HR Software for Small Business: Change It Once, One Record Per Person

Somebody moves to a three-day week. How many places do you have to change it? In most small teams the honest answer is "several", and one of them is always missed.

This post introduces People and records, Nexcubator's HR software for small business: people, working patterns, leave management and your organisation's own lists. For the whole picture, read What Is Nexcubator?

The solution: one employee record that every app reads

• One record per person: the job, working hours and contracts, working days, pay, leave and history. Time, Standup and the Planner read it, so you change it once.
• Every change has a day and a reason. Nothing is overwritten; History says what changed, when and why.
• Leave in hours, shown first. A part-timer's day off costs their own day, and Show me first says what a request takes before it is sent.
• Private by design. Pay is seen only by whoever runs pay, and sickness shows to colleagues and managers only as away, never why.
• Records keep your own lists, such as an asset register, with every change kept field by field.

About the visuals: there are no product screenshots here. The diagrams are illustrations drawn to explain the ideas, not product screens, and the company, the people and the figures in them are invented.

Why staff records drift, and what it costs

A move to three days is agreed in a corridor, written in an email, and typed into a spreadsheet by whoever does the pay. Three weeks later the timesheet still expects five days, the booking page still offers Tuesdays, the morning standup asks about a day they never worked, and the holiday tracker still counts their leave in days, as if their day were the same length as everybody else's.

Nobody did anything wrong. The same fact simply lived in four places, and only one of them was told.

A person's working week is one fact. Kept in four places, it is only ever as right as the last one somebody remembered.

A week at Harbour Works: an illustrative case study

Harbour Works is an invented design agency. Nora Byrne, Liam Farrell, Aoife Byrne, Emily Hart and David Wilson are invented people.

Nora runs Harbour Works and holds People and pay. Her week starts with the list, a calm employee directory: everybody, one line each, with their job, their team, who they report to and whether they are in today. Hours, contracts and pay are not on the list; they are on each person's page, for the people allowed to see them.

Monday. Aoife, a designer, is moving to three days a week from 1 November. Nora opens Aoife's page and presses Edit. She sets 21 hours a week, working days Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, From 1 November, and Why: "Asked to work three days." Who reads this lists every part of Nexcubator that will use the change. Because it is for a later day, it waits, marked "from 1 Nov" under History.

On the day, Time expects 21 hours. Standup asks about Aoife's last working day, so she is never asked about a Tuesday, and her least to log a day is never more than her own contracted day: 21 hours over three days is 7 hours. Nora also sets At standup, under it to Only a reminder, so Aoife's update always goes.

Tuesday. Liam, who leads the design team, wants the last week of October off. In Leave › Mine he picks Annual leave, 26 to 30 October, and presses Show me first. It says the hours it takes, that it skips Monday 26 October, the October bank holiday, and what he will have left. Anything worth knowing is written underneath, such as somebody else in his team being away too. He presses Ask, and it goes to whoever approves his week: Nora.

Nora sees it under Waiting for you, with who, which days, the hours and what is left after. The sentences are never a refusal. She decides, and presses Approve. Everything after that follows on its own.

From that moment Liam's booking pages are closed on those days, and visitors are not told why. When he drafts that week in Time, the leave is already there, as lines at his working day's length.

Wednesday. Emily, on Liam's team, rings in sick. Liam opens her page, presses More, then Record an absence. Sick is the default; he picks the days and saves. It is recorded, not asked. To colleagues and managers, Emily is simply away, never why. Only Emily and whoever runs pay see the kind. When she drafts her week in Time, the absence is a line for her to check, and once a Sick row is logged, Standup counts it as logged time.

Friday. David Wilson, who leads the Bluebell project, is leaving at the end of the month. Nora presses More, then Set a leaving date, chooses his last day and says why; the reason is seen by whoever runs pay, not his manager. His reports, Aoife among them, will move one level up on the day, so nobody is left without a manager, and a position opens for his job. A checklist covers his projects, the company's things, leave owed and taking out his account.

On his last day, Remove in Admin hands his work to Liam: open tasks, the projects he leads, and his booking page, switched off, with Liam told of each booking ahead. His files go to a folder called "From David Wilson". His messages stay, shown as "Former member", and his private to-dos are handed to nobody. His People record stays, marked as left.

His laptop is in the asset register Harbour Works keeps in Records. When it comes back to the office, Emily changes its location, and the record's History shows the change field by field.

Why there are other HR tools for small business, and what they miss

Small teams have good reasons for what they use. A spreadsheet of staff is free and everybody knows it. A standalone HR system keeps proper records. A leave-booking app is quick to set up, and a shared "who is off" calendar shows the team at a glance. Payroll and contracts usually sit with specialists, and that is sensible.

Each misses the same thing from a different side: it keeps its own copy of a person, and nothing else reads it.

