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What PeopleNest is

PeopleNest is the HR system: it holds the company's structure, its people, their time, their pay, their appraisals and their training, and it does the arithmetic that turns those into a payslip.

What it is​

PeopleNest is a record-keeping and calculating system for an HR department. Everything in it is either a list you set up once, a record you keep against a person, or a run that reads both and produces a result.

Three things fall out of that:

  • It remembers when, not just what. A person's department, position, grade and salary structure are held with a date range, so last year's payslip can still be explained after this year's promotion.
  • It calculates on demand, not continuously. Attendance becomes pay days when you process the attendance sheet. The sheet becomes a payslip when you run the payroll. Nothing happens in the background that you did not start.
  • It is configured, not programmed. Which wage types a man gets, what a late arrival costs him, how many days of leave accrue, which scores earn a bonus: all of it is set up on screens.

What it is not​

It is not the accounting system. Payroll ends at the ledger door: the Post Payroll screen hands the totals to the finance product beside it, Businessflo. The accounts themselves live there.

It is not a time clock. The biometric and card machines are separate hardware. PeopleNest reads them, through the Attendance Machine and Schedule Machine screens, and stores what they say.

It is not a tax authority. It applies the tax slabs you set up for it. Whether those slabs are the current statutory ones is the client's responsibility.

And it is not a reporting tool that will tell you something you never recorded. If an allowance was never set up as a wage type, no report will ever show it.

The eight modules​

Shared with Businessflo

Organization and Setup​

The company itself and the small lists everything else points at. The legal entity, the business units, the departments, the business and functional areas, the geography lists of country, state and city. Also the shared machinery: the working-time patterns, the calendar and its public holidays, the approval routes, and the reason and status lists that documents pick from. A client uses it once, at the start, and then only when the company changes shape.

The people

People Directory​

The employee and everything held against him. The job structure first, which is Position Grade, Position Category and Position, then the person: his basic information, his addresses, contacts, identification documents, education, certifications, skills and past experience. Then the two records that matter most, the Employee Organization Assignment, which places him in the company, and the Employee Policy Profile, which decides which rules apply to him. The leavers' side lives here too: resignation, clearance, and the disciplinary and grievance records.

Time

Time Management​

Everything to do with the clock. The shift times and the repeating shift patterns, the roster that puts a pattern on real people on real dates, the machines that collect punches, the attendance policy that decides what a late arrival or a short day costs, and the whole of leave: the leave types, the leave groups that bundle them into a policy, the entitlement each person holds, and the allocation run that tops it up. A client uses this module every single day.

Money

Payroll​

The pay side. The wage types, which are the named lines a payslip can carry, grouped by category and group; the pay scales and pay rates; the salary structure that says which wage types a person gets and how much; the payroll cycle and the pay periods inside it. Then the month-end chain: the attendance sheet, the payroll run, and the posting. Loans, overtime, reimbursements, tax slabs, gratuity and final settlement are all here.

Appraisal

Performance​

Goals and scores. The KPIs and evaluation metrics a company measures people on, the evaluation template that bundles them into a form with weightages, the target entity that says who is appraised on which form, and the evaluation cycle that cuts one goal sheet per person for one period. Then the tracker where evaluators score, the calibration where a committee settles the numbers, and the increment matrix that turns a score into a rating band.

Development

Training​

Courses and who has done them. The training categories and courses, the vendors and trainers, the training needs raised against people, the plan for the year, and the schedule of actual sessions. Then attendance at a session, the assessment, the feedback, and the training bond where the company has paid for something expensive.

Hiring

Recruitment and Onboarding​

Getting people in. A request for a hire becomes a requisition, the requisition becomes a recruitment project, and applicants arrive against it, through the career page or by hand. Then screening, the applications pipeline, interview evaluation and the offer. An accepted offer becomes an onboarding record with a checklist, and the checklist ends with an employee.

The front desk

Visitor Management​

Who came to the building. The hosts people come to see, the reception desks that sign them in, the refreshments offered, and the visitor registration itself. Small, independent of the rest, and usually the last thing set up.

How the modules lean on each other​

The arrows go one way. Setup feeds people, people feed time and pay, time feeds pay, and pay feeds the ledger.

Recruitment sits before People Directory and hands it a new employee. Visitor Management sits to one side and needs nothing but the company itself.

The rule that explains the shape​

Nothing in PeopleNest calculates anything until the thing it calculates from has been configured.

If something looks wrong​

  • "The module is there but every screen is empty" - the setup lists it reads have not been filled yet. Start at the order of setup.
  • "The payroll run finished and produced nothing" - a run with no wage types, no salary structure or no pay period has nothing to compute. See the payroll run.
  • "This person is missing from everything" - he almost certainly has no Employee Organization Assignment covering the date you are asking about.