Employee-facing
The real cost of a cheap HR system is somebody's afternoon.
It is not on the invoice. It is the person who answers "can you send me my payslip from March", "how much leave do I have", "where is my appointment letter" — forty times a month, from a folder structure only they understand.
And underneath that, a second cost nobody counts: every line manager needing an admin seat to do the parts of their job that involve other people.
What an employee does alone
Everything they would otherwise have emailed somebody about.
The test of a self-service portal is not how many features it lists. It is whether the HR team stops being the retrieval system for the company — which means covering the awkward half, not the easy half.
So it is not only payslips and leave. It is the tax declaration with its proofs, the letters including the offer they signed before they joined, the documents with their verification state, the policies waiting to be acknowledged, and the place to raise something when it is wrong.
- Pay and taxPayslips · Salary structure and its history · Tax declaration with proofs · Loans and their schedule
- TimeLeave balances and requests · Attendance, day by day · Regularisation · Comp-off · Company calendar
- Money outMulti-line expense claims · A receipt per line · Recall a claim · Traced to reimbursed
- PaperLetters, including the offer · Sign from the portal · Documents by type · Policies to acknowledge
- WorkGoals and check-ins · Self-assessment · One-to-ones · Learning · Benefits and nominees
- VoiceSurveys · Helpdesk with a clock · Harassment complaints · Announcements · Referrals
Why it actually gets used
Every request has a visible end, not just a visible submission.
Most portals stop at the submit button, which is why the HR inbox stops filling with did you get it and starts filling with where is it.
An expense claim does not say reimbursed until the payroll run carrying it has actually been paid. A tax declaration comes back line by line with the amount that was accepted and a reason where it was not. A referral shows the hiring progress and the bonus separately — and where there is no bonus, it shows why.
- An expense claimReimbursed — when the payroll run carrying it was paidnot when somebody approved it
- A tax declarationLine by line, with the amount actually acceptednot a single approved stamp
- A referralWhere the candidate got to, and where the bonus got toand if there is no bonus, the reason
- A helpdesk ticketWhose turn it is, written for whoever is lookingnot a neutral label that reads as yours to both of you
- A claim is many lines, each with its own bill —
And if the bill is missing, they can attach it after submitting without recalling the whole claim — because that is what actually happens when a manager asks.
- They can pull a claim back —
A submitted claim returns to draft and quietly disappears from the approver's queue rather than being argued about there.
- The payslip can be checked, not just read —
Every one is rendered from a frozen record and carries its own fingerprint, so the copy they downloaded in March is provably the copy you issued in March — and a correction to a paid month arrives as arrears on the next payslip rather than a quiet edit to the old one.
- They sign from here —
A letter needing a signature is signed in the portal, through the same evidence trail as an emailed link.
In their own words
What they do here, specifically.
Not a feature list. These are the things that otherwise arrive as an email to somebody who has to go and look them up.
- Pay —
Open any payslip and take the PDF. See their current salary structure component by component — and every previous one, so a question about what changed in April is theirs to answer. Watch a loan's outstanding balance against its full instalment schedule.
- Tax —
Open a declaration for the year, choose a regime, add claims under sections that are actually allowed for that regime, attach a proof to each one, and get each line back marked verified or rejected — with the amount HR accepted and the reason where it was not.
- Time —
Their own attendance day by day with where each day came from, and a regularisation for one mis-marked day stating what it should have been — cancellable while it is still pending. Leave as a full day, a half day or by the hour where the type allows it. Comp-off for a weekend they actually worked.
- Paper —
Every document held on them, grouped by type, with its verification state. Every letter addressed to them — including the offer they were sent before they were an employee, which follows them onto the record rather than orphaning. And they sign from here, through the same evidence trail as an emailed link.
- Policy —
What they have been asked to acknowledge, with the count waiting — and the acknowledgement records the exact wording they were shown, so a new version genuinely re-asks rather than silently inheriting the old consent.
- Growth —
Write their own goals and check in on them with a health call. Fill a self-assessment and acknowledge the result. Schedule a one-to-one with anyone, keep private notes on it, and see every open action item assigned to them across every meeting in one list. Start and complete assigned training.
- Benefits —
Enrol during an open window, name nominees and the share each one gets — refused unless they total a hundred — and change them later.
- Referrals —
Refer somebody for an opening, or at a staffing firm, for a named client. Then follow both trails: where the candidate got to, and where the money got to.
What they can see about other people
Carefully almost nothing.
Their own record is masked to them as well — no plaintext tax identifier, a bank account by its last four digits.
