One employee record, not five copies
Personal details, contracts, documents, absences and changes live in one place. When someone gets a raise or moves teams, it’s updated once and the history stays.
One record per person
HR software and internal systems for teams
Manage employee records, leave, approvals and documents in one place
Leave requests arrive by email, contracts sit in shared folders and someone updates the payroll spreadsheet by hand every month. Each new hire means typing the same details into several tools. We build HR systems that keep employee records, approvals and documents in one place and follow your rules for who approves what. Payroll gets a clean export instead of a list of corrections.
- One record per employee, with its history
- Leave and approvals with a visible status
- Contracts generated and e-signed in the system
- Payroll exports and reports without retyping
Why it works.
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01 -
02 Your approval rules, built in
Who approves leave, overtime or a new contract depends on the team, the amount and the location. We put your rules into the system, so requests reach the right person and nobody chases them by email.
Your approval chain
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03 Documents that fill themselves in
Contracts, addenda and confirmations are generated from the employee record, sent for e-signature and filed. Staff check them instead of retyping them.
Templates and e-signature
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04 Reports without the Friday spreadsheet
Headcount, absences, turnover and payroll inputs are exported in one click or emailed on a schedule. Managers see their own team; HR sees everything.
Scheduled reports
From signed offer to first day.
Onboarding is where scattered HR tools hurt most. HR, IT, payroll and the manager all need the same person’s details in the same week.
- Offer accepted Details arrive from your recruitment tool or an online form
- Documents read AI pulls names, numbers and expiry dates from IDs and permits for HR to confirm
- Contract drafted Built from your template and the employee record, then sent for e-signature
- Manager signs off Salary, start date and team approved in one click
- Checklists go out IT, payroll and the team get their tasks, with reminders before the start date
- Ready for day one Record complete, payroll input prepared, every step logged
What we’ve learned.
From the projects we’ve built in this area.
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Write down the approval rules first.
HR tools rarely fail on the normal case. They fail on the part-timer, the contractor, the employee abroad and the manager who is on holiday. List who approves what, and who stands in, before you compare tools or brief a developer. That list decides most of the design.
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Keep the history, not just today’s value.
Salaries, contracts, positions and addresses change. If the system stores only the current value, “what was her salary in March?” means digging through files. We store each change with the date it applies from, so old reports still add up.
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15+
List the reports before the features.
On the staffing platform we built for Transfer International, staff pull 15+ reports in one click, and the daily and weekly ones arrive by email. Ask HR and managers which reports they put together by hand every week. They are often the clearest saving.
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Don’t let AI make decisions about people.
AI helps with job ads, reading documents, answering policy questions and summarising notes. Ranking candidates or rating employees is different. The EU AI Act lists AI used in hiring and managing staff as high-risk, and GDPR restricts decisions made purely by software. A person decides; the system records who.
What we can build.
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Employee records
- Employee profiles with a full change history
- Contracts, addenda and terminations
- Documents with expiry dates, such as permits and medicals
- Import from spreadsheets and older systems
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Requests and approvals
- Leave, absence and overtime requests
- Approval chains by team, amount or location
- Shared team calendars
- Reminders when a request waits too long
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Documents and checks
- Contracts generated from your own templates
- E-signature through providers such as Eversign
- Identity checks through providers such as Sumsub or TrustID
- An audit trail of who changed what, and when
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Reports and connections
- Payroll exports and reports emailed on a schedule
- Dashboards per manager, branch or team
- Connections to payroll, accounting and recruitment tools
- Role-based access and two-factor login
Spreadsheets, an HR app or a custom system?
For a small team with standard contracts, an off-the-shelf HR app is usually the right answer. The picture changes when your rules, contracts or locations don’t fit its settings.
| Spreadsheets and email | Off-the-shelf HR app | Custom HR system | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follows your approval rules | Partly | Partly | Yes |
| Employee history and audit trail | No | Yes | Yes |
| Contracts from your own templates | No | Partly | Yes |
| Connects to your other systems | No | Partly | Yes |
| Cost to start | None | Monthly fee per employee | One-off build price |
| Ready to use | Today | Days to weeks | 6 weeks to 3 months |
Projects like this.
What we’ve built for clients in this field.
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HR platform Vacuum Labs
HR management platform · Europe
The problem
The company needed a more advanced people-operations system with documents, tasks, permissions and historical data built in.
