Ask any operations manager at an Irish locum nurse agency what consumes the largest share of administrative hours each week, and chances are it's "timesheets." Timesheets filled out by hand and then faxed back from the ward, WhatsApp images of completed digital timesheet systems, Excel sheets that do not match payroll processing, all this is too well known and represents a headache for staffing agencies in terms of delayed payments, disputes on worked hours, and even unwillingness of employees to trust the process.
Staffinc, a firm that develops customized healthcare staffing platforms for agencies, decided to tackle the issue head-on in Irish nursing staffing agencies. Instead of offering off-the-shelf timesheet apps, Staffinc creates digital timesheet systems and payroll management processes as an integral part of the platform it is creating.
The Problem With Paper (and Paper-Adjacent) Timesheets
To fully appreciate the problem and the subsequent solution, we need to take a closer look at exactly how costly paper timesheets are to an agency:
1. Manual matching. The process of having someone take a signed form, compare it with the scheduled shift, check the hours against the agreed rates, and input that into the payroll system by hand, all these are opportunities for transcription errors.
2. Delays in payment. If the process requires returning the paper form or faxing/emailing it to start payroll, locum staff are paid late, and the risk of losing them due to slower payment becomes quite real in a market where clinicians have a choice of agencies.
3. Lack of audit trail. Neither paper form nor photo on WhatsApp creates timestamped, tamper-proof evidence that can be used in case of requests from HIQA/HSE/client facility for evidence of who worked where and when.
4. Disagreements over hours. If there is no shared system for tracking hours in real-time, any disagreements become a matter of “who shouted louder” since neither side has evidence and can prove anything.
Staffinc's platforms are built to remove each of these failure points individually, rather than treating "digital timesheet systems" as a single feature to bolt on.
Digital Capture at the Point of Work
It’s fairly simple; the locum and agency workers clock in their time using their phones right there at or around the site of treatment, rather than completing a timesheet form after the fact from memory. Because the shift has already been scheduled and the pay rate set for the particular facility, the timesheet form isn’t a blank slate, but filled in with the information on the shift, ready for confirmation by the clinician and submission.
In one step alone, most of the problems associated with paper timesheets are avoided. There are no confusing scribbles to try and decode, the risk of losing a form in transit, nor the delay in documenting the time that was worked.
Manager and Client Approval, Built Into the Workflow
However, an online time sheet on its own is pointless when the approval stage involves having to chase the employee, and the approval being made through email. In Staffinc, the approval process is included in the system itself, such that once the locum has uploaded his/her time sheet, the person responsible for approving it, either the manager or contact person from the client company, can then approve it using the system itself, along with the same shift details.
The significance of this lies in two things. First, the approval process is automatically stamped with a date and approved by an authorized person, just as is required in HIQA inspection/payroll audits. Second, it removes the intermediary, namely the agency worker, from the approval process between the locum and the client.
From Timesheet to Payroll Without Re-Keying
But the stage that ultimately saves the most time for the agency is after the approval process. Rather than having an employee manually enter approved hours into the payroll or accounting software, the software developed by Staffinc automatically exports all necessary data into the software solutions Irish agencies use, such as Xero, Sage, and QuickBooks. All approved hours go right into the payroll processing and invoicing, with automatic application of custom billing rates and any allowances or reimbursements.
And that is when you can see the compounding effect. It takes hours rather than several days to close the pay period, since no double data entry takes place. Less data entry means fewer errors and thus fewer discussions with locums regarding short payments or issuing credit notes to your client due to mistakes in the invoice.
In the case of a comparable locum platform built by Staffinc, there has been an actual effect of accelerating the payment process; physicians got paid within five to seven days following the completion of the assignment, while facilities were billed automatically with detailed descriptions of their costs.
Built for Irish Compliance, Not Adapted From Elsewhere
What makes Staffinc's solution unique for the Irish market is the fact that it does not use a UK or US digital timesheet system and payroll workflow branded to suit Irish companies. Instead, it uses the compliance requirements of Irish agencies:
HIQA audit trails: all visits, shifts, carers' actions, and documents are timestamped in order to make the platform ready for any HIQA audit because HIQA audits are always done unexpectedly.
HSE contract reporting: report of visits, shifts, and compliance documentation required for HSE contracts is automatically generated without manual work each month.
NMBI registration control: nurse registration status is tracked with expiry warnings 90, 60, and 30 days before expiry in order to prevent hiring expired nurses.
Garda vetting workflows: applications and tracking of Garda vetting are part of the onboarding process rather than separate processes.
GDPR and EU hosting: everything is hosted within the EU, and GDPR compliance is provided from scratch and not added afterward.
As the same timesheet and shift data are used in the same audit trails as compliance requirements, there is no need to keep separate systems for "payroll records" and "compliance records".
A Real-World Example
A good example of how this can be achieved is provided by Staffinc's collaboration with Hollilander, which is a home care and nurse staffing agency located in Ireland that manages more than 50 carers. Before the creation of the platform, shift booking was carried out using calls and WhatsApp messages, scheduling was done via emails and texts, and the compliance process was performed using spreadsheets, where a single wrong date of expiry would ruin the entire audit process.
With Staffinc, Hollilander received a solution that integrates the carer scheduling, client portal, and HIQA/HSE/NMBI compliance system discussed earlier, all into one platform that was created in eight weeks. As a result of implementing the platform, Hollilander has successfully passed its first HIQA inspection post go-live with no findings, a quite good indicator that real-time records are taken more seriously than spreadsheets and message threads.
What This Means for an Agency Considering the Switch
The theory behind the use of Staffinc is rather basic, albeit the technical processes are somewhat complicated: Every single hour that a clinician spends on work should be recorded digitally at its very source, and from thereon, everything else should happen automatically. The approval process, exportation of payroll data, generation of invoices, and compliance reports are all drawn out of the same timesheet data instead of having to re-create them again and again in separate stages.
The fact that for an Irish agency operating in the old-fashioned way, using paper timesheets and fax, or a combination of spreadsheets and messaging software, the main attraction would not be speed alone. But the same technology used for faster payroll data will help prepare the agency for the upcoming HIQA inspections without any hassle at the end of each pay period.
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