HR and finance integration: 5 key factors at a glance

Human Resource Management Systems (HRMSs) are now standard for many growing and established businesses, but they often run separately from finance systems, which leads to disconnected data and extra manual work. By integrating HRMSs with finance systems, businesses can automate their financial processes and cut down on repetitive tasks. 

This article covers five key points for bringing HR and finance together, and shows how you can use Airwallex’s local payment network, accounting integrations, and APIs to build a scalable global operating system on top of your existing HRMS.

Why do disconnected HR and finance systems hold your business back?

Picture a typical settlement date at a multinational company – HR exports payroll data from the HRMS, finance uploads spreadsheets into online banking, then processes employee salaries, freelancer payments, and reimbursements one by one in different currencies. While accountants reconcile company card transactions and receipts manually, a single delay or error at any stage can disrupt the entire process. Underneath this workflow sit three structural problems:

• Data doesn’t sync and errors slip in: Teams rely on manual data transfer between HR, payments, and accounting systems, increasing the risk of duplicated or incorrect records.

• Hidden costs add up: Handling overseas payroll and reimbursements with traditional banks comes with FX spreads and multiple other fees, with FX costs often landing around 3-5% and transfers taking three to five days.

• No real-time visibility: Without a real-time view of people costs and cash flow, budget tracking and decision-making slow down.

These pain points only become more obvious as your business enters new markets, hires overseas employees, or works with more freelancers. Solving them isn’t about adding yet another tool, but about bringing in a single platform that lets HR and finance share data and workflows.

What is an HRMS?

An HRMS is a software platform that centralises core people operations, including employee information, payroll, attendance, leave, performance, and talent management. It helps standardise and track HR workflows, and usually gives employees self-service access for requests and enquiries.

Alongside HRMS, there are other types of HR systems like Human Resources Information (HRIS) and Human Capital Management (HCM). HRIS focuses on storing employee information and managing attendance, while HCM looks at the full employee lifecycle, from hiring to performance and development. Whatever system you use, its real value is only unlocked when it connects with your finance platform instead of operating in isolation.

Why does integrating HRMS and finance matter?

Higher operational efficiency

When your HRMS connects directly to your financial platform, payroll data and employee records flow into a single system that can automatically sync local, and cross-border salary payments, company card spend, and expense approvals with your accounting workflows. This reduces repetitive admin work, like tool-switching and manual checks, so your finance team can focus on higher-value tasks, such as financial analysis and planning.

Cuts global payment costs

Instead of piecing together bank fees and FX margins across different tools, managing multi-currency payments and FX on a single platform helps you see the true cost of paying overseas teams and suppliers in one place. With Airwallex, you can convert funds at rates close to the interbank rate and use a local payment network that covers over 120 countries and regions. This can help your business reduce FX costs by up to 80% and shorten payout times by eliminating the time and cost of going through international wire transfers and intermediary banks.

Smarter and faster financial management

Using a unified platform that brings together people costs, company card spend, supplier bills, and cash balances can streamline budget tracking and cash flow management. This helps speed up decision-making processes, such as adjusting hiring plans or marketing investments. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this kind of real-time visibility is especially important when operating across borders and managing multiple currencies.

5 key points for integrating HR and finance

Successful integration is about more than just connecting APIs – areas like payroll automation, accounting reconciliation, and compliance are just as critical to get right. Below are five key points to consider when aligning your HRMS and finance platform:

Automate global payroll

Running payroll across multiple countries involves juggling different currencies and local payment rules. Handling transfers and FX conversions one by one is both time-consuming and error-prone. A better approach is to have your HRMS export payroll data files that capture salary amounts, currencies, payment dates, and payee details, and then use these files to trigger batch autopay runs over local payment networks.

If you run a multinational company, Airwallex’s FX & Transfers lets you manage large payroll batches and reconcile them automatically on a single platform. The platform supports payouts to more than 200 countries and regions, with over 120 accessed via local payment networks. This setup cuts FX spreads and speeds up delivery times – around 93% of transfers arrive on the same day, and about 50% land instantly. 

You can use the platform’s batch transfer capabilities to set custom permissions for employees in advance, so authorised staff can process up to a thousand salary payments at once and reconcile everything automatically on a single platform. If you already have a payroll system in place, you can also connect it to Airwallex via API, extending your existing workflow without rebuilding it from scratch.

Streamline expense management

Traditional expense claims often start with employees paying out of pocket and holding on to paper receipts, before manually filling in forms and uploading files for review and approval. These complex, fragmented processes can easily cause delays and constant back-and-forth between employees and managers. A more modern approach is to merge “spend” and “track” into a single flow: employees pay business expenses with a Corporate Card and upload receipts to an Expense Management tool, where AI-powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) then matches each receipt to the right transaction and syncs expenses to accounting automatically.

