Solutions · HR Software & HRIS
Employee records, onboarding, time off, policy acknowledgement and review cycles usually live in several different systems. We build the HR platform that holds them in one place, with the permissions, audit trail and retention rules employee data needs.
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OlDevs is a full-stack technology studio in Vancouver, British Columbia that builds custom HR software and HRIS platforms for organisations whose people processes have outgrown spreadsheets and shared drives.We design and build employee records, onboarding and offboarding workflows, time off and scheduling, document and policy acknowledgement, performance review cycles and payroll integrations, with self serve portals for staff and managers. Access control, audit logging and retention rules are part of the build rather than an afterthought, because employee records are among the most sensitive data an organisation holds. Where an off the shelf HR product already fits, we say so and help you configure and integrate it instead.
Key facts
People systems, built to fit
One record per person covering roles, employment history, reporting lines, locations, work eligibility documents and emergency contacts. Field level permissions decide who sees what, and every change is stamped with who made it, when, and what the value was before.
Checklists that start the moment an offer is accepted: accounts to create, equipment to ship, documents to sign, training to assign. Offboarding runs the same path in reverse so access is revoked, assets come back and nothing is left half finished.
Accrual rules that match your policy rather than a vendor's defaults, including carryover, part time proration and statutory holidays by province. Requests route to the right approver, balances update as they are used, and managers see coverage before they answer.
A signed policy only helps if you can show who signed which version and when. We build versioned document libraries, targeted acknowledgement campaigns, reminders for the people who have not responded yet, and exportable evidence when an audit asks.
Review cycles you can actually finish: self assessment, manager review, peer input and calibration, with reminders that stop a cycle from stalling in week three. Goals carry between cycles so a review reads as a continuation, not a blank page.
HR data is only half a system until it reaches payroll, benefits, identity and finance. We build integrations against the APIs your providers publish, with reconciliation reports and a clear path for the records that fail to sync.
Process
Map the process you actually run
We sit with HR, payroll and a few managers and write down how hiring, leave, documents and reviews really work today, including the exceptions people handle by email. That map decides what to build and what to buy.
Audit data, systems and obligations
We inventory where employee data lives now, which systems must stay, what your providers expose through their APIs, and which privacy and retention obligations apply. Anything that blocks a build surfaces here, not later.
Design and build in weekly demos
One accountable team builds module by module and shows you working software every week. You use it, you tell us what is wrong, and the next week reflects that instead of a change request queue.
Migrate, run in parallel, train
We clean and load your existing records, run the new system alongside the old one for a cycle so balances and payroll figures can be compared, and train staff and managers on their own portal before the switch.
Launch, support and extend
You go live on one module or one department first, then widen. After launch we keep improving the system: new workflows, new integrations, and adjustments as your policies change.
How we work
Staff update their own contact details, check balances, read policies and pull their own documents without emailing HR. Managers approve in the same portal. HR handles the exceptions instead of the queue.
Roles decide what each person can see and do, and administration can be delegated by department, location or franchise unit. A manager sees their own team, a regional lead sees their region, and nobody sees more by accident.
Record changes, approvals, acknowledgements and access grants are logged with the person, the timestamp and the previous value. When someone asks how a decision was recorded, the system answers instead of your memory.
We design for data minimisation, define who may view sensitive fields, and set retention and deletion schedules for leavers so records do not linger indefinitely. Your privacy counsel sets the requirements and we build to them.
The HRIS becomes the single source of truth for who works here, and payroll, identity, finance and scheduling systems read from it. New hires and departures propagate once rather than being typed into four tools.
Headcount, turnover, absence patterns, onboarding completion and review progress come from the same records staff see. No parallel spreadsheet, no reconciliation argument before every board meeting.
Who it's for
Multi department employers with real complexity: several entities, multiple provinces, union and non union groups, and a payroll provider they are not about to replace. They need HR data joined up and permissioned, not another disconnected tool.
Member organisations and public sector bodies with strict records, retention and accountability obligations, plus committee and volunteer roles that do not fit a standard employee table. Bilingual English and French interfaces and WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility are usually requirements, not extras.
Head office needs consistent onboarding, policy acknowledgement and reporting across locations, while each franchisee manages its own people and schedules. Delegated administration and location scoped permissions are the whole problem.
Small teams growing past the point where a spreadsheet and a shared drive are honest. Often the right first answer is a well configured off the shelf product plus a thin custom layer, and we will say so.
Since 2014
OlDevs has been building software
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FAQ
Buy, in most cases. If you need standard employee records, time off and basic onboarding, an established HR product will ship sooner and take less work to maintain than anything custom. Building earns its place when your rules are genuinely unusual, when HR data must join operational systems no vendor integrates with, or when a process you cannot change will never fit the product. We tell you which situation you are in before we quote.
Usually yes, and that is normally the right call. Payroll is a regulated, high consequence system and replacing it is rarely the point of an HRIS project. We integrate against whatever API or file exchange your providers publish, keep the HRIS as the source of truth for who works where, and add reconciliation reports so a mismatch is visible before payday rather than after.
We design for least privilege: sensitive fields are visible only to named roles, access is logged, and retention schedules govern how long leaver records are kept before deletion. Depending on where you operate, PIPEDA or the provincial private sector privacy laws in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec may apply. We are developers, not lawyers, so this is not legal advice: your counsel defines the obligations and we build the system that meets them.
We map every field you have to the new model, flag the records that are incomplete or contradictory, and give HR a working list to clean before load rather than after. Migration then runs as a repeatable script, so we can rehearse it as many times as needed. We usually run the old and new systems in parallel for one leave and payroll cycle before retiring the old one.
Yes. We build the staff and manager portals as responsive web applications first, because that reaches every device without an install or an app store review for each change. When a genuine mobile need exists, such as offline shift check in or push notifications for approvals, we build native Android and iOS apps against the same backend.
It depends on how many modules you need and how many systems it has to talk to, so we scope it in phases rather than quoting one long timeline. You see working software every week from early on, and we aim to put one useful module in real hands, often onboarding or time off, before the rest is finished. Estimates come with the quote, once the process mapping is done.
You do. Clients own all code, designs, accounts and intellectual property from an OlDevs build, and we hand over repositories, infrastructure accounts and documentation as part of delivery. There is no licence to keep paying for and no lock in that stops another team from taking the work forward if you ever want that.
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