From a 26-sheet Excel workbook to a fully automated HR system
Our own operation — a Maldives group of resorts, vessels, sites and a head office
HumanR wasn't designed in a boardroom. It was built to replace the one giant workbook that ran an entire island operation. This is how that workbook became a live, automated HR system — the same product we now hand to you.
3,000+
employee records migrated out of Excel
600+
staff paid monthly on one payroll run
20+
sites, vessels & properties on a single system
The challenge
Where it started
Hundreds of staff spread across island resorts, cargo vessels, construction sites and a head office. A dozen nationalities, work permits with hard expiry dates, salaries split between MVR and USD — and all of it held together by a single shared Excel workbook with twenty-six tabs that only one person truly understood.
One workbook, dozens of sheets, and no reliable way to know which copy was current
Staff numbers reused, rosters duplicated, and formulas quietly broken for months
Every payday rebuilt from scratch — last month's numbers overwritten and gone forever
Biometric punches chased by hand and permit expiries checked by eye, machine by machine
A simple 'how many staff are on that island today?' took half a day to answer
What we did
The move onto HumanR
- 1
Import the workbook as-is — no retyping
The multi-workbook importer read the existing staff registers, salary sheets, leave trackers and item logs directly. Duplicated rosters, reused staff numbers and swapped date formats were flagged in a validation report instead of being imported as bad data.
Excel Migration → - 2
Load the current salary sheet as payroll history
The live salary sheet was brought in as a finalized, historical payroll snapshot. From the very first month, the system owned a payroll history the workbook had always overwritten.
Dual-Currency Payroll → - 3
Plug in the biometric devices
ZKTeco terminals across every site were pointed at the system. Punches began streaming in real time, and daily timesheets and overtime started building themselves — no more manual musters typed up days later.
Biometric Attendance & Overtime → - 4
Turn on document, permit and quota alerts
Passports, visas and work permits were tracked with expiry dates and quota blocks. Renewals started surfacing weeks ahead on a dashboard, instead of being discovered at an airport or an inspection.
Expat & Work Permit Management → - 5
Make payday a button
Dual-currency packages, Ramadan runs, automatic loan recovery and salary holds all moved into one payroll engine. A full month's draft that used to take days now generates in minutes — and regenerates cleanly whenever a correction lands.
Dual-Currency Payroll → - 6
Answer questions live
Headcount, document gaps, leavers, housing occupancy and cost views became live reports, always current and one click from CSV. The half-day Excel fire drills simply stopped.
Reports & Analytics →
The result
What changed
Migration measured in days, not the months of consulting the switch was quoted at
Payroll went from a multi-day rebuild to a run generated in minutes
Permit and document expiries now surface weeks ahead, not after they lapse
Attendance and overtime feed payroll automatically — nothing retyped between systems
One source of truth replaced the workbook nobody dared to touch
“We didn't set out to build software — we set out to survive month-end. Once the workbook was in the system and payday became a button, we realised we'd built the product we could never buy.”
See HumanR do this with your data
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