Custom app for secondment hours and rate agreements
Appfront builds an app in which every seconded employee logs hours per assignment and hour type, the contact person at the client gives digital approval and the system automatically looks up the agreed purchase and sales rate. The app calculates allowances, overtime scales and travel expenses per period into invoice lines and payroll mutations. So you no longer have to dig through scattered emails and Excel files to find out which rate was agreed.
What is an app for secondment hours and rate agreements?
An app for secondment hours and rate agreements records who worked when, on which assignment and at what rate. The employee logs hours by hour type, the client approves them, and the app applies the correct rate card: the sell rate for the client, the buy rate or wage for the employee, plus surcharges for overtime, irregular hours and travel expenses. From this come invoice lines, payroll changes and margin per placement.
Without such an app, the rate agreement lives in the contract and time registration sits separately from it. A client negotiates a tiered rate partway through, from a certain number of hours, the account manager records it in an email, and the back office keeps invoicing at the old rate for months. Or an employee moves to another department with its own rate and nobody updates the placement.
We build custom because your rate structure is your own: tiers per job group, indexation per contract date, client pay terms taken from the client's collective agreement, fixed mark-up factors, different arrangements per branch, and client portals that return hours in their own format. We connect to your back office, payroll software and accounting, and follow your approval rules. A generic timesheet package doesn't know your tiers or your arrangements per client.
Rate card per placement
For each placement you record the buy rate, sell rate, surcharge percentages and validity dates. If an agreement changes, the new card applies from its effective date and the old one remains traceable for earlier periods.
Hours with approval
The employee enters hours per day and hour type, adds a note or receipt, and submits the week. The client approves or rejects, with the reason, date and name recorded.
From hours to invoice and payroll
Approved hours are converted per period into invoice lines per client and payroll changes per employee, including surcharges and corrections to earlier weeks, ready for your accounting and payroll processing.
How we build your app for secondment hours and rate agreements
We start with your current rate list and a stack of timesheets from the past period, including the exceptions that always have to be corrected by hand.
We go through your contracts and rate list: tiers, surcharges, mark-up factors, indexation and deviations per client or branch. From this we derive the model in which every agreement can be recorded unambiguously.
Employees, clients, contacts, assignments and hour types go into the app, preferably from your back office. Each placement gets a rate card with an effective date and an approver at the client.
Entering, submitting, reminding, approving and rejecting hours with a reason. Then the period close: checking for missing timesheets, processing corrections and preparing the invoice and payroll lines per client.
We integrate accounting, payroll processing and, where needed, a large client's portal. Then we run alongside you for a period, adjust based on what stands out, and take over maintenance.
What an app for secondment hours and rate agreements does in practice
The components below appear in almost every app for secondment hours and rate agreements. Which ones you need depends on your rate structure and on how your clients want to approve hours.
Time registration by hour type
Log normal hours, overtime, irregular hours, travel hours, leave and waiting hours separately, per day and per assignment, including entries made offline on site.
Rate cards with tiers
Buy and sell rate, mark-up factor, surcharge percentages and tiers per job group, with an effective date so that earlier periods stay at the old rate.
Digital client approval
The contact person approves or rejects each week with a reason. Name, time and version are recorded, so any later dispute can be settled with a log entry.
Period close
Overview of missing and outstanding timesheets per period, with reminders to the employee and approver and a lock on the closed period.
Margin and alerts
Margin per placement, client and branch, with an alert for hours without a rate card, a rate below your minimum, or an expired agreement.
Invoice and payroll files
Approved hours are converted into invoice lines per client and payroll changes per employee, including corrections, ready to be passed on to your systems.
Who we build a timesheet and rate agreement app for
The software is intended for organisations that place people with third parties on an hourly basis, where the agreed rates differ per assignment, period and hour type.
Technical secondment firms
Projects run for a long time and rates are indexed annually. The rate card with its effective date and traceability back to earlier periods are the core here.
