per month) covers the essentials: records, workflows and approvals, applicant tracking, and time-off management, plus a basic AI assistant that can tell you how much PTO someone has left without you digging through a report.

Move up to Pro ($17/employee/month) for performance management and employee community features, or Elite ($25/employee/month) for the top tier. Companies with 25 or fewer employees skip per-employee pricing entirely and pay a flat $250 a month instead — worth knowing before you assume the per-seat math applies to you.

Payroll, full benefits administration, and time tracking are all separate paid add-ons requiring their own quotes, though BambooHR does offer a bundle discount for combining payroll and benefits. Budget for that ahead of time rather than assuming Core covers everything.

BambooHR pricing: Core, from $10/employee/month; Pro, from $17/employee/month; Elite, from $25/employee/month; flat $250/month for companies with 25 or fewer employees

4. Homebase

Best for: restaurants, retail shops, and any small business built around hourly, shift-based work

Pros:

• A genuinely usable free plan, not just a trial
• Scheduling and time tracking built specifically for hourly teams, including GPS clock-ins
• Payroll syncs cleanly with the scheduling and timesheet data you’re already generating

Cons:

• Priced per location, which can work against multi-site businesses with small headcounts per site
• PTO controls are locked behind the $70/month Plus tier

If your team clocks in and out rather than logging on from a laptop, most HR software wasn’t really built with you in mind, Homebase was. The free Basic plan covers one location and up to 10 employees with real scheduling and time-tracking tools, not a stripped-down demo. Outgrow that, and Essentials ($30/month per location) unlocks unlimited employees at that location, plus advanced scheduling, GPS-verified time punches, and team messaging.

The scheduling-and-time-clock combination is where Homebase earns its keep: managers build a schedule and watch labor costs update in real time, while employees get alerts if their shift changes or they’re about to miss a break, which matters for labor law compliance in a lot of states, not just convenience.

Payroll isn’t bundled into any tier, it’s a $39/month plus $6-per-active-employee add-on regardless of plan but it pulls straight from your existing timesheets, so hours worked and hours paid match without extra reconciling.

Homebase pricing: Free for one location (up to 10 employees); Essentials, $30/month/location; Plus, $70/month/location; All-in-One, $120/month/location; payroll add-on, $39/month + $6/employee/month

5. Zoho People

Best for: small businesses that want solid HR features without a big monthly bill

Pros:

• The cheapest genuinely full-featured HR software on this list
• Free plan for teams of 5 or fewer, no time limit
• Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, can handle time-off requests and answer basic HR questions conversationally

Cons:

• Payroll and recruiting require separate Zoho products, purchased and billed on their own
• Fewer employee-experience extras than pricier competitors like BambooHR

Zoho has an app for nearly every business function, and Zoho People is its HR entry, built to stay affordable at every tier rather than just the entry level. Essential HR runs $1.50 per employee per month with no minimum headcount, covering onboarding, employee records, time-off management, shift scheduling, and document management. That’s a usable feature set for the price of a coffee per employee.

Higher tiers add real depth without a steep jump: Professional ($2/employee/month) adds attendance management and timesheets, Premium ($3/employee/month) adds performance management and HR analytics, and Enterprise ($4.50/employee/month) adds an HR help desk and learning management tools.

The real limitation is that Zoho People can’t run payroll or hiring on its own, those jobs go to Zoho Payroll and Zoho Recruit, separate subscriptions with their own bills. If you’re fine managing two connected apps instead of one, the combined cost still beats most of this list.

Zoho People pricing: Free for up to 5 employees; Essential HR, $1.50/employee/month; Professional, $2/employee/month; Premium, $3/employee/month; Enterprise, $4.50/employee/month

6. Justworks

Best for: small businesses that want big-company benefits without hiring an HR department to manage them

Pros:

• Full PEO service gives small teams access to enterprise-level health benefits
• 24/7 support and compliance guidance included on PEO plans
• Straightforward per-employee pricing with no base fee on the PEO tiers

Cons:

• Meaningfully pricier than standard HRIS [human resources information system, the general category of employee-records-and-workflow software, as opposed to a PEO] or payroll software
• No free trial
• Co-employment isn’t the right structure for every business type

Everything else on this list is HR software. Justworks is a PEO, which means it doesn’t just sell you a dashboard, it becomes a co-employer of your team on paper, which lets a five-person company plug into the same large-group health insurance rates a 500-person company gets. For a small business competing for talent against bigger employers, that can be the whole ballgame.

