How Wholesale Domestic cut payroll time by two thirds and reclaimed 60% of HR admin time with Employment Hero

About the company

Wholesale Domestic is a leading Scotland-based bathroom retailer, offering everything from baths and tiles to heating and full home wall coverings. With over 118 staff across three showrooms, a head office and warehouse, the business serves both trade and retail customers.

The challenge

When HR Manager Lucy Crawford joined the business, she was juggling HR and payroll across three disconnected systems:

• A clunky HR portal for holidays, performance reviews and personal details.
• A rota and timesheet tool that only partially synced with HR.
• A manual payroll process in Sage which requires re-inputting data.
• A time-consuming, manual right to work process that involved chasing new starters for documentation.

But it wasn’t just Lucy who was struggling to engage with these outdated platforms. Employees without laptop access missed key documents and updates, and clocking in required tablets which didn’t support employees on the road. Managers couldn’t approve leave requests without computer access, which delayed the approval process by days or even weeks.

“My day-to-day workload was so challenging, especially when jumping between systems. Payroll alone took me around 20 hours a month. When you’re the only HR person in the business, that’s just not manageable.”

The solution

Lucy chose Employment Hero to consolidate the multiple platforms into one intuitive, mobile-friendly system. Her priorities of streamlining HR, payroll, rotas and timesheets whilst empowering staff to self-serve on the go was met instantly. 

“We didn’t want something that looked like it came from the 90s. Employment Hero felt modern and familiar, like the apps our team already used.”

In addition, the system’s automation capabilities meant double-handling and manual input errors were drastically reduced. When setting up the payroll, Lucy ran a couple of initial parallel pay runs before launch to make sure everything ran smoothly, and it more than paid off.

“When our first pay run with Employment Hero went smoothly, I knew we’d made the right call. The whole process was accurate and so much faster. What used to take me 20 hours a month, now takes only six.”

More recently, the team have started using Employment Hero’s Background Checks feature, powered by Zinc, to take the pressure off right to work verification. What used to mean chasing new starters for documentation is now handled in a couple of clicks, with Zinc running the checks securely in the background.

“Running background checks through Employment Hero is super easy. A couple of clicks of a button and the new employee receives an email guiding them through the process.” 

New starters follow simple steps to upload their details directly. Zinc processes the check and, once complete, Lucy receives an email notification and can access the full report from the employee’s profile in one click. No chasing. No separate systems.

“It does cost us to use Zinc, but this far outweighs the cost of the time we used to spend doing these checks ourselves.”

The ROI

The business has seen measurable gains across time, cost and engagement.

• Payroll processing reduced from 20 hours to 6 hours per month, a 66% time saving.
• 60% of HR admin time reclaimed, allowing the team to focus on strategy.
• Autonomy for managers to approve leave and rotas in-app.
• Improved onboarding with new starters arriving already confident in the platform.
• Higher staff engagement via shoutouts, birthdays and value-based recognition.
• Right to work checks automated, eliminating manual documentation chasing with Background Checks powered by Zinc, built directly into the platform.

“We’ve created an HR strategy for the first time and my colleague is building a training programme. We finally have headspace to focus on people.”

Why it matters

With just two HR people in a team of over 100, efficiency and impact make all the difference. By reducing manual work and enabling self-service, Employment Hero has transformed Wholesale Domestic’s people operations and has given Lucy back the motivation she needs to succeed in her role. 

“Before, I felt like a system administrator. Now, I feel like an HR professional again.”