This study explores the global perspective of payroll research and patent innovations for the past 50 years. The aims are to offer insights into payroll research and publication characteristics, and to highlight patterns and trends of the payroll systems development. Data are based on the Scopus database up to year 2018. Articles related to payroll were assessed by many aspects including growth of patent and publication, documents and source types, language of publications, subject area, geographical distribution of publications, keyword and citation analyses. From the result of the bibliometric analysis, it can be concluded that payroll systems patent developments are increasing, while publication of payroll empirical studies are quite low in number. Consequently, apart from uncovers innovation and commercialization efforts of payroll systems, this paper proposes that more empirical studies are needed in the area. Greater number of empirical studies will enable exploration of further insights on socio-technical elements and behavioral impacts of payroll systems implementation in organizations. Such studies could discover whether developed and patented systems are worth-investing and impacting on the quality of work and life of the users.