XcodeFix HRMS User manuals HR manual Employee manual

Documentation · Version 1.5

Two manuals, and nothing left to guess.

Complete guides to the portal, screen by screen. One for the HR team that sets the company up and runs it; one to hand to every employee. Read them here, or download either as a PDF.

Manual one

HR Administrator Manual

Signing the company up, the data to gather before anyone is onboarded, the seven-step setup wizard, adding people, and administering leave, attendance, helpdesk, documents, expenses, recruitment, performance, payroll and tax, timesheets, workforce analytics, the daily summary, recognition, drivers and vehicles, and everything about somebody leaving.

25 chapters · 81 screenshots
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Manual two

Employee Manual

Activating an account, applying for leave, marking and correcting attendance, raising tickets, claiming expenses, filling in a timesheet, declaring investments, reading a payslip and a tax statement, goals and reviews, the daily summary, recognition, and the company feed.

18 chapters · 38 screenshots
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Manual one

HR Administrator Manual

For the organisation admin and HR team · Version 1.5 · 03 September 2026

1. About this manual

This manual is for the person who sets up and runs XcodeFix HRMS on behalf of a company — usually the HR manager, the founder, or whoever holds the Organisation admin login. It covers the whole lifecycle: signing the company up, deciding what data you need before anyone is onboarded, running the setup wizard, adding people, and then administering leave, attendance, helpdesk, documents and engagement day to day.

A separate Employee Manual covers the same portal from the employee's side. Send that one to your staff; keep this one for yourself.

About the screenshots. Every screen in this manual was captured from a live portal belonging to a demonstration company, Northwind Technologies — 18 employees across six departments, with real leave applications, attendance history, tickets, documents and posts. Names, email addresses and identifiers are fictitious. Your own portal will look identical; only the data changes.

What the portal is made of

XcodeFix HRMS is organised into modules. Each one can be switched on or off for your company, and anything switched off disappears completely — it leaves no empty menu item behind.

ModuleWhat it doesAlways on?
Core HREmployee records, org structure, profiles, company settingsYes
Approvals & To DoOne inbox for everything awaiting your decisionYes
LeaveLeave types, policies, balances, applications, calendarsOptional
AttendanceSign in/out, daily rollup, shifts, regularisationOptional
HelpdeskEmployee tickets with categories, priorities and ownersOptional
Document CenterPayslips, Form 16, policies, forms, letter requestsOptional
ExpensesExpense claims with receipts, approval and payment trackingOptional
RecruitmentJob openings, an applicant pipeline, interviews and offersOptional
EngageCompany feed: announcements, kudos, celebrationsOptional

Who can do what

Every person with a login has exactly one role. Roles are fixed — you assign them, you do not design them — which keeps access predictable.

RoleTypical holderReach
Organisation adminHR head, founderEverything inside your company, including company settings, modules, roles and the audit trail
HR managerHR executive, HR business partnerEmployees, leave, attendance, holidays, helpdesk, documents, letters, engage — but not company settings, modules or roles
ManagerAnyone with direct reportsTheir own portal, plus approving leave and attendance corrections for their reports
EmployeeEveryone elseTheir own record, leave, attendance, tickets, documents and the feed
Keep two administrators. An organisation admin cannot change their own role — another administrator has to do it. If you are the only admin and you lose access, nobody inside your company can restore it.

2. Before you onboard: the data to have ready

This is the chapter to read first. Setting the portal up takes about thirty minutes if the information below is already decided and to hand. If it is not, the wizard will stall at whichever step you have not thought about, and half-finished structure is much harder to correct once people are in the system.

Collect the following before you sign up.

2.1 Company information

ItemRequiredNotes
Company name (trading name)YesAppears in the sidebar and on every email your team receives
Registered legal nameRecommendedUsed on letters and statutory documents — e.g. "Northwind Technologies Private Limited"
Portal address (subdomain)YesShort, lowercase, permanent-feeling. Chosen at signup
Registered address, city, state, PINRecommendedPrinted on employment and address-proof letters
Contact phone and websiteOptional
Country, time zone, currency, date formatYesDefaults are India / Asia Kolkata / INR / d M Y
Company logoRecommendedPNG, JPG, WEBP or SVG, up to 1 MB. Square or wide both work
Brand colourOptionalA single hex colour used for buttons, highlights and email headers
Administrator name, work email, passwordYesThe email must be reachable — signup is confirmed by a verification link

2.2 Organisation structure

Three lists, and the earlier they are right the less rework later. Every one of them can be edited afterwards, but employees are attached to them, so renaming is easy and deleting is not.

  • Grades — seniority bands. Optional, but they are what lets leave entitlement differ by seniority later without editing everyone one at a time.
  • Departments — the functional groups people belong to. Give each a short code if you use one (ENG, SLS, HR). Decide who heads each department; you can set the head once the people exist.
  • Designations — job titles, with an optional seniority level. Keep the list tight: one title per real job, not one per person.
  • Locations — offices, plus a "Remote" entry if you have home-based staff. Address, city and state are worth filling in.

2.3 Leave policy decisions

For each kind of leave you offer, decide these before you start. The wizard suggests a sensible Indian default set (Privilege, Sick, Casual, Comp Off, Loss of Pay) which you can accept and then adjust.

DecisionExample
Short code and namePL — Privilege Leave
Annual quota (days)18
How it accruesMonthly, quarterly, yearly, or not at all
Carry-forward capUp to 12 days into next year
Paid or unpaidPaid (Loss of Pay is the unpaid one)
Half days allowed?Yes — the application then asks for a session on each end
Attachment required?Sick Leave over N days often needs a certificate
Minimum service before it can be used0 months for most, 6 months for Maternity
Maximum consecutive days15
Notice required3 days for planned leave, 0 for sick
Restricted to a gender?Maternity — female; Paternity — male
Calendar colourUsed across the leave calendar

2.4 Working hours and shifts

  • Shift code and name, e.g. GEN — General Shift
  • Start and end time, and the unpaid break in minutes
  • Grace minutes — how late someone may arrive and still count as on time (15 is typical)
  • Half-day minutes and full-day minutes — the work thresholds that decide how a day is marked (240 and 480 are typical)
  • Weekly offs for that shift, e.g. Saturday and Sunday
  • Which shift is the default for new joiners
  • Regularisation window — how many days back an employee may ask for a correction (14 is typical)

2.5 Holiday calendar

A list of holidays for the current calendar year: date, name, and whether it is restricted (an optional holiday the employee chooses rather than one everybody gets). The wizard offers a suggested Indian list you can edit. If different offices observe different days, create more than one holiday calendar and attach each employee to the right one.