Temporary staffing agencies
Many short placements, client-based pay and collective agreement (cao) allowances. The core lies in hour types, allowance rules and the weekly sign-off by the contact person on site.
Payroll and back-office providers
You process hours for other companies, each with their own agreements. Differing rate structures per client and clean export files come first here.
Freelancer intermediaries and brokers
Freelancers invoice for themselves, but hours and rates must be correct. Self-billing, the justification per assignment and the margin per placement matter most here.
Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day
With OneDayBuild, we make your idea tangible in a single day for €1,150, so you know whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we deduct the cost in full.
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This page is about the app for secondment hours and rate agreements. For office administration, see our page on software for secondment hours and rate agreements, for secondment firms as a whole our page on secondment software, and for staffing agencies our page on staffing agency software. You can read about our approach on building an app.
Why Appfront for your secondment hours and rate agreements app?
A timesheet app is only as good as the rate agreement underneath it. That is what we build on: first capture the agreement unambiguously, then the hours around it.
An agreement doesn't belong in a mailbox
Every rate change gets an effective date, a person who recorded it and a reason. That means an invoice from an earlier period can always be traced back to the agreement that applied at the time.
Approval is your burden of proof
You win a dispute over hours with records, not with memory. Who approved what and when is on record, including the version of the timesheet that was approved.
Corrections are the rule
Late-submitted hours, a wrong hour type, a rate that changes retroactively: the app processes this as a visible correction in a new period instead of quietly after the fact.
Security and privacy in a secondment hours and rate agreements app
The app holds employees' personal data, clients' contact details, hours, rates and margins. Not everyone needs to see everything: an approver at the client sees hours for their own placements, an employee sees no margin. Access is controlled per role, every change to hours and rates is logged, and we set up retention periods for timesheet records and payroll documents in line with your GDPR policy and the statutory tax retention obligation.
The software runs in a European data centre, with encrypted storage and daily backups. Integrations with your back office, payroll package, accounting and client portals use their own keys, which can be revoked per integration.
Frequently asked questions about a secondment hours and rate agreements app
Questions that secondment firms and back-office managers ask before they get started.
The app collects hours per employee, assignment and hour type, has the client's contact person approve them, and links the applicable rate agreement to those hours. From that come invoice lines, payroll changes and a margin overview per placement. Agreements carry a start date, so earlier periods keep the rate that applied at the time.
Yes. You set up rate cards at whatever level you need: per client, per branch, per job group or per individual placement. Within those, you manage tiered rates, mark-up factors and surcharge percentages for overtime, irregular hours and travel time. A placement inherits the nearest agreement unless you deliberately deviate from it and record that.
The approver receives a notification per period and sees only the hours for their own placements. They approve or reject with a reason, at weekly level or per line. The app records the name, the time and the approved version. If nobody approves, your back office sees it in the overview of outstanding timesheets.
Yes. Entering hours works offline on a phone or tablet, for example in a basement, a factory hall or a care facility with poor coverage. As soon as there is a connection, the app synchronises automatically. If changes are made at the same time, the app shows which version differs, so nobody accidentally overwrites hours that have already been entered.
That is usually the starting point. We pull placements, employees and clients from your back office, and return approved hours as invoice lines and payroll changes. If a system has no usable interface, we work with scheduled file exchange in the format your payroll processing or accounting expects.
A closed period is locked. The app processes late or changed hours as a visible correction line in the next period, with a reference to the original week. The correction appears separately on the invoice and the payroll change, so the client and your administration can see where the difference comes from.
Check that first. If you work with standard hour types, a fixed rate per placement and clients who accept your portal, your existing package is often enough. Custom development comes into play with your own tiered rates and mark-up factors, deviating agreements per client, clients who insist on their own timesheet format, and approval routes your package doesn't support.
Want to see hours, rates and margin per placement on one screen?
Tell us how many placements you work with, how your rate agreements and tiered rates are currently recorded, and which systems process the hours and payroll changes. We'll show you what the rate card, the client's approval and the period close look like in a custom solution.