The standalone Payroll plan ($50/month plus $8/employee/month) is the entry point if you’re not ready for full PEO service: tax filing, PTO management, and basic HR tools, no co-employment structure attached. PEO Basic (around $79/employee/month, no base fee) adds compliance support, 401(k) access, and workers’ comp. PEO Plus (roughly $109–$124/employee/month) layers in health, dental, and vision benefits administration on top.

Read our full breakdown of what a PEO actually is if you’re weighing this against a standard HRIS. Short version: this isn’t the cheapest way to run payroll, but it’s often the cheapest way to offer benefits that compete with a bigger employer’s.

Justworks pricing: Payroll only, $50/month + $8/employee/month; PEO Basic, from ~$79/employee/month; PEO Plus, from ~$109/employee/month

7. Deel

Best for: startups and small businesses hiring across borders

Pros:

• Core HR platform is free
• Employer of Record [EOR — a service that legally employs your workers in a country where you don’t have your own entity, so you can hire there compliantly] service in 150+ countries
• One system for managing employees and international contractors together

Cons:

• EOR pricing is steep: $599 per employee per month at the standard tier
• Global payroll carries a roughly $1,000 setup fee on top of the monthly rate

Deel exists for a problem most HR software ignores: what happens when your third hire lives in Lisbon and your fourth lives in Manila? The free Deel HR tier covers the basics – employee directories, time-off management, document storage for any team, domestic or global. From there, Global Payroll runs $29 per employee per month for countries where you already have a legal entity, and Contractor Management ($49/contractor/month) handles compliant agreements and payments in 120-plus currencies.

No local entity, and need Deel to be the legal employer instead? That’s Employer of Record, and it’s expensive – $599 per employee per month, climbing to $899 at the enterprise tier – reflecting the legal and compliance infrastructure required in each country. Against the cost and timeline of setting up a foreign subsidiary, though, it’s often still the faster and cheaper option for a growing startup.

Every employee living in the same state as you makes Deel’s global machinery overkill. A distributed or growth-stage startup, on the other hand, may find it’s the only tool on this list built for the way hiring actually happens now.

Deel pricing: Core HR platform, free; Global Payroll, $29/employee/month; Contractor Management, $49/contractor/month; Employer of Record, from $599/employee/month

8. OnPay

Best for: small businesses that want solid payroll and HR features without paying for a big brand name

Pros:

• Straightforward, published pricing with no hidden per-plan tiers to decode
• Free HR tools bundled with the base payroll plan
• First month free, including setup and data migration

Cons:

• No dedicated time-tracking tool built in
• No volume discounts for larger teams

OnPay doesn’t try to be everything – it’s a well-built payroll platform with useful HR tools layered on top, priced simply enough that you can do the math yourself instead of requesting a quote. Payroll Essentials ($49/month plus $6 per worker) covers unlimited payroll runs, tax filing across all 50 states, contractor payments, and a self-service employee portal.

The HR add-on ($15/month plus $2 per employee) brings in PTO workflows, org charts, expanded onboarding, and document management – handy once you’re managing more than payroll, skippable if payroll is genuinely all you need right now. Compliance Resources and Live HR Support round out the optional add-ons for businesses that want more hand-holding on the regulatory side.

It won’t out-feature the platforms built for enterprise scale. For a small business that mostly needs payroll done right, plus a few HR basics and no steep learning curve, it punches well above its price tag.

OnPay pricing: Payroll Essentials, $49/month + $6/employee/month; HR add-on, +$15/month + $2/employee/month

So which one should you pick?

It mostly comes down to what’s breaking right now. Payroll errors and tax deadlines are the most urgent to fix, so start with Gusto or OnPay if that’s the pain point. Managing hourly shift workers? Homebase was built for exactly that. Trying to offer real health benefits on a small-business budget? Look at Justworks. And if the whole story is budget, Zoho People gives you more HR software per dollar than almost anything else on the market.

Whatever you land on, the real win isn’t the software. It’s never filling out anyone’s W-4 by hand again.

For readers who just want payroll and nothing else, our roundup of free payroll software for small business covers the $0 options before you consider paying for any of this.

Cracker Barrel is upgrading three of its most popular dinner offerings while separately using proceeds from a real estate transaction involving 26 company-owned restaurants to reduce debt and support future growth.

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain said Wednesday that it plans to improve the quality of its chicken, hamburger and steak dinners, calling dinner its “biggest opportunity” as it works to improve guest satisfaction.