2.6 Employee master data

This is the big one. For each person you are onboarding, the portal distinguishes between what it needs to create the record and what makes the record genuinely useful.

FieldStatusWhy it matters
First nameMandatoryIdentity throughout the portal
Work emailMandatoryThis is the sign-in identity and where every notification goes. It must be unique in your company and reachable
Joining dateMandatoryDrives leave accrual, probation and service length
Gender, marital statusMandatory (may be "Prefer not to say")Gender gates gender-specific leave types
Employment type, statusMandatoryFull time / part time / contract / intern; active / on notice / resigned / exited
Employee codeAuto-filledThe next code in sequence is proposed; overwrite it to match your existing numbering
Last nameStrongly recommendedNeeded for letters and for telling people apart
GradeRecommendedLets leave policies be granted by band rather than person by person
Department, designation, locationStrongly recommendedFilters, org charts and reporting all lean on these
Reports toStrongly recommendedThis is the approver for leave and attendance corrections. Without it, requests have nowhere to go and land on HR
ShiftStrongly recommendedDecides how attendance is judged; falls back to the organisation default
Holiday calendarRecommendedFalls back to the organisation default
Personal email, phone, date of birthRecommendedDOB drives birthday posts in Engage
Probation end dateRecommendedSurfaces "confirmations due" on the HR home screen
Exit dateOnly at exitLeave blank while the person is employed

2.7 Statutory, payroll and personal details

These are not needed to create the record and are not part of the bulk import. Collect them on or just after day one — most companies gather them with a joining form. Statutory identifiers are encrypted at rest and only ever displayed as the last four characters.

Statutory

  • PAN
  • Aadhaar
  • UAN and PF number
  • ESI number, where applicable

Payroll

  • Bank name
  • Bank account number
  • IFSC code

Personal

  • Residential address, city, state, PIN
  • Blood group
  • Emergency contact: name, relationship, phone
  • Family members and dependants, with dates of birth
  • Previous employment history
  • Assets issued: laptop, phone, access card, asset tag and serial

2.8 Documents to collect before day one

The Document Center holds two kinds of file: company-wide documents everyone can see, and personal documents visible only to that employee. A typical joining pack:

From the employee

  • Signed offer letter
  • Photo ID and address proof
  • PAN card
  • Educational certificates
  • Relieving and experience letters from the previous employer
  • Last three salary slips, if you ask for them
  • Cancelled cheque or bank passbook page
  • Passport-size photograph

Published by you

  • Employee handbook
  • Leave policy
  • Attendance and work-hours policy
  • Code of conduct
  • Information security policy
  • POSH policy and committee details
  • Reimbursement, travel and investment declaration forms

2.9 Readiness checklist

Do not start the wizard until you can tick every line.

Ready
Company name, legal name, address and logo
An administrator email address you can receive mail on right now
Department list
Designation list
Location list
Grade list, if entitlement or reporting will follow seniority
Leave types with quota, accrual, carry-forward and notice rules
Decision on which leave types may be cashed in, and any yearly cap
Decision on whether comp off is offered, and which type it credits
Shift timings, grace and half/full-day thresholds, weekly offs
Holiday calendar for the current year
Employee list with work email, joining date, department, designation, location and manager
Decision on who gets which role (admin / HR manager / manager / employee)
Policy documents ready to upload
Decision on whether to send invitations immediately or on a chosen day

3. Signing your company up

Go to hrms.xcodefix.com and choose Get started.

XcodeFix HRMS public landing page
The public site. Signing up is self-service — no sales call is required.
Organisation signup form
Signup asks for the company, your portal address, and the first administrator account.
  1. Enter the company name. A portal address is suggested from it; edit it if you want something shorter. The address is checked for availability as you type.
  2. Enter the administrator's name, work email and password. This account becomes the first organisation admin.
  3. Pick your industry and company size, accept the terms, and submit.
  4. Check the administrator's inbox for the verification email and click the link. The organisation stays pending until you do.
  5. Sign in. You land straight in the setup wizard.
Sign-in screen
Sign-in. Everyone in your company uses this screen, employees included.
If the verification email does not arrive, check spam first, then use Resend on the pending screen. Signup, sign-in and invitation emails are all rate-limited to stop abuse, so a burst of retries will be throttled — wait a minute between attempts.

4. The setup wizard, step by step

Seven steps. You can go back to any step you have already passed, and everything you set here stays editable afterwards from Administration in the sidebar — the wizard is a fast start, not a one-time commitment.

Step 1 — Company

Wizard step 1: company details
Company details, address, time zone and branding.

Fill in the legal name, address and contact details, then upload your logo and set the brand colour. These details appear across the portal and on every email your team receives, so it is worth doing properly now rather than later.

Step 2 — Structure

Wizard step 2: departments, designations and locations
Departments, designations and locations are entered as chips — type, press Enter, repeat.

Add your departments, designations and locations. Suggestions are offered for a company of your size and industry; click one to add it, or type your own. Nothing here is permanent — you can add more from Administration at any time.

Step 3 — Leave

Wizard step 3: leave types and entitlements
Leave types with quota, accrual and carry-forward.

A default Indian set is proposed. For each type set the annual quota, how it accrues and the carry-forward cap. Detailed policy rules — notice days, maximum consecutive days, minimum service, gender restriction, attachment requirement — are set afterwards under Administration → Leave types & policies.

Step 4 — Shifts

Wizard step 4: shifts and working hours
Shift timings, break, grace period and weekly offs.

Define at least one shift and mark it the default. Grace, half-day and full-day minutes decide how each day is judged when attendance rolls up overnight.