What we built
- Document and e-signature workflows
- Task and admin operations
- A detailed permissions model
- Bitemporal data: what was true when, and when it was recorded
What changed: One HR system for documents, tasks, permissions and the full history of employee data.
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Internal portal Tesla Consulting
Employee portal · Europe
The problem
The team needed to manage shared calendars, leave and internal tasks in one place.
What we built
- Employee portal
- Shared calendar and leave workflows
- Internal admin tools
What changed: One portal for employee calendars, leave and internal administration.
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Program management Emerge Scholars
Program operations platform · USA
The problem
The organization needed better coordination between students, staff, tasks, attendance and communication.
What we built
- Admin portal for program managers
- Mobile app for participants
- Task and attendance tracking
- Real-time communication
What changed: One system for program tasks, attendance and communication between staff and participants.
How the first version comes together.
A typical timeline. We confirm yours after the project workshop.
- 1
Week 1
Project workshopWe map one process with HR and a few managers, usually onboarding, leave or contracts, including the exceptions. You get a fixed price before any build starts.
- 2
Weeks 2–3
Records and rolesEmployee records, roles and permissions come first. We import your spreadsheets, so every weekly demo runs on real data.
- 3
Weeks 4–7
The first processRequests, approvals, documents and notifications for the chosen process, piloted with one team or branch.
- 4
Launch
Everyone moves overYou own the code, repositories and accounts. We fix bugs for free for 3 months.
- 5
Then
The next processesPayroll exports, scheduled reports or self-service for employees, added in 2-week stages.
Case studies.
Systems we’ve built that are close to this one.
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Candidate and employee management
Workforce platform for temporary staffing, recruitment, compliance checks, and payroll administration
Read the case study -
Recruitment management platform
Platform for recruitment agencies in education
Read the case study
Further reading.
- AI in HR and recruitment: where it helps and where to be careful Which HR and hiring tasks AI handles well, why screening and ranking candidates carry legal risk under GDPR and the EU AI Act, and practical guardrails. Read the article
- Getting your team to actually use AI: a 6-week rollout plan Why licences alone rarely change how people work, and a 6-week plan with champions, role-based use cases and a prompt library that does. Read the article
- How to write an AI usage policy your team will actually follow What a short AI policy should cover: approved tools, data rules, checking outputs, disclosure and incidents. With a template outline you can copy. Read the article
Questions people ask.
Is this only for large HR departments?
No. Smaller companies often feel the pain sooner, because one person handles HR, payroll inputs and office admin at once. A first version can cover only the process that takes the most time, such as leave or onboarding.
Shouldn’t we just buy an HR app?
Often, yes. If an off-the-shelf app fits your contracts, approvals and reports, it will cost less than building. We suggest custom software when the gaps are your core work, for example a staffing agency managing hundreds of contracts, permits and client assignments.
What does a custom HR system cost?
One process, such as leave requests or contract generation connected to one or two tools, usually costs €5–10k. A full internal system with records, approvals, documents and reports is typically €10–30k. Platforms that replace older software start at €30k. We fix the price after the project workshop.
How long until we can use it?
Our past projects reached a first version in 6 weeks to 3 months. One process is at the shorter end. Replacing an old HR system with years of data takes longer, mostly because of the data migration.
Can it connect to our payroll, accounting and recruitment tools?
Yes, through their APIs, or through exports in the format your payroll provider or accountant expects. We don’t rebuild payroll calculation, which changes with every tax update. We make sure payroll gets clean inputs: hours, absences, changes, advances and deductions.
How do you handle GDPR and employee data?
Access is limited by role, so a manager sees their own team and only HR sees salaries or medical records. We log who viewed or changed sensitive records, agree retention periods with you and host data in the EU when required. Your data protection officer or lawyer sets the rules; we build them in.
Where does AI help in HR?
Reading uploaded documents, drafting job ads and letters, answering employees’ policy questions from your handbook and summarising interview notes. We don’t use AI to rank candidates or rate employees. A person makes those decisions, and the system records who.
Who owns the system?
You do. The code, repositories, accounts and data belong to you. We fix bugs for free for 3 months after launch; after that you can choose monthly support or hand the system to your own developers.
Which HR task takes your team the most time?
Tell us how leave, contracts or onboarding work today. In a 30-minute call we’ll tell you whether to buy, build or extend, and roughly what it would cost.
JurajCEO, QikBuild
You leave the call with
- What we would build first
- A rough price range
- Whether custom software makes sense for you
Or write to hello@qikbuild.com