In a lot of labour hire businesses, every new placement adds office work as well as revenue. Onboarding packs, licence and ticket checks, inductions, visa checks, timesheets that arrive as photos and emails, and the same worker keyed into the ATS, the rostering tool, payroll and invoicing. When placements grow, someone in the office has to grow with them. The cause usually isn't the people or any single piece of software. It's that worker and timesheet information is captured several times, in several places, and nothing joins it up.
Picture a Monday. A host client needs six more people on site by Wednesday. Your recruiter finds them. Then the real work starts. Someone emails out onboarding forms and waits for them to come back. Someone saves photos of white cards and forklift tickets into a shared folder and types the expiry dates into a spreadsheet. Someone runs the visa checks for the workers who need them. The new starters are entered into the ATS, then again into rostering, then into payroll, and the client gets set up for invoicing if it's a new site. By Friday the timesheets come back: a photo of a paper sheet, an export from the client's own system, a text message, a supervisor's email saying "same as last week". Payroll keys them in. Billing keys them in again. The client portal wants its own submission as well.
None of these jobs is hard. There are just a lot of them, and the number goes up every time you place someone.
Signs you have this problem
- Your payroll and admin headcount rises roughly in step with the number of workers on assignment.
- New starters fill in the same details on several forms, and someone types them into each system.
- Licences, tickets and inductions are tracked in a spreadsheet, and you find out one has expired when a host client or site supervisor asks.
- Visa checks are done at onboarding and then not looked at again until someone remembers.
- Timesheets arrive as paper, photos, emails, app exports and client portal reports, and each format is handled differently.
- The same worker has slightly different names, addresses or bank details in the ATS, payroll and rostering.
- Some host clients want timesheets or invoices lodged in their portal, so the same hours are entered a third or fourth time.
- Pay queries take a long time because nobody can quickly see which timesheet version was paid and which was billed.
- One or two people know how each client's quirks work, and leave becomes a problem.
Why it happens
Labour hire businesses usually build their systems one need at a time. An ATS or CRM to find and place people. A rostering or timesheet tool. A payroll platform that handles award interpretation. Xero or MYOB for invoicing and the accounts. A shared drive for documents. Spreadsheets for whatever none of those quite covers, which is often compliance.
Each tool does its own job. The trouble sits between them:
- There is no single worker record. The worker exists in the ATS, in rostering, in payroll and in a folder of documents. Each copy was entered separately, so they drift.
- Compliance has no proper home. Tickets, licences, inductions and visa conditions belong to the worker, but they often live in a spreadsheet that isn't connected to the roster. So nothing stops an unticketed worker being rostered onto a role that needs the ticket.
- Timesheets don't arrive in one shape. Every host client sends hours their own way. Without one agreed path from "hours worked" to "approved timesheet", each format becomes its own manual process.
- Pay and bill work from different copies. Payroll enters hours from one version, billing from another, and the client portal from a third. Our post on Deputy to Xero or MYOB and where the standard integration stops covers where one common rostering connection ends.
Buying another app rarely fixes this by itself. A new onboarding tool or compliance tracker can be a good piece of software, but if it's one more place a worker gets keyed in, it adds to the rekeying. The gaps between systems stay where they were.
What it costs you
The obvious cost is admin wages. When the office has to grow before you can take on more placements, growth gets more expensive, and margin per placement is lower than it looks.
There are other costs that are harder to see:
- Compliance risk. An expired ticket or a visa condition nobody rechecked is a problem for the worker, the host client and your business. Spreadsheet reminders only work if someone opens the spreadsheet. In states with labour hire licensing, you also need to be able to show your records are kept properly.
- Cash timing. If timesheets take days to collect, check and key in, invoices go out later, and you've already paid the workers. For example, if your pay run is weekly and your invoices lag a few days behind it, you are carrying that wage bill for longer than you need to.
- Billing leakage. Every time hours are retyped, there's another chance for a shift, an allowance or an overtime line to be paid but not billed. Our guide to pay rate vs charge rate and your real labour hire margin explains how to find those gaps.
- Payroll pressure. Late or messy timesheets squeeze the pay run, which matters more now super has to go out with each pay. We covered that in labour hire payroll under Payday Super.
- Key-person dependence. When each client's timesheet process lives in someone's head, holidays and resignations become operational risks.
- Client experience. Host clients notice when a worker turns up without the right ticket, or when invoices need correcting.
What fixing it generally involves
The fix is rarely one big new system. It's usually a handful of decisions about how the work should flow, followed by connecting what you already have. Simplest first:
- Map the path of one worker and one timesheet. Follow a new starter from "placed" to "first pay and first invoice", and follow a week's timesheet from the site to payroll, the invoice and the client portal. Write down every time someone types something in. That list is your real problem.
- Use what your current tools already do. Many ATS, onboarding and payroll platforms have features nobody switched on, such as digital onboarding forms, document expiry fields or standard connections to Xero or MYOB. Sometimes a setting is all you need, and we'll say so.
- Decide where the worker record lives. Pick one system as the master for each worker's details and compliance, and have the others take their copy from it rather than being keyed separately.
- Make compliance part of rostering. Store ticket, licence, induction and visa details against the worker with expiry dates, and check them when someone is rostered, not just when they're onboarded. Alerts go to a person before something expires.
- Agree one timesheet path. Whatever format a client sends, it gets turned into the same approved timesheet, once. That one record then drives payroll, the client invoice and any portal submission.
- Connect the systems. Once the flow is agreed, link the ATS, rostering, payroll and Xero or MYOB so data moves on its own, with an exception list when something doesn't match. Our business process automation work starts here.
- Report from one place. With one worker record and one timesheet, you can see placements, compliance gaps, unbilled hours and margin together, rather than in five spreadsheets.
The labour hire and recruitment page explains how we approach this, and our problem page on disconnected business systems covers the same pattern in other industries. For a broader look at mapping and fixing processes before buying anything, see the business process improvement guide.
Frequently asked questions
Why does our admin team keep growing as placements increase?
Usually because each placement creates manual tasks that repeat for every worker: forms, ticket checks, data entry into several systems and timesheet handling. If those tasks aren't connected, the work scales with headcount. Joining up the systems means the work scales much more slowly.
Do we need to replace our ATS or payroll software?
Usually not. Most of the gain comes from deciding which system holds each piece of information and connecting the tools you already use. Replacement only makes sense when a system genuinely can't do the job, and that is a decision to make after the process is mapped.
How do we stop missing expired tickets and licences?
Keep each ticket, licence, induction and visa condition against the worker record with an expiry date, check it at rostering time, and send alerts to a named person before anything expires. A spreadsheet can't do that reliably on its own because it doesn't know who is being rostered.
Can one timesheet drive payroll, invoicing and client portals?
Yes. That's the aim. Hours from any source are turned into one approved timesheet, and that record feeds payroll, the client invoice in Xero or MYOB and any portal submission. Pay and bill then agree because they started from the same record.
Where should we start?
Start by following one worker and one week of timesheets through your business, and count every time something is typed in. If you'd like a full written map of your processes and systems, our $5,000 Process & Systems Audit does exactly that.
If your office grows every time placements grow, book a free initial chat and we'll talk through where your worker and timesheet information lives and how to join it up.