Step 5 — Holidays

Wizard step 5: holiday calendar
The suggested holiday list for the year — remove what does not apply, add what does.

Mark any optional holidays as restricted. Employees then apply for the one they want, and the request goes through approval like a leave application.

Step 6 — People

Wizard step 6: adding employees
Add people one at a time, or upload a CSV. Nobody is emailed yet.

Add your employees here or import them from a spreadsheet. Everyone you add is created with a pending invitation that has not been sent — sending is a deliberate separate action, so you can build the register quietly and go live when you are ready.

Step 7 — Finish

Wizard step 7: summary and finish
A summary of what was configured, and the choice of whether to send invitations now.

Review the counts. Leave Send welcome emails now ticked to invite everyone immediately, or untick it and send them later from the Employees screen. Then choose Finish setup — your portal goes live at once.

5. Adding people

5.1 The employee register

Employees register
Administration → Employees. Search, filter by department and status, and see at a glance who has portal access.

The register lists everyone, current and past. The Portal access column shows each person's role, or that they have no login yet. The header shows how many invitations are still unsent — Send N invitations despatches all of them in one action.

5.2 Adding one person

Add an employee form
Adding an employee. Four sections: personal details, employment, placement, portal access.
  1. Personal details — first and last name, work email, personal email, phone, date of birth, gender and marital status. Work email is the sign-in identity.
  2. Employment — employee code (pre-filled with the next in sequence), joining date, employment type, status, probation end date. Leave exit date blank.
  3. Placement — department, designation, location, shift, holiday calendar and, most importantly, Reports to. That person becomes the approver for this employee's leave and attendance corrections.
  4. Portal access — pick the role, and decide whether to email the invitation immediately.
Set "Reports to" for everyone. It is the single field most often skipped, and it is the one that decides whether a leave request has an approver. People with no manager fall to HR by default, which is fine for a ten-person company and unmanageable at a hundred.

5.3 Importing a team from a spreadsheet

Employee import screen
Administration → Employees → Import. A CSV of up to 2 MB.

The import expects a header row with these columns. Column order does not matter; capitalisation and spaces in the header are ignored.

ColumnRequiredNotes
first_nameYes
emailYesMust be a valid address, unique in the file and not already on the register
last_nameNo
emp_codeNoLeft blank, the next code in sequence is allocated
join_dateNoAny recognisable date. Blank means today
departmentNoMatched by name against your department list
designationNoMatched by name
locationNoMatched by name
manager_emailNoThe manager's work email; linked after all rows are created, so managers may appear anywhere in the file

A bad row never aborts the run. The file is parsed first, every problem is reported line by line, and everything valid still lands. Duplicates and rows with an invalid email are skipped and named in the result. As with the wizard, imported people are created with an unsent invitation.

Import order tip. Create your departments, designations and locations first. The importer matches those columns by name, and anything it cannot match is simply left unset — which means a silent gap rather than an error.

5.4 Invitations and activation

An employee record open for editing
An existing employee record. Invitation and exit controls sit at the bottom.

An invitation is a single-use, time-limited link. The employee clicks it, sets their own password, and their account activates — you never see or set anyone's password. Re-sending an invitation replaces any pending one, which is also how you help someone who never received the first.

5.5 A new-joiner runbook

WhenDo this
Offer acceptedCollect the joining-form data listed in §2.6 and §2.7, and the documents in §2.8
A week beforeCreate the employee record with joining date, department, designation, location, shift and Reports to. Do not send the invitation yet
Day one, morningSend the invitation. Upload their signed offer letter and personal documents to their My Documents folder
Day oneAsk them to complete My Information — address, emergency contact, family — and confirm their statutory details
First weekRecord issued assets (laptop, phone, access card) on their record. Check their leave balances look right for a mid-year joiner
First monthConfirm attendance is being marked correctly for their shift; correct anything odd before the first payroll cut-off
Probation endThe HR home screen flags confirmations due in the next 30 days. Confirm them, or extend the probation date

6. Company and structure administration

6.1 Company settings

Company settings
Administration → Company settings. Profile, registered address, regional settings and branding.

Everything from wizard step 1, permanently editable. Changing the logo or brand colour updates the portal and future emails immediately; mail already sent is untouched.

6.2 Departments, designations, locations and shifts

Departments
Departments, each with a code, a head and an active flag.
Designations
Designations, with an optional seniority level.
Employee grades
Grades, the seniority bands leave entitlement can follow.
Locations
Locations, with address and time zone.
Shifts
Shifts, with timings, break, grace and weekly offs. One shift is the organisation default.

Prefer deactivating to deleting. A deactivated entry stops appearing in dropdowns for new records but keeps the history of everyone already attached to it intact.

6.3 Movements: promotions and transfers

Movements
Administration → Movements. Every promotion, transfer and confirmation, newest first.

A movement is recorded on the person's own record, under Movements, and appears here afterwards. Fill in only what changes — a blank field keeps what they have now.

The movement card on an employee record
The movement card sits below the employee's details, with their placement history above it.
FieldWhat it does
Kind of changePromotion, transfer, confirmation or other — it is what the movement is filed under
Effective fromThe date it takes effect. A future date is stored as scheduled and does not change the record until that morning
New designation, grade, department, location, shift, managerLeave any of them blank to keep the current value
ReasonKept in the history and the audit trail
Dating a movement forward is the point. Record the promotion when it is decided, dated for the first of next month, and it applies itself on the day. Nobody has to remember.

Editing an employee's placement directly on their record is treated as a correction to the current placement rather than a new movement, so the history does not fill up with edits.

6.4 Users and roles

Users and roles
Administration → Users & roles. One row per login, with the role changeable in place.

Change someone's role by picking a new one and choosing Save on that row. The count of administrators is shown at the top; you cannot change your own role, and the portal will not let you remove the last administrator.

6.5 Modules

Modules
Administration → Modules. Switch optional modules on and off for your company.

A module is usable when it is both entitled to your plan and enabled by you. Switching one off hides it from everybody instantly and hides its navigation entirely. Data is not deleted — switching it back on restores everything.

