HR Operations Platform

One system for attendance, shifts, leave, payroll inputs and client billing.

Discipline: Business Systems
Status: In daily use
Proof: 150+ daily employee check-ins

Screenshot of the running product with sample data. Names and client marks are blurred.

Overview

A workforce operations platform that covers the working day end to end. Staff check in, shifts are tracked, leave and overtime are approved, and the numbers flow into payroll and earnings without being typed twice. A separate payment app lets clients settle invoices through Stripe or PayPal.

Role: Product design, frontend and backend engineering
Services: UX and interface design, Web application, Real-time features, Payments, Document exports
Platform: Web application with a separate payment app

150+

Daily employee check-ins

The platform runs the team's daily operations, handling more than 150 employee check-ins a day alongside payroll, leave and client billing.

Context

The platform serves a production team and the clients it delivers for. The same records drive internal operations, like attendance, payroll and expenses, and client-facing work, like orders, invoices and payments.

Challenge

HR software is judged every morning. If a check-in fails or a shift is miscounted, payroll is wrong two weeks later. The system had to cover a wide surface (staff, attendance, shifts, leave, overtime, payroll, orders, invoices, expenses, notices, policies, assets) without turning into a maze, and stay consistent while many people use it at once.

Strategy

The decisionsthat shaped it.

01
One record, many views
Attendance, overtime and leave write to the same staff record that payroll and earnings read from. Nothing is re-entered between modules.
02
Payments in their own app
Client payments run in a separate Next.js app reached through tokenised links. Billing can be secured, deployed and changed without touching the internal product.
03
Scope by role
Staff see their day. Managers see their team. Admins see the organisation. Same modules, different reach.

HR platform, Payroll Operations screen with payroll totals and the salary preview table — Payroll Operations: totals, outstanding liability and the salary preview, calculated from attendance.

Experience

The main paths through the product, in the order people take them.

Who does what,in what order.

Staff

Sign in
Check in
Work the shift
Request leave or overtime
Check out

Manager

Review attendance
Approve leave
Confirm overtime
Close the payroll period

Client

Open invoice link
Choose Stripe or PayPal
Pay
Get confirmation

HR platform, Attendance and Overtime screen with daily status filters and the attendance table — Attendance statuses come straight from the data model: present, absent, late, half day, early exit, on leave.

Interfacedecisions.

01
Attendance filters by status in one step: present, absent, late, half day, early exit, on leave.
02
Payroll is computed from attendance. Work days, presence and per-day rates roll into the payable amount before anyone is paid.
03
Outstanding and disbursed totals stay visible while payroll moves from preview to paid.

Engineering

Architecture in brief. The stack supports the product, not the other way round.

What powers it.

01Interface
- Next.js
- Redux Toolkit
- Radix UI
02Services
- Node.js API
- better-auth
- Socket.io
03Data
- MongoDB
- Mongoose
04External
- Stripe
- PayPal
- PDF export
- Excel export

Real-time attendance

Check-ins and approvals are pushed over Socket.io, so dashboards update without a refresh.

Sessions and roles

better-auth sessions with role checks on every route and API call.

Exports

Payroll and reports export to PDF and Excel for the people who work outside the system.

Outcome