Guides

When HR in Excel or Google Sheets stops working, what to migrate first, and how a 5–50-person IT team moves people, time off and org data into a real HR system in a single afternoon.

What a 5–200-person outsourcing company or dev shop needs from HR software — and why generic HR tools and heavyweight PSA suites both miss: capacity, timesheets and client invoicing next to the HR basics.

How IT services teams plan capacity without spreadsheets: billable vs overhead people, allocation percentages, bench visibility, a 12-week utilization forecast, and the numbers that actually matter.

How to compute billable utilization honestly (billable people, billable projects, net of PTO), the benchmark bands services teams actually live in, and the levers that move the number.

A practical billing workflow for IT services teams: T&M vs retainer vs fixed price, where billable hours leak, and a monthly invoicing ritual that takes an hour instead of a day.

Engineers already log work in Jira — finance still needs invoiceable hours. How a one-way Jira → timesheets sync closes the gap: setup, review-then-lock, and what it deliberately doesn't do.

What an accountant actually needs each month — headcount changes, comp, leave days, approved hours, reimbursements — and a readiness-checked single export that replaces the spreadsheet shuffle.

Eight numbers that change decisions at a services company — utilization, bench cost, margin per project, revenue per employee, eNPS trend, attrition, time-to-hire, PTO liability — why each matters and what bad looks like.

A practical, vendor-neutral guide to pricing services work: cost-plus vs market vs value, the fully-loaded margin math with worked examples, effective rate, rate cards by seniority, and where margin quietly leaks.

A vendor-neutral guide to the three ways IT services teams bill — time & materials, fixed price, and retainer / dedicated team: who carries the overrun risk, how cash flow differs, and how to choose per engagement.

Why a standalone ATS is overkill below 200 people, what a lean hiring flow actually needs, the GDPR duties most teams miss — and how to run the whole pipeline inside the HR system your hires land in.

A complete onboarding checklist for 5–200-person IT teams: before day one, day one, week one and the first 90 days — with owners, due dates, and the remote-work and offboarding items most templates forget.

A complete offboarding checklist for 5–200-person IT teams: access revocation, equipment return, knowledge handover, final pay and the exit interview — every task with an owner and a due date anchored to the last working day.

Why 1-on-1s are the first thing billable pressure kills, the 30-minute format that survives real delivery schedules, why manager notes must be genuinely private, and the early-warning signals to listen for.

A review cycle sized for a 20-person company: self-assessment plus manager assessment, goals set in advance, grades instead of vibes for promotion and pay decisions — and 360° only where it earns its cost.

The difference between OKRs, KPIs and SMART goals; why 'shipped X' key results fail; and how to write outcome-based OKRs for reliability, delivery speed, quality and growth — at a cadence a small team can actually keep.

How to run engagement surveys at a size where everyone knows everyone: eNPS mechanics in plain words, the anonymity rules that hold at 15 people, and the follow-up ritual that makes the score worth collecting.

Losing a good engineer is one of the priciest events a small company never puts on a spreadsheet. What turnover really costs, how to measure it honestly — regrettable vs non-regrettable, tenure cohorts — why engineers actually leave, and a retention playbook a small team can run without a People department.

Why grade-less companies leak senior engineers, what a ladder needs at 20 people — 3-5 grades, written criteria, salary bands — and how to run promotions against evidence instead of negotiation.

What a time-off policy must define, sensible defaults for a 5–50-person team, how UA · PL · RO · EE rules differ by category — and why approved leave must feed your capacity plan.

Annual benefit budgets, expense claims with receipts attached, an explicit approval step and one reimbursement queue the HR chain works to closure — a lightweight flow that replaces DMs and a spreadsheet nobody reconciles.

What the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) requires, who it applies to, the June 2026 transposition deadline, and a readiness checklist for 5–200-person IT teams.

What GDPR actually demands from a 20-person employer holding employee data: lawful basis, an honest data map, the five practices that cover 90% of day-to-day compliance, and how to answer 'what do you have on me?'.