Where WalnutsHR Is in Its Lifecycle (2026)

We launched WalnutsHR Inc. on April 22, 2026. We're a young company. Our blog mentions us alongside vendors with 5–15 years of history; readers deserve a clear picture of where we actually are.

This is the post that tells you. We will keep it current as the product ships. When you read a comparison post on this site that says "WalnutsHR has X but doesn't yet have Y," you can come back here and verify the claim against the live status.

What's live today (2026 Q2)

Everything in this list is in production, available to every account, today:

• Employee records — a single source of truth for your people: contact info, employment history, compensation, custom fields
• Time-off tracking — request, approval, balance accrual, calendar integration; configurable policies per location
• Time tracking — clock in/out, weekly timesheets, project and shift tagging, manager review and approval before export
• Applicant tracking (ATS) — job postings, candidate pipeline, structured interview workflows, offer extension; built for the SMB stage where a standalone ATS is overkill
• Document management — upload, share, version, and acknowledge documents (offer letters, handbook, policies, certifications)
• Onboarding workflows — checklists, document collection, task assignment for new hires
• Org charts — auto-generated from reporting relationships, exportable
• Role-based permissions — admin, manager, and employee scopes with field-level controls
• Primary database in a Canadian region by default — for Canadian customers, the HR database is provisioned in a Canadian region of our cloud provider; this is the default, not an upsell. Other operational services (auth, email, analytics, payments) are disclosed in our privacy policy
• Bilingual EN/FR interface — every employee picks their preferred interface language independently; Anglophone team members see English, Francophone team members see French

Plans:

• Free tier: up to 5 employees, employee directory and basic dashboard
• Paid tier: $10 CAD/employee/month, no contract, no setup fee

That is what exists today. If a feature is not in this list and you cannot find it in the product, it does not yet exist. We won't tell you it does.

On the near-term roadmap

These are the things we are actively building or have committed to ship within the next several quarters. We use ranges, not exact dates, because we'd rather under-promise than miss a calendar commitment we made to a stranger on a blog.

• Expanded reporting. Headcount reports, time-off utilization, compensation distribution, custom report builder.
• Native Canadian payroll. CPP/EI, T4 and T4A generation, ROE filing, CRA remittance, provincial tax deductions, direct deposit. Targeting 2026; track progress on the payroll waitlist. In the meantime, WalnutsHR runs alongside your current payroll provider.
• US data residency option. For US customers and for Canadian customers with US operations who need US-resident processing.
• Mobile app. Native iOS and Android, focused on the employee experience (request time off, view documents, find a colleague).

We will update this section as items ship and as priorities shift. If you're depending on a specific item for a buying decision, reach out and we'll give you a current read on the timing.

Not on the roadmap

This list is shorter, and it's the more honest list. There are categories of product we deliberately do not build.

• Full-scale HCM (workforce management at enterprise scale). Enterprise HCM suites cover this category. We don't compete in that segment and won't try to.
• Benefits administration. Group benefits enrollment, broker portals, carrier integrations. Specialized brokers and benefits platforms do this well; we partner rather than rebuild.
• US multi-state payroll. Canadian payroll is on the roadmap (see above); US payroll is not. Established US payroll providers cover this category well, and we'll integrate with them rather than build a competing product.
• Enterprise-tier customization. Workflow scripting, custom fields with no limit, custom approval routing chains six layers deep. Our product opinion is that the SMB stage benefits from constraints; if you are at the scale where you need full customization, you have outgrown us.

If something on this list is critical for your business, the honest recommendation is to evaluate vendors who specialize in it. We'd rather lose the prospect than sell into a mismatch.

The free tier — our intent

Our current intent, stated openly so you can hold us to it:

We intend to keep the free tier (up to 5 employees) free. We don't plan to move it behind a paywall, add a credit card requirement, or impose an arbitrary expiration. If we ever change feature scope on the free tier, our intent is to give notice on this page first.

We're a Canadian-incorporated business and our free tier is part of how we exist in the market, not a temporary acquisition lever. The thinking is simple: a 4-person company that uses WalnutsHR for two years and grows to 30 people is the customer we want, and the free tier is how that relationship starts. Cutting off the free tier the moment it has acquisition value would burn the trust that makes the model work.

The legal authority over plan changes lives in Section 5.1 of our Terms of Service, which preserves our right to modify or discontinue the free plan. Treat this section as a direction-of-travel statement, not a contractual commitment. If our intent ever changes, we will update this page.

Why we publish this

Comparison posts get easier to write when readers can verify what's true today. The vendor comparison genre is full of vague claims that age badly — "WalnutsHR offers X" when the feature shipped six months later, "WalnutsHR plans to do Y" with no follow-through. We don't want to write those posts and we don't want you to read them.

This page is the source of truth. We update it as things ship. If you find a comparison post on our site that contradicts what's listed here, this page wins, and we'd appreciate the heads-up so we can correct the comparison.

We're building a product the way we'd want a vendor to build for us: in the open, with clear scope, and with the things we won't do made as visible as the things we will.

See the live product or try the free tier with no card and no sales call. Either way, you'll be able to verify what's in this post against what's in the product.