6.6 Audit trail

Audit trail
Administration → Audit trail. Every administrative change, with who, what and when.

Administrative actions are recorded here permanently — role changes, policy edits, employee updates, document uploads, letter decisions. If a support engineer ever signs in as your organisation, that is recorded too, along with the real person behind the session. Credentials are never written to the trail.

7. Leave administration

7.1 Leave types and policies

Leave types and policies
Administration → Leave types & policies. What can be applied for, and the rules behind it.

Each type carries its policy: annual quota, accrual frequency, carry-forward cap, minimum service, maximum consecutive days, notice days, whether negative balances are allowed, and any gender restriction. The rules are enforced when an employee applies, and the reasoning is shown to them on the apply screen — so a rejected application is rarely a surprise.

Accrual runs on the 1st of each month, and carry-forward is applied in January. Changing a quota mid-year affects future accrual; it does not retroactively rewrite balances already granted.

7.2 Entitlement bands and allocations

The quota on a leave type applies to everybody. When seniority earns more, a leave policy grants the extra days on top, and an allocation decides who gets it.

Leave policies
Administration → Leave policies. A band is a name and a number of days per leave type.
Leave allocations
Administration → Leave allocations. Prepare first, check who it covers, then apply.
  1. Create a leave period — the year entitlement is granted for. Periods may not overlap.
  2. Create a policy with the days each leave type is worth under that band.
  3. Prepare an allocation: choose the policy, the period, and whether it covers everyone, a grade, or one person. Tick pro-rating so a mid-year joiner earns a share rather than the lot.
  4. Review the draft, then Apply. The days are written into every covered person's balance.
Applying is the irreversible half. Granted days land in the ledger and are not undone by deleting the allocation — correct them with a balance adjustment instead. Re-applying the same allocation never grants twice, so a half-finished run is safe to repeat.

Exited employees are never included, whichever target you choose.

7.3 Blocking dates

Blocked dates
Administration → Blocked dates. A release freeze, a stock count, year end.

A block refuses the leave request as it is submitted, quoting the reason you wrote — so nobody chases an approval that was never going to be granted. Scope it to one department, or leave it blank for the whole company.

7.4 Balances across the organisation

Leave balances across the organisation
Administration → Leave balances. Every employee's entitlement for the year, in one grid.

Use this to sanity-check a policy change, to answer "how much do I have left?" without opening a record, and to make manual adjustments where a balance needs correcting. Adjustments are written to the same ledger as accruals and consumption, so the arithmetic always reconciles.

7.5 Holiday calendars

Holiday calendars
Administration → Holiday calendars. Published lists and their dates.

Create one calendar per year, or several if offices differ. Mark optional days as restricted. Employees see their own calendar under Leave → Holiday Calendar, and attendance marks those days as holidays automatically.

7.6 The leave calendar

Leave calendar
Who is off and when. Employees see their own circle; HR sees the organisation.

7.7 Approving leave

Manager To Do inbox
A manager's To Do inbox: leave applications and attendance corrections from their reports.

Leave goes to the applicant's manager — the person named in Reports to. Approve or reject directly from the inbox, with an optional note that is emailed to the employee. Both outcomes notify the employee and update their balance immediately: an approval converts pending days to consumed, a rejection releases them.

7.8 Comp off and encashment

Two things employees ask for that create or spend entitlement, both landing in the approver's To Do inbox alongside leave.

RequestWhat approving it doesSwitched on by
Comp off Credits the worked day to the employee's comp off balance Ticking Credit comp off to this type on a leave type
Encashment Spends the days and hands the amount to payroll to pay Ticking May be cashed in, plus an optional yearly cap
Encashment is re-checked when you approve it, not only when it is asked for. If the employee has taken leave in the meantime and no longer has the days, the approval is refused rather than pushing the balance negative.

What the days are worth is not calculated here — the portal has no payroll. You record the amount to pay when approving, and it is carried on the record for payroll to act on.

8. Attendance administration

Attendance settings
Administration → Attendance settings. Organisation defaults, then per-shift overrides.

Four numbers do most of the work:

SettingMeaning
Grace minutesArrivals inside this window still count as on time
Half-day minutesWork below this is not a half day; at or above it, the day is marked half day
Full-day minutesWork at or above this marks a full present day
Regularisation windowHow many days back an employee may request a correction

Each shift can override grace and the two thresholds, and carries its own weekly offs. Changes apply to days rolled up from that point on — a day already processed keeps the judgement it was given, unless the nightly job is re-run for it.

How a day gets marked

Employees sign in and out from the portal. Overnight, the system rolls up each person's swipes against their shift and marks the day Present, Half day, Absent, Weekly off, Holiday or On leave, and computes late minutes, shortfall and excess. Approved leave wins over the swipe record, so an approved day never shows as absent.

Regularisation

When a day is wrong — a missed swipe, a client visit, a kiosk outage — the employee requests a correction from their attendance screen. It reaches their manager's To Do inbox with the requested times and a reason. Approving it rewrites that day and marks it regularised, which stays visible in the record.

9. Helpdesk administration

Helpdesk categories
Administration → Helpdesk categories. Queues, their default owner and the response target.

Each category is a queue: a name, a description employees see when choosing, a default assignee who picks tickets up, and an SLA in hours that sets the response target. A workable starting set:

CategoryOwnerSLA
IT SupportIT lead8 hours
HR & PolicyHR executive24 hours
Payroll & SalaryFinance24 hours
FacilitiesAdmin48 hours
Leave & AttendanceHR executive12 hours
A helpdesk ticket thread
A ticket thread. Comments, status changes and assignment are all recorded in order.

Tickets move through Open → In progress → Resolved → Closed. Every change emails the raiser. Internal notes are available for anything the employee should not see.

10. Documents and letters

10.1 Folders and documents

Documents and folders administration
Administration → Documents & folders. Company-wide folders and personal ones.

A folder is either organisation-visible — everyone sees the same files — or employee-visible, where each person sees only their own. Payslips, Form 16 and My Documents are the employee-visible kind; Company Policies and Forms are organisation-wide.

