Is Breathe HR a payroll system?

No. Breathe HR is not a payroll platform and does not process PAYE, tax, or National Insurance. It records approved hours, overtime, and leave, then integrates with payroll providers like Sage, Xero, and QuickBooks, who handle the actual pay run. Treat Breathe as the people admin engine that feeds your payroll tool.

How much does Breathe HR cost?

Breathe HR uses tiered per-employee-per-month pricing across four plans, Start, Regular, Pro, and Premium. Cost scales with headcount and the modules you enable, such as rota or expenses. Published pricing lives on the Breathe HR pricing page. Expect a typical 20-person SME to sit in the Regular or Pro tier on a monthly subscription.

Is Breathe HR GDPR compliant?

Yes. Breathe is a UK-based provider headquartered in Horsham, West Sussex, with data stored in the UK and controls aligned to UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Role-based access, audit logs, and document-level permissions help SMEs meet ICO expectations. You still need your own data retention policy and a signed data processing agreement.

How does Breathe compare to BrightHR?

Breathe leans towards clean, simple people admin for UK SMEs and has strong self-service. BrightHR bundles HR software with Peninsula legal advice, which suits firms wanting software plus a helpline in one contract. If you already have HR support, Breathe is usually the better pure-software choice. If you have none, BrightHR's bundle can feel reassuring.

What size business is Breathe HR suitable for?

Breathe fits UK SMEs from roughly 5 to 200 employees. Below 5, a shared drive and spreadsheet often still work. Above 200, firms usually outgrow Breathe's reporting and workflow depth and migrate to Sage HR, BambooHR, or Personio. Most Rebox clients on Breathe sit between 15 and 90 employees.

Can Breathe HR be used alongside outsourced HR support?

Yes, and it often works better that way. Breathe handles the system of record, covering holidays, sickness, documents, and reviews. Your outsourced HR consultant handles the judgement calls, including investigations, disciplinaries, contract drafting, and tribunal risk. The software keeps your data tidy so your consultant can act on facts, not guesswork, when something goes wrong.

Breathe HR for Small Business: A 2026 Partner Review

What Breathe HR actually is

Breathe HR is a UK-built cloud HR platform that handles the daily people admin most SMEs struggle with. It centralises employee records, automates holiday tracking, logs sickness and performance, and gives staff a self-service app. It does not process payroll, and it does not replace an HR consultant. This review covers what Breathe does well, where it falls short, and whether it fits your business.

Key Takeaways
Breathe HR is a UK SME HR platform covering records, holidays, sickness, performance, and self-service, not payroll.
CIPD research shows HR tech adoption among UK employers continues to rise, with digital people systems now mainstream in SMEs (CIPD People Profession 2023, 2023).
It suits businesses from roughly 5 to 200 employees. Above 200, most firms migrate to Sage HR, BambooHR, or Personio.
Breathe integrates with Sage, Xero, and QuickBooks for payroll. Approved hours flow out; it does not run PAYE.
Rebox HR won Breathe Partner of the Year 2024 after implementing Breathe for dozens of UK SME clients.

[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] I have set up Breathe for more than 40 Rebox clients since we became a partner. The pattern is consistent: firms buy it to stop losing holiday request emails, then realise they have also solved their GDPR document problem, their sickness reporting problem, and their "where is the signed contract" problem. This review is the one I wish clients had before they signed up.

[INTERNAL-LINK: Breathe HR partner services → /services/hr-software]

What Breathe HR actually does

Breathe HR covers seven core modules that handle the day-to-day people admin work in an SME. According to CIPD's People Profession research, HR technology adoption is now standard practice among UK employers, with most HR teams using at least one digital people system to manage records and absence (CIPD People Profession 2023, 2023). Breathe sits squarely in that SME space.

Employee records and documents

Every employee gets a digital file. Contracts, right-to-work evidence, signed policies, appraisal notes, and disciplinary records all live in one place with role-based access. This is the feature that most often justifies the subscription on its own, because it replaces a shared drive nobody can find anything in.

Holiday and leave management

Staff request leave in the app. Managers approve or decline. Breathe auto-calculates entitlement from contracted hours, including part-time pro-rata, and shows a live team calendar. It handles the Working Time Regulations 1998 statutory 5.6 weeks cleanly, plus carry-over rules you configure.

Sickness tracking

Absence is logged by type, with return-to-work notes and Bradford Factor scoring built in. Trigger alerts flag patterns before they become formal absence management cases. In practice, this is the module that pays for itself first because managers stop under-recording.

Performance

Breathe has a light-touch performance module: 1:1 logs, objectives, and review cycles. It is not a dedicated performance platform like Lattice or 15Five, but for an SME running annual or bi-annual reviews, it is enough.

Rota, shifts, and expenses

Newer add-ons cover shift planning for hourly-paid teams and expense claims. These are priced separately from the core plan, and they work best for hospitality, retail, and care businesses.