• A spreadsheet of staff is a copy nobody else reads, and a cell is overwritten with no day and no reason. People keeps one record that Time, Standup and the Planner read, and every change to terms has a From and a Why, kept under History.
• A standalone HR system keeps good records apart from the work, so hours and leave are typed again into timesheets and calendars. In People, new hours reach Time and Standup from their day, approved leave closes booking pages, and the leave is already there when Time drafts the week.
• A leave-booking app usually counts leave in days for everybody. People keeps it in hours, and Show me first skips a person's days off and public holidays before a request is sent.
• Payroll and contracts in separate tools leave contracted hours in a file, so a job's labour cost is a guess. In People, pay is seen only by whoever runs pay, and Time uses the cost rate worked out from it for a job's labour total without ever showing it.
• A shared "who is off" calendar often says why somebody is off, for the whole team to read. People shows sickness as away to colleagues and managers; only the person and whoever runs pay see the kind.

None of these is a setting to find. It is how People works from the start.

Concept 1: One employee record, read by everything

The idea: a fact about somebody's work should be typed once, in one place, and every app should read it from there.

A person's page has four tabs: Overview, Hours and pay, Leave and History. Time, where the timesheet lives, reads the contracted hours, the least to log a day and the role they are billed as. Standup reads their working days and what happens when a day is under the minimum. The Planner reads working days, and team booking pages work out who takes each booking from leave, public holidays where each person works, working days, and first and last days.

The same holds when people join. Add a starter is one form: the invitation, their record, their terms from the first day and a checklist with owners all follow, and nobody types their name again in any module.

Concept 2: Every change has a day and a reason

The idea: people records are history, not a form you overwrite.

A change to terms needs a From and a Why. One in force today goes to Time at once; a later one waits for its day, and History keeps it all. A leaving date can be taken back until the reports have moved, and an import can be undone for 24 hours.

Concept 3: Leave management in hours, shown first

The idea: a day off should cost the person their own day, and a request should say what it takes before it is sent.

Take Aoife after her move. If she asks for the week after Easter next spring, Show me first skips Easter Monday and her Tuesday and Friday, and takes 14 hours: two of her 7-hour days. The same dates take a full-timer four of their own days. Nobody has to work out what a "day" is worth.

Leave is worked out every time from the entitlement (four contracted weeks a year unless your organisation set otherwise, pro-rated to the part of the year somebody is there), what was carried over or adjusted, and what was taken or booked. Because it is kept in hours, a three-day week and a five-day week are both treated fairly, with "about N days" shown in the person's own days.

Who is away is the team's holiday tracker: a four-week grid of who is on leave, asked, away, on a public holiday or not working. Public holidays come from where each person works: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales and Scotland are built in, and changes you make are kept, with why. Leave goes to the person somebody reports to if they approve leave, otherwise to whoever runs pay, and nobody approves their own.

Concept 4: Absence management that stays private

The idea: each person sees what their role needs, and nothing more.

Something you may not see is absent, not greyed out, and the page says who does see it. Pay is seen only by whoever runs pay. Time multiplies hours by the cost rate worked out from pay and never shows it, and the audit log says pay changed, never the figure.

Sickness is the clearest case. Each kind of leave carries its own rules, and Sick starts out marked "shown as away", with a certificate noted as needed after three days in a row. It shows as away to colleagues and managers, never why, and to booking pages and the Planner only "leave" or "holiday" ever arrives, never the kind.

Concept 5: The org chart, in your own words

The idea: a reporting change should be said, shown and then applied, not rebuilt by hand.

Type "Emily reports to Liam", or several changes at once, and press Show me: now and after are drawn side by side, and nothing is written before Apply. A change that would make somebody report to somebody under them has no apply button, and anything it does not understand is listed, never guessed.

Concept 6: Records, your own lists

The idea: the lists a business keeps beside its people deserve the same care.

Records are your organisation's own lists, such as an asset register, site visits or contracts, each kind with the fields you choose. Search, filter, save a view and share it, or export to CSV with only the fields you may see. Archive takes a record out of the list without losing it, and each kind sets who may see and who may change its records. A single field, such as an insured value, can be restricted to the people who need it.

A spreadsheet keeps only the latest value. A record keeps who added it, who changed it last and, under History, every change as "field: old → new", newest first.

The principle underneath: records, not judgements

• People holds facts about how work is arranged: terms, working days, leave and who reports to whom.
• Decisions stay with people. A leave request is approved or sent back by a person, and its sentences are never a refusal.
• Every change is somebody's, with a day and a reason you can read later.
• Health stays private. Sickness is shown to others only as away.

You can see the whole picture on the People and records page.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• What Is Nexcubator?: the ideas behind Nexcubator and all its apps.
• People and records: the feature page.
• Forgot Your Timesheet Again?: how Time drafts your week, with leave already in it.
• The Calendar That Understands You: booking pages that know who is on leave.

Where it stands

People is available in the beta now, added to an organisation's subscription on its own. Records are there too, though Your records is hidden from the menu while the records service is rolled out; each list opens by its address, such as /records/.

If a change to somebody's hours still means updating four tools, that is exactly the conversation we want to have.

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Nexcubator is business software by Aitina Tech. Request early access and tell us where your people's hours, leave and records live today.