Uploads are content-checked rather than trusted by filename, stored outside the web root under a random name, and served only to people entitled to them. A file whose contents do not match its extension is rejected.

10.2 Letter requests

Letter requests
Administration → Letter requests. Employment, experience, salary, address-proof and visa letters.

Employees request a letter from their Document Center; the request lands in your To Do inbox with their note explaining what it is for. Issue the letter by uploading the signed PDF against the request, which files it into that employee's documents and notifies them. Rejecting it asks for a reason, which is emailed too.

11. Expenses

People spend their own money on the company's behalf and want it back without chasing anyone. A claim is a cover sheet with a line per receipt: the employee builds it as a draft, submits it when it is complete, an approver decides, and finance records the payment.

11.1 Expense types

Expense types
Administration → Expense types. What may be claimed, and the rules that go with it.
SettingWhat it does
Per-line capThe most one line of this type may be worth. The claim is refused at the point the line is added, not at approval. Zero means no cap
Receipt requiredA line of this type cannot be added without a file attached
Sort order, activeOrdering in the picker, and whether it still appears for new claims

A type that has been used on a claim cannot be deleted — switch it off instead, and the history stays readable.

11.2 The claims register

Expense claims register
Administration → Expense claims. Awaiting approval, approved but unpaid, and paid.

The three tiles are the numbers finance actually asks for. The middle one — approved but unpaid — is the work queue: each of those rows can be marked paid with a payment reference, which is recorded against the claim and shown to the employee.

Approving for less than was claimed is allowed. An approver can reduce the amount — a meal above policy, say — but never increase it beyond what was submitted.

12. Recruitment

12.1 The pipeline

Recruitment pipeline board
Recruitment. Everyone live, as a board — the fastest way to see where hiring is stuck.

Five columns, left to right: Applied → Screening → Interview → Offer → Hired. Rejected and withdrawn candidates leave the board rather than cluttering a sixth column; they are still on the Candidates list. Filter the whole board to one opening from the control above it.

12.2 Job openings

Job openings
Recruitment → Job openings. Seats filled against seats open, and candidate counts.

An opening carries the department, designation, grade, location and hiring manager, so a candidate hired against it arrives with their placement already decided. The status dropdown on each row moves it between draft, open, on hold, filled and closed without opening a form.

12.3 Candidates

Candidates list
Recruitment → Candidates. Everyone who has applied, including those no longer live.
A candidate record
A candidate: interviews and feedback on the left, the actions available to you on the right.

The same email may apply for two different openings, but not twice for the same one. Choosing a referrer marks the source as a referral automatically.

12.4 Interviews and feedback

Interview rounds
Administration → Interview rounds. Screening, Technical, Managerial, HR — whatever you run.

Scheduling an interview moves the candidate into the Interview stage by itself, so the board never lags behind what is actually happening. The interviewer sees it under My Interviews and records a 1–5 rating, a recommendation and written feedback.

Feedback belongs to the interviewer. Only they — or a recruiting administrator standing in — can submit it. Referrers never see it.

12.5 Offers and hiring

Draft an offer with the designation, grade, CTC and joining date; move it through sent and then accepted or declined. A declined offer takes the candidate off the board.

Once an offer is accepted, the Hire card appears. It creates the employee record from the candidate — carrying the offer's placement across — and links the two, so the pipeline shows where somebody ended up and nobody is hired twice. Sending their invitation is the separate, deliberate step described in chapter 5.

12.6 Referrals

Employees put people forward from Refer someone. The referrer is taken from their session, so it cannot be spoofed, and they can watch how far their referral gets without seeing any interview feedback.

13. Performance

A review cycle has three moving parts: goals people set, the appraisal each person and their manager fill in, and the feedback colleagues give along the way. The product keeps them together so a review conversation starts from evidence rather than memory.

13.1 Appraisal cycles

Appraisal cycles
Administration → Appraisal cycles. A cycle is a window with a name; launching it creates an appraisal for everyone in scope.

Set the period the cycle covers and the dates self-assessment and manager review are due, then launch it. Launching is the moment the cycle becomes real: every active employee gets an appraisal record, and everyone is notified. A cycle can be launched only once.

Launch when the list of people is right, not when the dates are. Dates can be edited afterwards; the set of appraisals is fixed at launch, so somebody who joins the next day is not in the cycle.

13.2 What people see

Each person gets their own appraisal to complete, their goals to update, and — if they manage anyone — a review to write for each report. Feedback can be given to anyone at any time and is attached to the person, not the cycle, so it is still there next year.

14. Payroll

Run payroll in parallel before you rely on it. For at least one full cycle, compute a run here and compare it line by line against whatever you pay from today. Payroll is the one place in this product where being wrong costs somebody money, and a parallel run is how you find the disagreement before an employee does.

14.1 Salary components

Salary components
Administration → Salary components. The earnings and deductions a structure is built from.
SettingWhat it does
CalculationA fixed amount, or a percentage of the person's base salary
TaxableWhether this component forms part of the wage that tax and statutory rules are worked out on
Pro-ratesWhether unpaid leave reduces it. A monthly allowance usually does; a fixed reimbursement often does not

14.2 Structures and assignments

Salary structures
Administration → Salary structures. A structure is a named set of components with their amounts or percentages.
Salary assignments
Administration → Salary assignments. Which structure a person is on, and the base salary the percentages are applied to.

An assignment has a start date. Giving somebody a rise means adding a new assignment from the date it takes effect, not editing the old one — which is what lets last year's payroll still compute last year's answer.

14.3 Additional salary

Additional salary
Administration → Additional salary. Bonuses, incentives, arrears and one-off recoveries, kept outside the structure.

A one-off is paid by the run whose period contains its date. A recurring entry is paid by every run its dates overlap. Either way the amount is paid in full — a bonus is a decision about a number, so half a month of unpaid leave does not halve it, unlike every component in the structure.

Entries are cancelled rather than deleted. Why somebody was not paid a bonus is a question that gets asked as often as the other one.