Training log

Who was trained, on what, when, and when the refresher is due. For any SME with mandatory training like first aid, food hygiene, or safeguarding, this module removes the spreadsheet.

Self-service and reports

Staff get an app. Managers get a dashboard. Directors get reports on workforce headcount, absence trends, holiday liability, and turnover. Reports export to CSV cleanly.

[CHART: Breathe HR module map, showing core plan modules vs paid add-ons, source: breathehr.com feature list]

Citation capsule: Breathe HR is a UK SME-focused cloud HR platform covering employee records, holiday and sickness tracking, performance reviews, training logs, and self-service apps, with add-on modules for rota planning and expenses. It integrates with Sage, Xero, and QuickBooks for payroll and is used widely across UK businesses of 5 to 200 staff (Breathe HR, 2026).

[INTERNAL-LINK: benefits of HR software pillar → /blog/benefits-of-hr-software]

What Breathe HR is not

Breathe HR is deliberately scoped for UK SME people admin, which means several things it is not. It is not a payroll engine, not an applicant tracking system, and not a fit for large enterprises above 200-300 employees. Understanding this scope prevents the most common buyer's remorse we see with clients who expect it to do everything.

Not a payroll system

This is the single biggest misconception. Breathe does not calculate PAYE, National Insurance, pension contributions, or statutory payments. It does not file RTI with HMRC. What it does is hold approved hours, overtime, and leave, then pass that data to your payroll provider. The earlier version of this post got this wrong, and we are fixing it here: if you need payroll, you need a payroll product.

Not an applicant tracking system

Breathe has light recruitment features, but it is not a full ATS. If you hire more than 5-10 people a year or run structured hiring funnels, pair Breathe with a recruitment tool or use your HR consultant's recruitment service.

Not suitable above 200-300 employees

Once a firm passes around 200 staff, reporting depth, workflow complexity, and multi-entity needs usually outgrow Breathe. Clients at that size typically move to Sage HR, BambooHR, or Personio.

[IMAGE: UK office manager at laptop reviewing HR software dashboard, search terms: small business office manager laptop HR]

Who does Breathe HR suit best?

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Breathe HR fits UK SMEs between 5 and 200 employees, with the sweet spot sitting between 15 and 90 staff. Our Rebox client data shows the strongest satisfaction comes from firms in professional services, trades, manufacturing, care, and hospitality, where the previous system was email plus spreadsheets. According to the CIPD, smaller employers often lag on digital adoption, so moving from paper to Breathe is a single, measurable step forward (CIPD People Profession 2023, 2023).

Good fit

Owner-managed UK SMEs where the office manager or finance lead is the de facto HR contact.
Businesses that have outgrown shared drives for contracts and holiday sheets for leave.
Firms with a retained HR partner who wants clean records to work from.

Poor fit

Businesses under 5 employees, where a spreadsheet still works and the monthly fee is not justified.
Complex enterprises above 250 employees with multiple legal entities or international payroll.
Firms needing deep recruitment pipelines or advanced performance analytics as a primary use case.

How does Breathe integrate with payroll?

Breathe HR integrates with the three main UK SME payroll platforms: Sage Payroll, Xero Payroll, and QuickBooks. The integration pattern is consistent across all three: approved timesheet data, overtime, and leave records flow from Breathe into payroll on a set cadence, so your payroll administrator does not re-key absence and hours each month. This is where most of the time saving shows up.

What the integration actually does

Each month, approved data in Breathe is pushed or pulled into the payroll tool. Your payroll administrator still runs the pay cycle in Sage, Xero, or QuickBooks, but they start from clean, signed-off numbers. HMRC RTI submission happens in the payroll tool, not Breathe.

What it does not do

It does not auto-calculate statutory sick pay, shared parental pay, or pension auto-enrolment. Those sit with your payroll provider. If your payroll provider also offers an HR module, you may not need Breathe at all. Most SMEs find Sage's HR module thinner than Breathe, which is why they pair the two.

[INTERNAL-LINK: HR software service page → /services/hr-software]

How is Breathe HR priced?

Breathe HR uses per-employee-per-month pricing across four tiers, Start, Regular, Pro, and Premium, with add-ons for rota and expenses billed separately. Published pricing lives on Breathe's pricing page and changes periodically, so I will not quote specific figures here. A typical 20-person UK SME lands in the Regular or Pro tier. Add-on modules push the monthly spend up but stay well inside SME software budgets.

What pushes you up a tier

Performance, recruitment, and reporting depth live in the higher tiers. Most firms start on Regular and move to Pro when they want structured reviews or deeper reports.

What the sticker price does not include

Implementation time is yours to fund, either in-house or through a Breathe partner. We budget 6-10 hours of partner time for a 20-person rollout, plus an hour of manager training per department. Full Breathe pricing detail sits at breathehr.com/pricing.

How does Breathe HR compare to alternatives?

