From 5 hours to 2 minutes per week: How Simple Financial Planning slashed leave management admin with Employment Hero
At a glance
Company
Simple Financial Planning Ltd.
Location
England
Employees
45
Explore this case study if:
- Tracking leave management is manual and takes forever
- You need a full audit trail for compliance
- You want to drastically decrease onboarding time
Simple Financial Planning, a financial advisory firm founded in 2013, experienced rapid growth after merging with another company in early 2024. With the headcount jumping from 21 to 40 and plans to scale even further, the organisation faced strain across HR and compliance.
Through Employment Hero, Debbie Johnston, HR & Compliance Director, was able to save five hours of time tracking annual leave per week alone, as well as cutting onboarding time and building a full audit trail.
The challenge
An exciting merge, but a sky high workload
When Debbie joined Simple Financial Planning in 2019, HR was a concoction of spreadsheets, email chains and paper forms. It was difficult to navigate before, but things became even more complicated after the merge. Being a one-person team, Debbie’s workload was sky high, met with a whole host of challenges:
- Shared Excel spreadsheets for leave tracking, susceptible to error.
- Manual onboarding for every new starter.
- No central source for HR documentation or compliance records.
- Payroll processing was a clunky, back-and-forth process.
- Limited visibility for leadership into team structure and tenure.
“When you’re hiring at scale and managing it all manually, it’s a car crash waiting to happen. Everything was manual, through spreadsheets, folders and even pieces of paper. It was just manic.”
The solution
Leave management made simple
When Debbie realised that current operations had become too disjointed, she went in search of a solution. After comparing three systems, Debbie chose Employment Hero for its affordability, simplicity and powerful features. In particular, Debbie’s main priority was a product that could relieve the incredible amount of time she spent on tracking leave management manually.
“Holiday tracking was our biggest pain point. Before, I’d be chasing paper forms and emails. Now, it’s down from five hours a week to two minutes. Everything’s streamlined and I can pull up any information I need in seconds.”
With employee data, policies and documents now centralised, Simple Financial Planning can rely on one cloud-based system, accessible by both HR and team leads. No more searching for paperwork, no more repeat entry and no more bottlenecks.
Compliance? Under control
Through Employment Hero’s onboarding tools, Simple Financial Planning sends tailored welcome packs to new joiners, collects key documents and tracks task completion, all from the same platform. But the best part? Being FCA-regulated, they needed a robust record-keeping and auditable system. Employment Hero’s document distribution and policy sign-off tracking brought instant improvements. No printing. No scanning. No chasing.
“All information is just a click away now. I can send policies and contracts to new starters, track who’s signed what and see it all logged. From a compliance point of view, it’s so tidy.”
Payroll without the pressure
Previously, payroll prep required cross-checking spreadsheets and manually calculating entitlements. Now, Simple Financial Planning runs payroll faster, more accurately and with far less stress. Leave balances, pay rates and updates sync directly from HR to payroll, cutting down double-handling and error risk.
“It’s been a game-changer. Payroll used to take up hours every month, but now it just flows straight through from the HR side. It’s taken so much pressure off me.”
Self-service and smarter reporting
From the ability to view birthdays and anniversaries in one click, to rolling out workplace risk assessments via the survey tool, Simple Financial Planning’s HR team is continually discovering new efficiencies through Employment Hero.
“I used to spend hours trying to find birthdays and anniversaries. Now, it’s literally one click. That time back means we can focus on staff engagement.”
And what’s more? If Debbie has any questions, she knows that Employment Hero’s 24/7 chat bot is here to save the day, before she even needs to speak to a team member.
“Your bot is the best I’ve seen. It actually helps me solve things instantly. I don’t even need to talk to someone.”
The impact
Time saved, confidence gained
Since rolling out Employment Hero, Simple Financial Planning has transformed its internal operations. Key results include:
- 5 hours per week saved on holiday tracking alone.
- Onboarding time cut drastically, with same-day, automated contract delivery and employee self-service.
- Full audit trail for compliance policies, certification documents and acknowledgements.
- Stress-free payroll processing, reduced from hours of manual work.
- Improved visibility for directors, who now access snapshots of team structure, tenure and leave in-platform.
- Greater focus on people, with time now dedicated to check-ins, engagement, and strategic planning.
“I’ve had five different vendors try to reach out to me recently, and I’ve told them all I’m not interested. Employment Hero has everything I need.”
The world’s first Employment Operating System from Employment Hero
Employment Hero’s Employment Operating System is more than just a platform–we’ve taken the traditional isolated aspects of employment and integrated them into a seamless, human and AI-powered solution that empowers employers, employees and job seekers alike. Find and hire top talent with SmartMatch, seamlessly onboard new hires, automate complex payroll, drive employee engagement and more.
See what you could do with the world’s first Employment OS.
One system. Everything employment.
