What do you prepare before HR software?
Before HR software goes live, prepare one clean record per employee, your departments and reporting lines, work schedules and holidays, leave types and balances, and a list of who may see or approve what. Decide roles for employee, manager, HR officer and administrator, and keep salary, ID and bank data visible to HR only.
What goes wrong without preparation
Leave requests sit on paper or in WhatsApp, and balances live in someone’s spreadsheet. Two managers approve the same dates for people in one team. Attendance is a sheet nobody reconciles at month end. A new HR officer cannot find a contract. And when a salary figure shows in the wrong place, you have a trust problem no software fixes.
HR software removes these only if the starting data is right and permissions are set before staff log in.
The employee record: fields to collect
| Group | Fields | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Full name in Arabic and English, photo, employee number | One unique number per person |
| Work | Job title, department, manager, work location, start date | Defines who approves what |
| Contact | Work phone, work email, emergency contact | Work details visible to colleagues |
| Private | National ID or passport, birth date, address, bank details | HR only |
| Contract | Type, start and end dates, probation, working schedule | Drives leave and attendance |
| Documents | ID copy, signed contract, certificates | Store with restricted access |
Collect once, in one sheet. Avoid asking staff for fields you will not use.
Structure: departments, positions and managers
Draw the organisation before you enter it. Each employee needs a department and a direct manager, because approvals follow that chain. List job positions with the number of seats if you recruit against them. Where a person reports to two managers, decide which one approves leave, so requests do not stall.
Working schedules and holidays
Leave and attendance calculations depend on the working calendar.
- Weekly schedule. The weekend differs between companies, for example Friday and Saturday. Define shifts and hours per group, including part-time and shift workers.
- Public holidays. Eid dates and national days move each year. Enter them annually and check them against the official announcement.
- Company-specific days. Add closures or shortened days.
A wrong calendar produces wrong balances, so test it with real examples before go-live.
Leave rules: the part that needs a policy first
Software enforces your policy; it cannot invent one. Write down:
- Leave types: annual, sick, unpaid, maternity, paternity, Hajj, marriage, bereavement, compensatory.
- Entitlement: days per year per type, and how they accrue.
- Carry-over: how many days move to next year, and when they expire.
- Approval chain: the manager, then HR, or HR only for some types.
- Documents: which types need a certificate.
- Notice rules: how far ahead a request must be made.
In Odoo, Time Off holds these types and allocations, shows a team calendar and updates balances when a request is approved or refused.
Permissions: who sees and does what
Set the roles before staff receive access.
| Role | Sees | Can do |
|---|---|---|
| Employee | Own profile, own leave and attendance | Request leave, check in and out, view own balance |
| Manager | Own team’s leave and attendance | Approve or refuse team leave, view team calendar |
| HR officer | All employee files and requests | Edit records, allocate leave, run reports |
| HR administrator | Everything, including settings | Configure leave types, schedules and access |
| Payroll officer | Payroll data only | Prepare and validate payslips |
In Odoo these map to access groups in each app: Employees, Time Off, Attendances, Recruitment and Payroll each have officer and administrator levels. Private fields such as ID and bank details sit on a tab visible to HR only. Review who holds the administrator role and keep it to one or two people.
The rollout order we recommend
- Employees. Files, departments, managers, documents.
- Time Off. Leave types, balances, approvals, team calendar.
- Attendances. Check-in and check-out by screen, badge or kiosk, linked to schedules.
- Recruitment. Job positions, applicants and stages, if you hire often.
- Payroll. Salary rules, allowances and deductions. Payroll belongs to Odoo’s Enterprise edition, so the edition decision comes early. Payroll rules are agreed with your accountant.
- Appraisals and expenses, if you need them.
Starting with Employees and Time Off gives a quick win: staff see value in the first weeks, and the data from steps 1 and 2 feeds everything after. See our HR software implementation and Odoo implementation pages.
Data migration: how old records move in
- Collect the current spreadsheets, files and policies.
- Clean: one row per person, consistent spelling, dates in one format, no duplicates.
- Map each column to a field in the new system.
- Test import with ten employees and check every field.
- Import the rest, then check totals: headcount per department, leave balances against the last report.
- Freeze the old sheets on go-live day, so there is one source.
Leave balances need particular care. Enter the balance as at the go-live date from the last approved record, and document its source.
Training that people finish
Train by role, on the screens each person will use, with their own data:
- Employees: request leave, check in, see balance, update contact details.
- Managers: approve, read the team calendar, handle clashes.
- HR: add a starter, change a contract, allocate leave, close a month.
Record short videos so new hires can learn alone. Our data migration and staff training service covers both.
After launch
In the first month, review weekly: pending requests nobody approved, employees without a manager, wrong balances and permission mistakes. Agree who in the company owns the system and who requests changes. When someone leaves, close their record and remove access the same day.
For a company where approval chains and permissions are central, the GTP project is a useful reference: it has approvals, roles and QR-coded documents. Read the GTP story.