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Recruitment agency software development

For agency directors and owner-consultants who need vacancies, candidates, shortlists, placements and fee notes in one system designed around how their desks actually work, rather than a sales CRM with the field names changed.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A twelve-consultant agency runs its permanent desk on a sales CRM, its temp desk on a spreadsheet and its candidates in a shared drive full of CVs named by whoever saved them.

  • A client briefs a vacancy by phone; the consultant writes it on a pad and emails three CVs that afternoon from memory, because searching the drive by skill is impossible.
  • Two consultants send the same candidate to the same client for different roles in the same week, and the client notices before the agency does.

Where it gets harder

Interviews are arranged by a chain of emails, so a reschedule from the client reaches the candidate late or not at all.

  • When a placement is made, the fee is calculated in a spreadsheet, the invoice is typed into the accounts package, and the start date that triggers it lives in the consultant's head.
  • On the temp desk, workers text their hours to the resourcer on Friday evening, who types them into the spreadsheet on Monday and chases the client for approval by email.
  • Fee notes go out late, rebates are forgotten, and the director cannot see which desk is actually making money without a day of copying numbers around.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom recruitment agency build normally covers the full vacancy-to-fee-note cycle. Vacancies carry the client, the hiring contact, the brief, the fee terms agreed and the consultant who owns the role, with a pipeline the director can see across desks. The candidate database holds a structured profile with skills tags, availability, salary or rate expectations, and the history of every submission and interview, with CVs attached rather than parsed. Candidate registration and job application run through your website into the same database. Shortlisting records which candidates were sent to which client for which role, with the submission date, so an ownership dispute between consultants is settled by the record. Interview scheduling offers slots to the client and candidate and confirms both sides. The placement record captures the agreed salary or rate, start date, fee percentage and rebate terms, and raises the fee note on the trigger you set. For temporary desks, weekly timesheets are submitted by the worker, approved by the client and converted to pay and bill lines. A client portal lets hiring managers see their live vacancies, review shortlists and leave feedback without emailing anyone.

We work through your desks with you first: permanent, temporary or both; how fees and rebates are agreed; who owns a candidate after a submission and for how long; whether clients will actually use a portal; and what the existing CRM holds that must come across. Each becomes a named workflow stage in the scope document.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Payroll for temporary workers, which stays in a payroll system and receives approved hours through an integration
  • Accounting beyond raising fee notes and bill lines
  • Right-to-work checks, which are recorded as documents with dates against the candidate rather than performed by the system

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An agency with a permanent desk and a growing temp desk wants timesheets approved by client site managers on their phones, approved hours sent to its payroll bureau every Monday, and a director view of gross margin per desk and per consultant. The payroll hand-off and the margin reporting make this a custom build, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from walking through a vacancy on each desk from brief to fee note
  • A written scope document naming each stage, the fee and rebate rules, the timesheet cycle and what is left out
  • Designs of the vacancy pipeline, the candidate record, the shortlist submission and the timesheet approval screen
  • The build, including the client portal and payroll hand-off where in scope, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of clients, vacancies, candidates and CVs from your current CRM and drive, with duplicates reported
  • Training for consultants, resourcers and the director, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to your current CRM, CV store, accounts package and website; a list of desks, consultants and fee terms in use.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the director, a senior consultant and the temp resourcer; ownership rules, fee triggers and the timesheet cycle are written into the scope document.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Pipeline, candidate record and shortlist designed for consultants at a desk; timesheet approval designed for site managers on a phone.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in layers: clients, vacancies and candidates, then shortlists and interviews, then placements and fee notes, then timesheets and the portal.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Two consultants and the resourcer run real vacancies and a live timesheet week in the system and tell us what does not match how the desks work.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Changes from the review are made and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Data migrated and duplicates resolved, fee note and payroll exports verified against test records, launch checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The agency runs its desks on the new system; hosting and maintenance continue under their own agreement if taken.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Accounting software for fee notes, bill lines and credit notes
  • Payroll bureaux and payroll systems for approved temporary hours
  • Email and calendar platforms so interviews appear in consultants' diaries
  • Job boards and aggregators for multi-posting vacancies
  • E-signature providers for terms of business and candidate declarations
  • SMS providers for interview confirmations and timesheet reminders
  • Identity and right-to-work document check providers, as a record of the check result and date

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A two-desk agency with mobile timesheet approval

The situation

An agency with a permanent desk and a temp desk supplying warehouse staff wants site managers to approve weekly timesheets on their phones, approved hours sent to its payroll bureau every Monday morning, and a director view of gross margin per desk and per consultant.

Why it is a custom build

The custom route is needed because of the bureau export format and the per-consultant margin reporting, which sit outside the standard timesheet add-on the package offers.

The scope we would propose

  • Workers submit hours per shift from their phone
  • The site manager approves or queries each line, approved hours become pay and bill lines with the agreed rates
  • A Monday export goes to the bureau in its required format
  • The margin view is calculated from bill lines and pay lines rather than copied from a spreadsheet

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Permanent desk, temporary desk or both, and the number of consultants
  • Fee, rebate and rate rules, and what triggers a fee note
  • Weekly timesheets, their approval route and the payroll hand-off format
  • Client portal and how much hiring managers do inside it
  • Volume and condition of client, vacancy and candidate data to migrate, including CV files
  • Job board multi-posting and the boards involved
  • Director reporting such as margin per desk and consultant pipeline metrics
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Recruitment agency package

Vacancy pipeline, structured candidate database, shortlists and submissions, interview scheduling, placements with fee notes, optional temp timesheets and a client portal for recruitment agencies.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide whether we need a custom build or the package?

During discovery we compare how your desks run against the recruitment agency package. If one or two desks with standard fee rules, shortlists and the optional timesheet add-on cover your week, we quote for the package. Payroll hand-offs in a specific format, unusual ownership rules or margin reporting across desks point to the custom route.

Can you move our candidates and CVs from the current CRM?

Usually yes. We export clients, vacancies, candidates and attached CVs, map the fields to the structured profile, and report duplicates for your team to resolve before launch. The scope document states what can and cannot be carried over once we have seen the data.

Does the system parse CVs into fields?

No. The candidate profile is structured by your team or by the candidate at registration, and the CV is attached as a document. This keeps the data you search on accurate rather than guessed, and avoids depending on a parsing service.

Can it handle right-to-work and compliance documents?

It records them. Each candidate can carry documents with type, date checked, expiry and who checked it, and reports show what is missing or expiring. The system does not decide what is required or whether a document is valid; those decisions stay with your consultants and your own advisers.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. The source code and your data are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and you can move the system to another provider.

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