14.4 Statutory deductions

Statutory deductions
Administration → Statutory deductions. Provident fund, state insurance, professional tax and TDS — each one a rule you enter.
No rates are supplied with this product, deliberately. Every percentage, ceiling, threshold and band is one you enter from your own compliance advice. Shipping rates would mean every customer silently inheriting whatever happened to be correct on the day the software was written, and going quietly wrong the year it changed. A rule you have not set up deducts nothing — payroll will not guess.
FieldWhat it means
Applied toWhich wage the rule works on: basic salary, gross pay, or taxable gross
Employee rateThe percentage taken from the person's pay
Employer rateThe company's share. It is recorded as a cost and shown on the payslip, and it never reduces net pay
Wage ceilingCaps the wage the rate is applied to. The rule still applies above it, just on the capped amount
Wage thresholdStops the rule applying at all above that wage. This is the difference that catches people out: a ceiling caps, a threshold excludes
Effective from / toRules are dated rather than edited in place, so a March run keeps computing March's answer after April's rates arrive
Professional tax bands
Professional tax is a flat amount per wage band, so it is entered as bands rather than a rate. Leave the upper limit blank on the last one to mean “and above”.
Statutory exemptions
Statutory deductions → Exemptions. An active rule applies to everyone; this is where the exceptions are recorded.

14.5 Running payroll

Payroll runs
Administration → Payroll runs. A run covers a period. Compute rebuilds it; finalise freezes it.
  1. Create a run for the period, with the date people are to be paid.
  2. Compute. Every payslip in the run is deleted and rebuilt from the structures, additional salary and statutory rules as they stand. Correct something and compute again as often as you like.
  3. Check the register and a few payslips.
  4. Finalise. The run becomes read-only and payslips are published to employees. A finalised run cannot be recomputed — it is a record of what was paid.
Compute is destructive and that is the point. A draft run is rebuilt rather than patched, so a component you removed actually disappears instead of lingering from the previous attempt.

14.6 The salary register and the bank file

Salary register
A run → Salary register. Every component for every person in one sheet, with the statutory summary above it.

The statutory summary is what each authority is owed for this run, split between the employees' share and the company's. The register below it can be downloaded as a CSV for your accountant.

The bank payment file lists everyone with a net amount to pay, with their account and IFSC. It is available only once a run is finalised: a draft can still change, and a payment file is an instruction to move money. Anyone without bank details on file is left out of the file and reported on screen rather than silently dropped.

A payslip
One payslip. Statutory lines are labelled as such, and employer contributions are shown separately with a note that they do not reduce net pay.
Net pay never goes below zero. A month of unpaid leave can legitimately produce a zero payslip, but deductions are never allowed to overdraw someone's pay — if that would happen, the data is wrong and needs correcting rather than paying.

15. Tax declarations

Employees declare what they intend to invest, upload the proofs, and HR verifies them. What HR accepts is what reduces the tax withheld from their pay — so the loop matters, not just the form.

The same rule as statutory deductions applies. Slabs, section limits and the standard deduction are numbers you enter from your own advice. Nothing here ships with a rate.

15.1 Tax slabs

Tax slabs
Administration → Tax slabs. Bands, the standard deduction, and a note recording where the figures came from.

Add one slab per regime you offer. The standard deduction is subtracted before the bands are applied. Leave the upper limit blank on the last band to mean “and above”. The notes field is worth filling in — a year from now, somebody will ask why these numbers.

15.2 Exemption categories

Exemption categories
Administration → Exemption categories. The sections people may declare against, and the cap on each.

A declaration above the cap is trimmed to the cap when it is saved, not argued about at verification time. The help text you write here is shown to employees under the field, which is the cheapest way to reduce the number of questions you get.

15.3 Verifying proofs

Declarations queue
Administration → Declarations. Submitted, verified and rejected, with a count of proofs waiting on you.
Verifying one declaration
One declaration. Each line is accepted, rejected, or left pending, with the amount you are prepared to accept and a note the employee will read.

You can accept less than was declared — a certificate covering eight months of the year, say — but never more. Accepting more than somebody claimed would be inventing a claim on their behalf, so the product will not do it whatever is typed in the box.

Only verified amounts reduce TDS. A declaration that has been submitted but not yet verified is an intention. Withholding less tax on the strength of an unproven intention is exactly what leaves someone with a bill in March.

15.4 What was withheld

Tax withheld report
Administration → Tax withheld. A financial year's deductions, per person, with a CSV for whoever files the return.

This is derived from finalised payroll every time the page loads — never a saved snapshot, so it cannot drift away from the payslips people were actually given. Draft runs are not counted.

The PAN column only says whether one is on file; the number itself is encrypted at rest and appears in the CSV export, which is audited. A row flagged Missing is worth chasing before you file.

This is not a Form 16. A Form 16 is issued from the tax authority's own system against tax actually deposited there, and this product has no visibility of your challans. What it gives you is the figure you withheld and the months it came from — the worksheet, not the certificate. Employees see their own version of it under Tax statement, and it says the same thing.

16. Timesheets

A timesheet is a week. The employee fills it in, submits it, and their manager approves or sends it back — the same boundary as a leave application, and for the same reason: once somebody else is relying on the numbers, the person who entered them should not be able to change them quietly.

16.1 Projects

Projects and hours by project
Administration → Projects. What time can be logged against, and what has been logged, over any date range.

A project marked billable makes every hour logged against it billable. Time can also be logged with no project at all, which is how internal work is recorded without inventing a project for it. The hours report counts approved weeks only — an unapproved week is a claim, not a fact.

16.2 Reviewing the team's weeks

Timesheets to review
Time review. Managers see their own team; an administrator sees everyone.
One week's timesheet
One week, grouped by day, with the note the person wrote against each entry.

Sending a week back returns it to the employee as a draft to correct and resubmit. Nobody can approve their own timesheet, including an administrator.

17. Workforce analytics and planning

17.1 Insights

Insights dashboard
Administration → Insights. The organisation today: headcount, who is off, attendance, and everything waiting for a decision.

Insights answers “what is happening right now”. The approvals tile is the useful one on a Monday morning — each number links straight to the queue behind it.