A team view shows their manager, their skip-level, their peers and their reports as cards carrying a name, a designation, a department and a location. No email address and no phone number, in either direction, because a staff directory is the most commonly exfiltrated thing in an HR system.
The company calendar shows who is on leave and when — which is a deliberate trade, and the one place on this page where something is visible that some companies would rather was not. It never shows why.
The half nobody sells
A line manager runs their team from the same login.
This is the reframe. A self-service portal is a commodity; the manager layer is where the second and third tools usually get bought — one for approvals, one for the merit cycle, and an admin seat for anyone who needs to decide a probation.
Here it is one login with no admin licence: the approvals inbox with separation of duties, delegation of that authority while they are away, the pay-review round for their own reports, probation decisions, the reviews they have to write, and their team's goals sorted worst-first.
- Approve what is waitingleave, expenses, regularisation, letters — and never something they submitted themselves
- Hand approvals over before annual leaveto a named colleague, for a date range, scoped to the request types they choose
- Run their part of the pay reviewapply a percentage across the team, override any row, write the justification
- Decide a probationconfirm, extend, put on a plan, or exit — from the same screen they check their own payslip on
- Write the reviewssend a self-assessment back with a reason, then release the ratings when ready to talk
- See the team's goals, worst firstoff-track and stale check-ins at the top, and add a check-in on somebody else's goal
- One inbox, everything that needs them —
Leave, attendance corrections, expense claims, letters, loans, final settlements, compensation changes and reviews — with what is pending, what they have acted on recently, and the lot. And they cannot approve something they submitted, even through a delegation somebody handed them.
- Handing over is a first-class act —
Delegate approval authority to a named colleague for a date range, and narrow it to particular kinds of request if that is what they want to hand over. Revocable.
- They see enough, and not more —
A report's designation, band, dates, package and leave balances — not their identity documents, their bank details or their emergency contacts. And they read the actual expense lines and bills before approving a claim, rather than approving a total.
- Viewing and correcting are different —
A manager reads the team's attendance grid; correcting a day is somebody else's permission.
- Peers see almost nothing —
A colleague's card carries a name, a designation and a location. No email, no phone number.
Speaking up
The surfaces that only work if people trust them.
A survey can be answered anonymously, and the results can still be broken down by department — because the answers carry the demographics without the identity, and any group too small to hide in is dropped from the breakdown rather than shown.
A harassment complaint has its own surface with its own access, deliberately separate from the helpdesk that anybody staffing a queue can read. A one-to-one gives each side a private space that the other never sees — and neither does HR, because the record is never returned with them in it.
- Anonymous means the identity was never written —
A complaint filed anonymously stores no complainant at all — which the screen says plainly, including the consequence: an anonymous filing will not appear in their own list afterwards, because there is nothing to attach it to.
- Free text stays unread by machines —
Survey comments are stored and readable by people. Nothing scores them for tone, and the summary reports only how many people answered in words.
- They can resign here, and take it back —
With a reason and the last working day they would prefer. Their manager is notified, they can withdraw it while it is early, and once HR accepts they watch their own notice period — and work their own handover list, marking each item done with evidence for their manager to verify.
- An assignee works their queue without an admin licence —
Whoever a ticket lands on can answer it from the same portal. Internal notes between agents are never returned to the person who raised it.
- A ticket says whose turn it is —
And it says it differently to each of the two people looking at it, so nobody is waiting on somebody who thinks they are waiting on them.
Being straight
What it is not, and what it does not do yet.
›Is there a mobile app?
No — and today it is a desktop-first web surface rather than one that adapts gracefully to a phone. If your workforce is phone-first, raise that early; it is the single biggest gap on this page.
›Can an employee update their own address or bank details?
Not today. They can see them; changing them goes through HR. For a company with a lot of movement that is a real friction and we would rather say so.
›Can they upload their own documents?
Not from this screen yet. They can see what is held and its verification state.
›Do employees count as seats?
Employees are your people and are counted as such. What is not counted is external portal users — clients, partner firms and candidates in the hiring module.
›Can an employee see anything about anybody else?
Their own record, and what their role entitles them to. A manager sees a report's package but not their identity documents. Peers see a name and a designation and no contact details at all.
›Does a manager need an admin licence?
No. Approvals, delegation, the pay-review round, probation decisions and reviews all sit in the same portal. That is the point of this page.
Book a demo
Sign in as one of your own employees. Then as their manager.
Count how many of those are an email, a second tool, or an admin seat today.
- Find a payslip from a specific month and check its fingerprint
- Raise an expense claim, then attach the missing bill without recalling it
- As the manager: approve it, then try to approve your own
- Delegate your approvals for a week, scoped to leave only
- Open the team goals board and find the stalest check-in