“We are making investments to improve food quality,” President and CEO Dave Deno said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “Dinner is our biggest opportunity, and we plan to upgrade our chicken, hamburger, and steak offerings.”

Deno said Cracker Barrel wants to ensure its food consistently meets guests’ expectations for “taste, temperature, and quality on every visit.”

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The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain announced that it plans to improve the quality of its chicken, hamburger and steak dinners. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The chief executive said his priorities are centered on food, the guest experience and employees as Cracker Barrel works to build on improving traffic and profitability.

“A big part of my management philosophy is doing fewer things better and concentrating on opportunities that could have the greatest impact,” Deno said. “For restaurants, the formula is pretty straightforward. You must offer great food, provide a great guest experience, and hire and retain excellent employees who deliver both.”

“These are the priorities that we will be focused on: food, experience and people,” he added.

Alongside the menu upgrades, Cracker Barrel said it completed a sale-leaseback transaction involving 26 company-owned restaurants that generated approximately $77 million in net proceeds.

“The sale leaseback transaction generated $77 million in net proceeds, which were used to pay down debt and partially offset the $150 million debt related to the 0.625% convertible senior notes that matured and was repaid in June,” Chief Financial Officer Craig Pommells said. “The quarter ended with total debt of $337.2 million, which was $147.4 million below the prior year.”

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Deno said Cracker Barrel continues to see pressure among lower-income consumers, though customer trends have improved. (Richard Beetham for Fox News Digital)

Deno said Cracker Barrel continues to see pressure among lower-income consumers, though customer trends have improved.

“When it comes to us specifically, yes, we do see some pressure with our low-income guests, but our trends, as I said, have gotten better,” Deno said.

Still, Chief Financial Officer Craig Pommells said the chain’s value remains an advantage, noting the average guest check is about $16.

“If you’re feeling pressured from a discretionary income perspective, there are a lot of ways you can still have a great experience at Cracker Barrel,” Pommells said.

The company also said higher freight costs, including fuel surcharges, are already factored into its fiscal 2027 outlook.

“We are seeing fuel surcharges and so on related to freight, both from the perspective of retail, but to a lesser degree on the restaurant side. All of that’s built into our projection with the best information that we have today,” Pommells said.

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Deno took over as CEO in August following the departure of Julie Masino, whose tenure included a rebrand that drew criticism from some longtime customers. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

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Deno took over as CEO in August following the departure of Julie Masino, whose tenure included a rebrand that drew criticism from some longtime customers.

The overhaul, part of a roughly $700 million investment across Cracker Barrel’s restaurants, included updates to store interiors, menu changes and the temporary removal of the chain’s iconic “Old Timer” logo before it was later restored.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.

The fitness company behind high-end exercise classes Barrecore, Boom Cycle, and Kobox has suddenly shut all its studios.

Common Bond emailed customers announcing its locations, all of which are currently in London, were closed “until further notice”.

The firm describes itself as a wellness collective and charges £2,400 for 12 months of unlimited classes. It also runs Reformcore and Triyoga brands and said in August last year it had ten sites.

Its website is no longer publicly accessible. The BBC has contacted Common Bond for comment.

The email sent to customers on Wednesday seen by the BBC said: “We’re sorry to let you know that all Common Bond studios are closed until further notice.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and disruption this may cause . We understand this is frustrating, and we appreciate your patience while we work through this.”

Instructors have told the BBC they were told last week they would not be paid on time and that they only found out about the studios closures from the Wednesday email.

One instructor said she and her colleagues were told their pay would be delayed on the day it was due on 14 August.

She said: “In good faith, I continued to teach my classes without any news on when or if payment would be made. I have heard absolutely nothing since.”

The CEOs of two of the world’s leading AI companies warned the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that rapidly advancing AI could threaten humanity if governments and industry fail to keep it under human control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI has enormous potential but also carries significant risks if it is not developed responsibly.

“If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” Amodei told the 15-member council during a special meeting on AI held alongside the U.N. General Assembly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivered a similar warning, saying AI’s development could move “so fast” that humans no longer have the ability to understand or intervene.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on during a UN Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 23, 2026. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

“We could lose control of the future to AI,” Altman said. “The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed. This would obviously be terrible.”

The meeting comes as concerns grow over increasingly advanced AI systems.

“For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time,” Amodei said. “No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone.”

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appears virtually during a United Nations Security Council meeting at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 23, 2026. (John Lamparski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Altman also urged countries to work together on AI as the technology continues to advance.