17.2 Workforce analytics

Workforce analytics
Administration → Workforce. Joiners, leavers, attrition and the shape of the team over any period.

Where Insights is about today, this is about change. Set a period and the report shows who joined, who left, headcount at each month end, and how people are distributed by department, designation, grade, location, employment type or gender.

Attrition is measured against average headcount — the mean of the opening and closing figures — not against either end. An organisation that doubled during the period would otherwise show a rate that looks alarming or reassuring purely because of which end you picked.

17.3 Who worked on a holiday

Worked on a holiday report
Workforce → Worked on a holiday. People marked present on a day the company was closed, and whether they claimed the day back.

A row here without a compensatory-off claim is not necessarily a problem. It is, however, the list worth checking before somebody notices they were never given the day back.

17.4 Staffing plans

Staffing plan
Administration → Staffing plans. Headcount that was agreed, and what has been opened against it.

A plan is a budget decision; a job opening is a recruiting activity. Keeping them apart is what lets anyone answer “are we hiring more than we agreed” — a question with no answer if the only record of the agreement is the openings themselves.

  1. Create the plan with a period and a line per role: department, designation, how many, and the cost of each hire.
  2. Approve it. Only an approved plan offers its lines to job openings.
  3. When raising an opening, choose the plan line it draws against. The plan then shows planned, opened and hired side by side, and flags a line that has gone over.
Closing an opening releases the headcount again. Every other state — draft, open, on hold, filled — counts as drawn down against the plan.

18. Daily work summary

A standing question, asked of a group every working day, with the answers collected in one place. It is not a timesheet and is not trying to be: a timesheet asks how many hours went where and is approved, a summary asks what somebody did and is read. Use either, both, or neither.

18.1 Setting a group up

Daily summary groups
Administration → Daily summary. Who is asked, when, and who the digest is for.

Write the question in your own words — it becomes the label people answer under, so "What did you work on today, and what is in your way?" gets better answers than "Daily update". Pick the time and the days, then tick the people.

The scheduler runs hourly, so the time is the earliest it goes out, not the exact minute. A question is asked once a day however many times the scheduler runs, so a re-run never double-prompts anyone.

18.2 Reading the digest

Summary digest
Summary digest. One day, one group, everyone who was asked.

People who said nothing are listed too, marked No answer. A digest that only showed the replies would quietly hide the half that is usually more interesting. The panel on the right gives the last fortnight at a glance — four of six one day and six of six the next tells you something.

People can revise an answer for a week, which is long enough to fix a typo in something their manager is about to read and short enough that the record stays honest.

19. Recognition

Recognition
Recognition. A leaderboard, a feed of what people thanked each other for, and the form to add to it.

People give each other points with a reason attached. The reason is the part that matters — "Stayed late to get the release out without being asked" is worth reading a year later; "Great work" is not.

Set a monthly allowance. Recognition that costs the giver nothing stops being recognition and becomes noise. The allowance is a setting rather than a fixed number because how generous it should be is a cultural question, not a technical one. Leave it at zero for no limit.

Nobody can award themselves, and somebody who has left cannot be recognised. Points are held as a ledger rather than a running total on the employee record, for the same reason leave balances are: a total nobody can explain is worse than no total.

Recognition is a module of its own, so it arrives switched off. Turn it on under Administration → Modules when you are ready for it — nothing appears in anybody's sidebar until you do.

20. Drivers and vehicles

Drivers and vehicles
Administration → Drivers & vehicles. What expires soon, first — because that is the question somebody actually has.

For a company with drivers, the thing that matters is not the fleet list; it is the expiry date somebody has to chase. A driving licence is a compliance date exactly like a probation date, and so are vehicle insurance and fitness certificates.

The list at the top of the screen puts all three together, within sixty days, soonest first, colour coded — red for expired or within a month, amber for within two. Retired vehicles and inactive drivers drop out of it, so it stays a list of things that need doing rather than a list of everything.

RecordWhat it holds
DriverAn employee, their licence number, class and expiry, the vehicle they usually drive, and whether they are currently active or suspended
VehicleRegistration, make and model, seats, insurance and fitness expiry
Vehicles are retired, not deleted. A driver record may still point at one, and who drove what is worth keeping. One person has one driver record — a second is refused rather than silently creating a duplicate licence for the same employee.

21. Engage administration

Engage groups
Administration → Engage groups. Channels, and who is allowed to post in each.

Groups come in four kinds — announcements, general, kudos and events. Set post permission to admins only for the announcements channel so official notices are not buried, and leave the rest open to everyone. Birthday posts are generated automatically each morning from the dates of birth on employee records.

The Engage feed
The feed as employees see it, with pinned announcements at the top.

22. Email and templates

Email templates
Administration → Email & templates. Eighteen messages, all rewritable in your own words.

Nothing is sent inline. Every message is rendered at the moment it is queued — so editing a template later never rewrites mail already sent — then delivered by a background worker that retries on failure.

Editing an email template
Editing a template. Only the listed placeholders are available, and a preview renders with sample data.
GroupMessages
AccountWelcome (organisation admin), verify email, password reset
OnboardingEmployee invitation, welcome (employee)
LeaveApplied, approved, rejected, cancelled
AttendanceRegularisation applied, regularisation decided
HelpdeskCreated, updated, resolved
DocumentsLetter ready, document shared
EngageBirthday, announcement
Outgoing email settings
Administration → Outgoing email. Send through your own mail server instead of the platform's.

By default, mail goes out from the platform mailbox. Point it at your own SMTP server if you would rather mail arrive from your domain — credentials are encrypted, and a test message confirms the settings before you commit to them.

23. Your To Do inbox

HR To Do inbox
To Do. Everything waiting on you, grouped by what kind of thing it is.

One inbox for every approval in the product — leave, restricted-holiday requests, attendance corrections, letter requests. The sidebar badge shows the outstanding count. Approve or reject in place with an optional note; the Closed tab keeps a record of what you decided and when.

What lands in your inbox depends on your role. Managers see requests from their direct reports. HR sees letter requests and anything from people with no manager mapped.

