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Sesame HR
Spanish HR and time recording platform built around the legal obligation to record daily working hours
As of 31 August 2026, Sesame HR's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A Valencia-built HR suite that grew out of Spain 2019 law requiring every employer to record each employee daily start and finish times. Softwr lists it under HR. Sesame HR is available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Sesame HR does
Sesame HR is a Spanish human resources platform founded in 2017 covering time and attendance, absence, shift planning, document management, employee records, expenses, performance and internal communication. It is sold mainly to small and mid-sized companies in Spain and Latin America, usually alongside an external payroll bureau. The product exists because of a specific regulation. Spanish Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 made daily working time registration compulsory for every employer, with records retained for four years and available to labour inspectors, and it applies to office staff as well as shift workers. That created an immediate market for compliant clock-in tools, and Sesame built its business on being the one small Spanish companies could deploy in an afternoon, with clock-in by web, mobile, tablet kiosk, QR code and facial recognition, geolocation, and inspection-ready reports. Everything else in the suite was added around that anchor, which is why the time module is deeper than the performance or recruitment modules. Buyers are Spanish companies of 10 to 500 employees, plus a growing base in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Portugal. The trade-off is that Sesame does not calculate payroll: it exports hours, absences and variable pay to a gestoria or a payroll system such as A3 or Sage, so the payroll relationship stays with an external adviser. Companies outside the Spanish-speaking markets will also find the documentation, support and legal templates weighted heavily towards Spain.
What people use it for
- A Spanish employer that must produce daily working time records for a labour inspection
- A company with shift workers across several sites that needs rota planning and real clock-in data in one place
- A business whose gestoria wants clean hours and absence data each month instead of emailed spreadsheets
- A Latin American subsidiary of a Spanish group standardising on the same attendance system
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The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Sesame HR.
- There is no payroll calculation, so the payroll relationship stays with an external gestoria or payroll system and Sesame is only feeding it data.
- The product is built around Spanish and Latin American regulation, so a buyer employing in northern Europe gets attendance tracking without the local statutory logic that made the product valuable in the first place.
- Modules beyond time and attendance are noticeably shallower, and companies expecting the performance or recruitment features to replace dedicated tools are usually disappointed.
- Support, documentation and legal templates are Spanish-first, and English-language material lags behind, which slows adoption in mixed-language organisations.
- Pricing is per employee per month across module tiers, so a company that only wants compliant time recording still pays a headcount-scaled fee for a suite it uses a fraction of.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Sesame HR
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Sesame HRvsPersonio
Personio: Better for companies that need deeper HR functionality and European multi-country policy handling
- Sesame HRvsPlanday
Planday: Stronger dedicated shift scheduling for hospitality and retail if rota planning is the main requirement
Pricing
What Sesame HR costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Sesame HR
On request
- Priced per employee per month with module-based tiers
- Time and attendance in the base tier
- Shift planning, performance and expenses as higher tiers or add-ons
- Annual commitment discounts published on request
Capabilities
Features
Time and attendance
Clock in and out by web, app, tablet kiosk, QR code and facial recognition with geolocation
Legal time reports
Four-year retention and inspection-ready reporting under Spanish working time law
Shift planning
Rota building with coverage rules, swaps and overtime visibility
Absence management
Leave requests, approval flows and statutory absence types by country
Document management
Payslip distribution, signature and employee document storage
Expenses
Claim submission with receipt capture and approval routing
Performance
Objectives, evaluations and employee surveys
Payroll export
Hours, absences and variable pay exported to gestorias and payroll systems
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Why is time recording mandatory in Spain?
Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 requires every employer to record daily start and finish times for all employees and to retain those records for four years for labour inspection.
Does Sesame HR run payroll?
No. It exports hours, absences and variable pay to a gestoria or payroll system such as A3 or Sage.
Does it work outside Spain?
It is used across Latin America and Portugal. Outside those markets you get the tooling without the country-specific legal logic.
Can it handle shift workers across multiple sites?
Yes. Kiosk and QR clock-in with geolocation is designed for exactly that, and rota planning sits on top of the same data.
Keep looking
Where to go from Sesame HR
- Sesame HR alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Sesame HR pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Sesame HR badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
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- Best HR softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Sesame HR, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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