Corporate Cards and Expense Management tools can come together in a single, integrated workflow, from spend to reconciliation. With Airwallex, your employees can pay using virtual or physical Corporate Cards and enjoy 0% foreign transaction fees when spending directly from your multi-currency balances. The platform’s AI-powered OCR then matches the data from each uploaded receipt to the correct card transaction, helping your finance team reconcile spend with far less manual work.

Keep data in sync

Whenever people join, leave, or have their pay adjusted, gaps between HR, payroll, and accounting can quickly create wrong entries or mispayments that later have to be fixed by hand. When core systems stay in sync near-real-time, finance teams spend less time chasing errors and can reconcile accounts much faster.

Simplify bookkeeping with Airwallex’s accounting integrations with leading tools like Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite. By letting card spend, bill payments, and transfer data flow straight into your general ledger, you can speed up the month-end close and reduce duplicate reconciliations.

Choose a platform with API-led scalability

A platform with API-led scalability lets you quickly launch new capabilities, from issuing cards as scale to setting individual spend controls and market-specific expense policies.

If you are ready to build a forward-thinking operating model, Airwallex offers a suite of APIs across accounting, payments, remittance, and card issuing, which can plug into your existing HR systems, so your team can flexibly adapt and orchestrate processes as your needs evolve while reducing the cost of technical integration.

Safeguard global compliance and data security

Once HR and finance data start crossing borders, compliance and security move to the top of the priority list. You should choose a platform that holds financial regulatory licences worldwide and adheres to recognised international security standards, such as PCI DSS, SOC 1, and SOC 2. Implement end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and active anti-fraud monitoring to ensure information security.

Holding over 60 financial regulatory licences worldwide, Airwallex takes a multi-layered approach to security, with data encryption and real-time fraud detection in place to keep funds flowing within a regulated, protected environment.

Integrate your HRMS and finance systems seamlessly with Airwallex

As a one-stop financial platform, Airwallex is built to complement your existing HR systems to form a unified financial operating system. Here is how Airwallex fits into your daily workflows:

• HR data sharing: HR sets up employee profiles in the HRMS with salary and currency details, then sends them to Airwallex for setting up recipients and payment instructions.

• Payroll automation: The system handles currency conversion at competitive rates and then pays employees via local payment networks, with payment status updated almost instantly.

• Corporate Cards and Expense Management: You can issue virtual or physical Visa cards with 0% foreign transaction fees to your employees, with spend limits and merchant rules set in advance.

• Receipts and automatic reconciliation: Employees snap receipts in the Airwallex app, and AI-powered OCR matches them to card transactions.

• Automatic accounting sync: All transactions flow into accounting tools like Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite with transaction data like merchant categories.

After connecting your HRMS and finance platform, you will unlock cleaner data, fewer manual tasks, and leaner FX costs in one move.

Build a modern global finance engine with Airwallex

If you are ready to move from a standalone HRMS to a more connected, efficient financial operating system, Airwallex can help you replace manual work and fragmented tools with an integrated, global setup by linking HR data, payroll, expense management, and multi-currency payments on a single platform, so your teams spend less time reconciling data and FX, and more time on strategic decisions. Sign up today to supercharge your financial system.

Frequently asked questions about HR and finance integration

Do I need technical expertise to integrate my HRMS and finance platform?

Not necessarily. If your company already uses common HR systems and leading accounting tools such as Xero, QuickBooks, or NetSuite, Airwallex offers pre-built, plug-and-play integrations so you can complete most configurations through a visual interface without writing code. For more advanced workflows, such as automatically triggering cross-border payroll, Airwallex also provides a comprehensive suite of APIs to help your team build these integrations quickly.

Which accounting or HR software does Airwallex integrate with?

Airwallex integrates with Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite so that all your transactions can sync automatically into the general ledger. It can also connect with any HR system that supports APIs to use HR data for payroll runs, payments, and accounting entries.

How can I stay compliant when paying overseas employees?

With Airwallex, you manage overseas payroll in line with local regulations. The platform holds more than 60 financial regulatory licences worldwide and takes a multi-layered approach to security by implementing controls such as multi-factor authentication, Know Your Customer (KYC), and anti-money laundering (AML). It also meets international security standards, including PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 1, and SOC 2, so your funds remain safeguarded under strict requirements.

Disclaimer: This article was prepared in December 2025 based on voluntary online research and publicly available information. We have not personally tested every tool or provider mentioned. This article is for educational purposes only, and readers should independently evaluate each service provider based on their specific business requirements. Content is updated every six months. To request an update, please contact us at [email protected].