24. When someone leaves

Leaving is a process, not a flag. Somebody works a notice period, hands things over, gets cleared by three or four different people, is paid what they are owed, and only then does their access stop. Each of those is a record here, because each of them is something people ask about afterwards.

24.1 The clearance checklist

Exit checklist
Administration → Exit checklist. The template every leaver is cleared against.

Write the list once. Each item has an owner — free text, because "IT", "Facilities" and "Reporting manager" are not roles the product knows about — and a switch marking it blocking.

A blocking item stops the settlement being paid. That is the whole reason the checklist exists: paying somebody before the laptop comes back is the mistake it is there to prevent. Use it for things that genuinely have to happen; make the rest non-blocking so nothing is held up over a courtesy.

Each exit gets its own copy of the list, so editing the template next month never rewrites what somebody was already asked to clear — and deleting an item here leaves clearances already under way exactly as they were.

24.2 Recording an exit

Exits
Administration → Exits. Everyone leaving, and how far through clearance they are.

Record the reason, the day they told you, their last working day, and the notice due against the notice actually served. They move to on notice straight away: still employed, still able to sign in, still on the payroll. Nothing stops until you complete the exit.

If they change their mind, cancel the exit. They go back to active and the exit date is cleared. That is a real thing that happens, so it is a button rather than a support request.

24.3 Clearance

One exit, with clearance and settlement
One exit. Clearance on the left, the settlement underneath it, and the dates on the right.

Each item can be marked done, left outstanding, or set to not applicable — which does not block, and is the honest answer for a laptop that was never issued. Notes are visible to whoever picks the exit up next, which is usually not you.

24.4 The final settlement

A settlement is one person on one date, which is why it is not a payroll run. Folding it into a run would mean either running payroll off-cycle for one leaver or holding their money until month end.

Build works out the part the product actually knows:

LineWhere it comes from
Salary for the days workedTheir salary structure, pro-rated to the days of the final month they were here. Components marked as not pro-rating are paid in full
Leave encashmentUnused days on leave types you allow to be cashed in, at a day's pay — a month's gross over the days in the month. The line says so, so nobody has to reverse-engineer it
Notice not servedThe shortfall between notice due and notice served, at the same day rate

Everything else — gratuity, a retention clawback, a goodwill payment, an asset never returned — is a line you add by hand, with a note saying how you worked it out.

Recomputing keeps the lines you added. Correct a leave balance and rebuild, and the derived lines refresh while your gratuity stays exactly where it was. A recompute that silently ate a hand-worked figure would be worse than no recompute at all.
A settlement can come out negative. Somebody who owes a month's notice after working three days genuinely owes the company money, and the product says so rather than quietly showing zero. Recover it separately; nothing is paid out.

Approve, then record the payment with its reference. Approval is refused while a blocking clearance item is outstanding, and the button is disabled until it is cleared.

24.5 Completing the exit

The last step disables their login, ends their sessions, and closes the record.

Nothing is deleted. Their leave ledger, attendance history, payslips, tickets and documents stay intact for audit and statutory purposes. There is no "delete employee" that destroys history, by design — and their payslips remain available to your finance team long after the login has gone.

People who have left appear in Workforce analytics under people who left, with their tenure, which is where an attrition conversation starts.

25. Reference

25.1 Permissions at a glance

CapabilityOrg adminHR managerManagerEmployee
View and edit own profile✓✓✓✓
Apply for leave, raise tickets, request letters✓✓✓✓
Approve leave and attendance corrections✓✓✓—
View and manage all employees✓✓team only—
Invite employees✓✓——
Leave types, policies, holiday calendars✓✓——
Attendance settings✓✓——
Helpdesk categories, documents, letters✓✓——
Raise expense claims✓✓✓✓
Approve expense claims✓✓✓—
Expense types, mark claims paid✓✓——
Refer a candidate✓✓✓✓
Conduct interviews, give feedback✓✓✓—
Manage openings, candidates and offers✓✓——
Company settings, modules, roles, audit trail✓———
Email templates and outgoing mail✓———

25.2 Employee import template

emp_code,first_name,last_name,email,department,designation,location,join_date,manager_email
NW1004,Rohit,Deshmukh,rohit.deshmukh@example.com,Engineering,Engineering Manager,Pune,2024-02-13,kavita.menon@example.com
NW1005,Ananya,Krishnan,ananya.krishnan@example.com,Engineering,Senior Software Engineer,Bengaluru HQ,2024-06-13,rohit.deshmukh@example.com
NW1006,Vikram,Singh,vikram.singh@example.com,Engineering,Software Engineer,Pune,2025-06-13,rohit.deshmukh@example.com

25.3 What runs automatically

WhenWhat happens
Every minuteQueued email is delivered, with retries and back-off
Just after midnightYesterday's attendance is rolled up, and the last week is backfilled
Just after midnightPromotions and transfers whose effective date has arrived are applied
1st of each monthLeave accrues; in January, carry-forward is applied
NightlyExpired invitations and reset tokens are cleared out
NightlyDatabase and uploads are backed up and kept for 14 days
Each morningBirthday posts appear in Engage

25.4 Glossary

Accrual
Leave being earned over time rather than granted in full on 1 January.
Carry-forward
Unused leave moved into next year, up to a cap.
Grace period
Minutes after shift start within which an arrival still counts as on time.
Regularisation
A request to correct an attendance day, approved by the manager.
Leave policy
A named band of extra days per leave type, granted to people through an allocation.
Allocation
The act of granting a policy to a grade, a person or everyone for a period.
Comp off
A day earned back for working a holiday or a weekly off.
Encashment
Unused leave paid out instead of taken.
Movement
A dated change of placement — promotion, transfer or confirmation.
Claim line
One receipt on an expense claim. The claim total is always the sum of its lines.
Pipeline stage
Where a candidate has got to: applied, screening, interview, offer or hired.
Restricted holiday
An optional holiday the employee chooses, subject to approval.
Session
Half of a working day. Session 1 is the first half, session 2 the second.
Entitled vs enabled
A module must be included in your plan (entitled) and switched on by you (enabled) before anyone can use it.