Zara Interiors: Frappe HRMS for a workforce that works on site, not at a desk
India
A workforce that moves between sites was tracked wherever the paperwork happened to be, and payroll depended on information that arrived late and incomplete every month. ATS Global Techsoft implemented Frappe HRMS across the employee lifecycle, with self-service so requests and approvals are made and recorded in the system.
The challenge
Attendance tracked wherever the paperwork happened to be
Zara Interiors' workforce moves between sites, which makes the ordinary assumptions of an office HR process fail. Attendance, leave and payroll inputs were captured wherever the paperwork happened to be, and each site ran the process slightly differently because nothing defined it centrally.
Payroll was where that surfaced. The data it depends on arrived late and incomplete every month, so the cycle started with a collection exercise before any calculation could begin. Approvals lived in message threads, which meant there was no record of who agreed to what — a problem the first time anyone disputed a leave balance.
Our approach
The employee lifecycle in one system, with self-service
Delivered by our Backend Engineering practice.
ATS Global Techsoft implemented Frappe HRMS across the full employee lifecycle. Onboarding holds documents against the employee record rather than in a shared drive. Attendance and shift capture is built for staff working away from an office. Leave policies carry approval workflows, so a request has a defined route and an auditable outcome. Payroll runs with statutory deductions off the data already recorded.
Self-service is what makes the rest of it hold. Employees raise requests and managers approve them inside the system, not over messages, which means the record is created as a by-product of the work rather than by someone transcribing it afterwards. Payroll then calculates from attendance and leave data already held, and the monthly collection exercise disappears rather than being made faster.
- Onboarding with documents against the employee record
- Attendance and shift capture for site-based staff
- Leave policies with defined approval workflows
- Payroll with statutory deductions
- Employee and manager self-service
- Field-level role-based access control
Architecture
Frappe HRMS, Frappe Framework, Python, MariaDB
Frappe HRMS runs on Frappe Framework against MariaDB. Leave types, approval chains, shift patterns and payroll components are configuration on standard doctypes rather than code, which keeps the deployment upgrade-safe and lets the HR team change a policy without a release.
Access control is role-based down to the field, which matters more than usual when a workforce is distributed: a site manager should see their own team's attendance and nothing else. The platform is the same one that carries Prem Plumbings' full ERP, so HR here can extend into finance later without a migration.
Building blocks
- Frappe HRMS · Frappe Framework · MariaDB · Python
- Leave, shift and payroll rules as configuration, not code
- Field-level role-based access control
- Upgrade-safe standard doctypes
- Document management against the employee record
- Extends into ERPNext finance without migration
Technology stack
What changed
One record for a workforce spread across sites
Attendance, leave and payroll for a site-based workforce are recorded in one system instead of per-site paperwork. Leave and approvals carry an auditable record of who approved what and when, which settles disputes by lookup rather than by recollection.
Payroll is calculated from attendance and leave data already in the system, so the monthly collection exercise is gone rather than shortened, and employee documents are held against the employee record rather than in a shared drive. Self-service moves routine requests off managers' message threads. For the same HRMS alongside a CRM, see Land Group.
Key results
Attendance, leave and payroll for a site-based workforce are recorded in one system instead of per-site paperwork
Leave and approvals carry an auditable record of who approved what and when
Payroll is calculated from attendance and leave data already in the system, ending the monthly collection exercise
Employee documents are held against the employee record rather than in a shared drive
Self-service moves routine requests off managers' message threads
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