From entering a timesheet to raising invoices and paying suppliers, we’ve made sure everyone in the supply chain could get paid through Engage and knew when, why and how much they could expect.

Mission

One of our missions at Engage is ‘Introduce trust and transparency in the recruitment supply chain and make sure everyone gets paid on time.’ For people outside of this industry that seems pretty obvious. But the industry is complex and there are a lot of moving parts. People need to work hard to earn trust. This impacts how and when people get paid dramatically. Especially for temp workers not getting paid on time could mean not having a roof above your head the following week.


Problems to solve

• There can be up to five different stakeholders involved in making sure a temp worker is placed for a job. How do you make sure all of them have access to the data they need in order to keep processes moving and not block payments?
• Some of these processes happen offline and are captured in file types sent across via email or discussed over a phone call
• When processes are managed digitally different stakeholders could be using different software which may not communicate well with each other
• Companies that are responsible for paying temp workers will sometimes only pay the worker once the invoice to their client has been paid.
• If there is a hiccup within the process of getting someone’s work for a period authorised it slows down the entire process and people will either not be paid (on time) or need to be paid out of pocket which can have a major negative impact on cash flow. 

Timesheets to invoicing

Engage modelled self-billing agreements between recruitment agencies and their clients. This meant whenever a timesheet with the time worked by the worker for a specific period was approved, an invoice would automatically be issued to the client on behalf of the agency. In the past these timesheets would have, more often than not, be handled offline on paper or in a spreadsheet. We introduced a solution where both workers and recruitment consultants could enter timesheets. We saw a significant increase of timesheets being submitted on time, speeding up payment processes along the way.

We spoke to workers and agencies to understand what was needed to solve this issue. Clients elaborated that missing receipts for expenses were the primary reason invoices couldn’t be paid. This meant the timesheet itself could be paid if it weren’t for the faulty expense being on there. With this information we prototyped a solution where we separated the approval flow of timesheets from expenses. This meant workers could submit expenses independent from their time worked and clients could approve them independently as well.

During the process we reached out to users to validate if this solution would work for them. We gained some valuable input from those sessions (‘if expenses should be approved separately this means that could mean more work for me’) and added some additional features, like a daily digest email for all timesheets and expenses awaiting approval, that would help the workflow.