“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” he said. “They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments, accountable to the people that they serve. At the international level, this will require cooperation.”

He added, “In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don’t always like each other very much still come together for shared interests and the collective good in the face of a powerful new technology. We believe this must be one of those times.”

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The debate over how to develop and govern AI has intensified in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Amodei published an essay urging the industry to “slow the pace” of frontier AI development. The essay drew public support from Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The discussion at the U.N. also came a day after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would reject what he described as a “globalist scheme” to control AI, while emphasizing that the U.S. should remain the global leader in the technology.

French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux told Fox News Digital in an interview that France is seeking to bring artificial intelligence to the center of international security discussions, with a special UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday featuring executives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face.

“For a few weeks now, we wanted to bring AI at the center stage,” Confavreux said, explaining that the meeting was the first of its kind to feature briefers at this level from leading AI companies.

He said recent cybersecurity concerns, including a reported hacking incident involving Hugging Face, underscore the need to address AI-related security risks at the international level.

“We need to bring that into the discussions of the global community,” he said.

The meeting was chaired by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, alongside the Security Council’s 14 other members.

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Confavreux also highlighted a separate meeting led by French President Emmanuel Macron focused on protecting young people from the risks associated with AI and the digital age.

“AI is a fantastic accelerator for many things in our daily lives,” he said, adding that protecting young people in the digital age must be addressed globally rather than solely at the national level

FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Reuters contributed to this report.

Revolut has today begun piloting what it describes as the UK’s first in-store facial recognition checkout, with merchants paying 0 per cent processing fees on transactions made through the system. The trial, called Revolut Pay with Smile, runs at three Kiss the Hippo cafés in London until Saturday.

The service runs on Revolut Register, a new point-of-sale system for hospitality businesses. Once a customer has enrolled, the technology checks their face against the selfie identity check they completed when they first signed up to Revolut, then authenticates and processes the payment.

Customers opt in through the Revolut app. Revolut said they will then be able to look at the terminal to pay for a coffee, a meal or a round of drinks without a phone or wallet.

The pilot is open to Revolut customers at the Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho branches of Kiss the Hippo from 24 to 26 September. Guests who pay with a smile can order from a special Revolut menu, with speciality coffees priced at £1, and will earn triple RevPoints, the bank’s loyalty programme, on every transaction.

Revolut, which secured approval to operate as a UK bank earlier this year, published research alongside the launch on the costs independent venues face at the till.

According to Revolut, independent venues spend an average of £875 a month on payment processing and infrastructure, rising to more than £950 a month for pubs and bars. The company said terminal outages cost venues £2,495 a year in direct lost revenue.

Its research also found that two thirds of independent venues face verbal outbursts from customers multiple times a week because of poor checkout experiences. Revolut said more than half of Britons report delays or failures caused by merchants losing their internet signal.

In June, a Worldpay outage knocked out card payments at pubs, shops and restaurants across the UK during an England World Cup match.

Revolut said Revolut Register is a modular, two-screen register designed to bring payments, banking and floor operations together. It has a built-in eSIM backup, which the company said is intended to keep terminals online if a venue’s connection fails during peak hours.

On security, Revolut said transactions are authenticated with end-to-end encryption managed inside the Revolut app and that personal data is never stored by merchants. The Information Commissioner’s Office has published guidance on biometric recognition under UK data protection law.

Revolut Register is available at a 50 per cent discount, at £349.50 plus VAT against a recommended retail price of £699 plus VAT, for merchants signing up for their first terminal until 31 December 2026.

The company said the pilot extends its payments business into facial recognition checkout and opens a new revenue stream. It did not say when, or whether, Pay with Smile would be rolled out beyond the three cafés.

Alex Codina, general manager of merchant payments at Revolut Business, said: “With over half of Brits reporting delays or failures due to merchants dropping internet signals, checkout friction is driving customers out the door. To solve this, we’re deploying Revolut’s full technological ecosystem to reinvent the mechanics of the hospitality industry and give consumers the payments experience they deserve.”

He added: “By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we’ll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points.”

Alex Damgaci, managing director of Kiss the Hippo Coffee, said: “In hospitality, a seamless checkout is no longer a luxury, it’s the bare minimum. Technology that takes the friction out of the payment process and offers payment flexibility gives operators the reliability they need to protect revenue and maintain guest satisfaction.”

He said: “To mark the pilot we’ve put together a special menu for the three days, and we’re looking forward to welcoming guests to pay with a smile at our Bloomsbury, Soho and Chelsea cafés.”

About the author

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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