A central place where employees can view their payslips, request leave, check their rota, submit expense claims and pass on HR changes. One branded environment that fits your brand, integrated with your existing HR and payroll system (Visma YouForce, AFAS, Personio, Nmbrs, Loket), with SSO and a native mobile app as standard.
Most employers in the Netherlands use a standard self-service module from their payroll package: Visma YouForce, Loket Werkgeverdesk, Nmbrs ESS, AFAS Profit Pocket, Personio, BambooHR or the Workday HCM portal. For most organisations with up to a few hundred employees, that works well — so we would generally advise against adding a bespoke portal alongside it if the standard packages can handle your workflows.
But once you use several HR systems at the same time (a group with multiple brands, a recent merger or acquisition), or if your sector requires workflows that no standard package offers — think of a care sector collective agreement with irregular-hours allowances and rotas that must run 24/7, retail rostering with shift swaps between branches, or an education cycle with performance reviews and annual workload calculations — then a bespoke employee portal pays off. We build it as a single integrated layer on top of your existing HR, payroll and scheduling systems, in your own house style and with the workflows your organisation actually uses.
The target group is usually medium-sized to large: employers with 50 to 5,000 employees, franchise organisations with staff spread across dozens of locations, care and education institutions with many part-time contracts and complex rotas, retail chains where shop-floor staff and branch management must both use the same environment, or international employers with staff in NL, BE, DE and PL who each need their own language and compliance context.
It depends on how much you want to replace, integrate or add to your existing HR stack. In the first conversation we'll work out together which approach fits, or whether an out-of-the-box package would serve you better.
A custom employee portal as a front-end on top of your existing Visma YouForce, Nmbrs or Loket. Employees log in via SSO, view their payslips, tax forms and annual statements, and request leave or expenses in your own branded look. The back end remains your payroll package; we only replace the generic white-label UI.
A single portal that brings HR data together from multiple sources: payroll (YouForce, AFAS, Nmbrs), rostering system, expenses tool, LMS, and your time-tracking software. Employees see everything they need to know this week on one screen, with no more separate logins for each HR tool.
A mission-critical employee portal for groups or sector organisations with their own collective labour agreement rules, NEN 7510 (healthcare) or BIO (government) requirements, and multi-brand branches each running their own HR system. Includes an onboarding flow, performance cycle and a native mobile app for employees who are not sat at a desk.
Every organisation needs its own mix of modules, but this is the foundation we almost always see. We build what you need and leave out the rest: no bloated package with half-working features.
Four patterns where a standard package falls short and custom development pays off. If one of these situations sounds familiar, we would be glad to talk further.
Your collective labour agreement contains arrangements that no standard package covers: irregular hours allowance, first-aid (BHV) compensation, shift swaps between branches, or a specific leave cycle. Off-the-shelf packages force you into their model; custom development follows your CLA.
If you have had mergers or acquisitions, you may have several payroll packages running side by side (for example AFAS in one brand and Visma in another). A custom portal gives employees a single login and one look and feel, and gives HR one central admin screen.
Employers in healthcare and public sector organisations face stricter requirements for logging, access control and data storage than a standard SaaS package offers. We build the portal within your own cloud environment (GCP, AWS or Azure) with the correct audit trail.
You want employees to work in your look and feel, not in a generic YouForce or Personio interface. Especially for organisations where employer brand and culture are central (healthcare, universities of applied sciences, retail chains), a bespoke portal quickly pays off through higher engagement, a lower threshold for handling HR matters themselves, and fewer calls to the HR helpdesk.
In healthcare, retail, manufacturing, logistics and construction, most of your people do not work behind a laptop. A native mobile app with biometric login, push notifications for shift changes and an offline cache for on the go solves this. Standard self-service modules are often web-only and frustrate exactly this group.
For employers with international staff (manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, cleaning), multilingual support is not optional. Your portal must not only translate text, but also display local payslip formats and annual statements correctly, plus explain collective labour agreements (CAOs) per country where needed.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →A conversation in which we understand which HR, payroll, rostering and LMS systems are in use, which collective labour agreement applies, and which flows the portal needs to cover. We give you honest advice on whether a standard package would be a better fit; we only proceed with custom development where it genuinely adds value.
A workshop with HR, IT and a few line managers, plus interviews with employees in different roles (office, shop floor, part-time). Outcome: a concrete module scope, integration architecture and the first screen flows. Through our integration architects we involve your payroll provider where needed.
A working build every two weeks. A test group of your employees joins from sprint two onwards, so UX issues surface from real-world use in good time rather than at roll-out.
A phased roll-out prevents overloading your HR department. We usually start with one location or one role group, evaluate, and then scale up. This includes training sessions for key users and ongoing management for security patches and further development.
An employee portal is only worthwhile if the data is accurate. We integrate with virtually any Dutch and international HR, payroll and rota package that offers an API or SFTP integration.
The four largest Dutch payroll packages. We integrate with their official APIs for master data, payslips, leave balances and changes. Visma YouForce integration via the YouServe REST API or via Visma Connect; AFAS via GetConnector/UpdateConnector; Nmbrs via SOAP/REST; Loket via the Loket.nl API.
For groups with overseas branches or international employers. Personio is strong in DACH and the Benelux, while Workday and SuccessFactors are used in enterprise contexts. We integrate via their official REST APIs and build a unified data model on top, so your portal doesn't need to know which system an employee comes from.
For healthcare, retail, hospitality and flexible staffing pools. We synchronise shifts, swap requests, availability and hours worked. The rostering stays in your planning software; the portal only shows the employee view and the swap workflow.
Single sign-on via SAML 2.0 or OIDC, with automatic account provisioning via SCIM. For education we integrate with SURFconext, and for healthcare with a UZI pass or an internal identity provider. Magic link or a 6-digit SMS code for frontline employees without a work email address.
What HR and IT managers typically want to know before we start.
A free, half-hour introductory call. We listen to your HR stack, ask about your sector and collective labour agreement, and give you an honest answer on whether a custom portal is worth it for your situation, or whether an off-the-shelf package is the smarter choice.
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