The four alternatives UK SMEs most often shortlist against Breathe are BrightHR, Sage HR, BambooHR, and People HR. Each targets a slightly different buyer, and the right choice depends on whether you want bundled legal advice, payroll integration, enterprise polish, or simple UK-built HR. Independent reviews on G2 and Capterra consistently rate Breathe well for SME usability (Capterra UK, 2025).

BrightHR

BrightHR bundles HR software with Peninsula's 24/7 legal advice helpline. It suits firms with no HR support who want reassurance. If you already retain an HR partner, you are paying twice for advice.

Sage HR

Sage HR is a natural add-on if you already run Sage Payroll or Sage accounts. The HR module is competent but feels less polished than Breathe on self-service and mobile.

BambooHR

BambooHR is the premium option, US-built, with strong reporting and onboarding. It usually costs more than Breathe and suits SMEs from 50-300 staff who want a more polished experience.

People HR (Access People)

People HR (now Access PeopleHR) is a broader mid-market platform. It does more than Breathe, but the added complexity is wasted on a 20-person firm.

[IMAGE: HR software comparison chart on desk with laptop, search terms: software comparison evaluation UK office]

What should you expect from implementation?

A typical Breathe HR rollout for a 20-person SME takes 2-4 weeks from kick-off to full employee go-live, split across data migration, configuration, manager training, and employee rollout. [ORIGINAL DATA] Across 40-plus Rebox implementations, the firms that hit the 3-week mark had one thing in common: the office manager owned the data cleanse before the Breathe account was switched on. The firms that took 6-8 weeks usually hit dirty data issues halfway through.

Day 1 to day 7

Collect the data: employee list, contracted hours, start dates, holiday entitlement, current leave balances, contracts, and right-to-work evidence. Clean it. This is the boring week, and it is the week that determines success.

Day 8 to day 14

Configure Breathe: company settings, holiday policy, sickness policy, absence triggers, approval workflows, document folders. Upload cleaned data. Set up admin and manager accounts.

Day 15 to day 21

Train managers. A one-hour session per manager covers approvals, running reports, and logging absence. Rebox does this alongside the partner setup so it lands alongside your policies.

Day 22 to day 30

Roll out to employees. Send welcome emails with login instructions. Expect a first-week spike in questions, mostly about holiday balances not matching expectations. Have your policy ready to quote.

[INTERNAL-LINK: retained HR support → /services/retained-hr-support]

What are the common implementation mistakes?

The four mistakes that cost SMEs the most time during Breathe HR rollout are dirty starting data, unclear holiday policy, skipped manager training, and no internal launch comms. Each is avoidable, and together they explain why some rollouts take twice as long as they should. Fixing these before go-live is cheaper than fixing them afterwards.

Dirty starting data. Wrong start dates, wrong contracted hours, or inherited spreadsheets nobody trusts. Clean before migrating, not after.
Unclear holiday policy. If your contracts say one thing and your custom has been another, Breathe will expose the gap on day 1. Resolve the policy first.
Skipping manager training. Managers who do not know how to approve leave will approve by email, and your single source of truth splits in two.
No internal launch comms. Staff who hear about Breathe for the first time when they get a login email will assume it is a monitoring tool. Announce it properly.
Treating it as a payroll replacement. It is not. Agree the payroll handover process with your bookkeeper before go-live.

[INTERNAL-LINK: policies and procedures → /services/policies-and-procedures]

Why is Rebox HR a Breathe partner?

Rebox HR was named Breathe Partner of the Year in 2024 after implementing Breathe for dozens of UK SME clients across professional services, trades, manufacturing, care, and hospitality. Being a partner means Rebox clients get preferential setup pricing, direct escalation to Breathe's partner support team, and HR consultants who know the platform inside out. If you buy Breathe direct, you get the software. If you buy through Rebox, you get the software plus the HR expertise to use it properly.

[INTERNAL-LINK: Rebox HR Breathe Partner of the Year award → /blog/rebox-hr-breathe-hr-partner-of-the-year-award]

Citation capsule: Rebox HR was named Breathe Partner of the Year in 2024 after implementing Breathe HR for more than 40 UK SME clients. Partner clients receive preferential setup, direct partner support escalation, and HR consultants trained on both the platform and UK employment law under ERA 1996 and the Equality Act 2010 (Rebox HR, 2024).

The verdict

Breathe HR is the right HR platform for most UK SMEs between 5 and 200 employees who want their people admin out of spreadsheets and into one place. It is not a payroll system, not an ATS, and not the answer for larger or more complex firms. Buy it if you want clean records, automated holiday, proper sickness tracking, and a self-service app your staff will actually use. Pair it with a retained HR partner, and you have the system plus the judgement calls covered.

If you are evaluating Breathe HR for your business, or you want help implementing it properly, book a call with Rebox on 01327 640070 or email hello@reboxhr.co.uk.

[INTERNAL-LINK: HR support for small businesses → /blog/hr-support-for-small-businesses-what-you-actually-need]