Keep Records, Leave and Time in Order When Your People Are Never in One Place
Fee earners work at the client's premises, from home, in court, on site visits and late at night, so ordinary attendance rules rarely fit. We set up one record per person, leave and attendance rules that suit the way a firm works, a clear route for corrections and standard letters, then configure them on your system or on the GullyHR platform. You decide the rules; we make them easy to follow and easy to audit.
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Share your requirementsThe starting point
Is Day-to-Day HR Held Together by Spreadsheets and Goodwill?
Employee administration is invisible until it fails. In a firm with people on client sites, on the road or in court, nobody is sure who was where on which day, leave is approved by message and records sit in several folders. The cost appears when a certificate is needed in a hurry or a payroll query cannot be traced.
We help you build records and routines that work for a team that is always somewhere else.
You may be experiencing:
- Personal, qualification, membership and bank details scattered across email, shared drives and partner files.
- Attendance for people who work at client sites or from home recorded inconsistently, or inferred from timesheets.
- Leave balances disputed because approvals were given on chat and never entered.
- Study leave, exam leave and travel days handled differently by each practice.
- Corrections to attendance and timesheets made informally, with no record of who approved them.
- Experience letters, address-proof letters and employment verifications drafted afresh each time.
- Laptops, access cards and software licences allocated without a register, and returned late or not at all.
What we can help with
Our Employee Administration Services for Professional Services Firms
Employee Record Structure
Design one record per person: personal and contact details, grade, practice, reporting lines, qualifications, memberships and their renewal dates, documents and history of changes.
Attendance Rules for Mobile Work
Set how presence is recorded for office days, client-site days, work from home, court or site visits and travel, and how this ties to the firm's timesheets without becoming double entry.
Leave Types and Balances
Define casual, earned and sick leave and any study, exam or compensatory leave the firm offers, with accrual, carry-over, approval and balance visibility for the employee.
Compensatory Time After Peaks
Agree how time off after audit seasons, filing windows or bid deadlines is granted, recorded and approved, so it is a practice and not a favour.
Regularisation and Correction Process
Fix who may correct attendance or leave, within what time, with what proof and who approves, and keep the history of each change.
Letters and Certificates
Standard formats for appointment, confirmation, promotion, experience, employment verification and address-proof letters, with a defined issuing route and sign-off.
Asset and Access Register
Record laptops, devices, access cards, software licences and client-system credentials allocated to each person, with return steps at exit.
Self-Service and Approvals
Configure employee and manager self-service for leave, corrections and letter requests, with approvals routed to the people manager and a deputy.
The deliverables
What You Receive
Depending on the agreed scope, you receive:
- An employee record structure with the fields and documents to hold.
- Attendance and leave rules for office, client-site and remote work.
- A regularisation and correction process with an approval trail.
- Leave policy summaries for each leave type, ready for the handbook.
- Letter and certificate formats with an issuing route.
- An asset and access register template or configured module.
- A short guide for managers on approving and correcting records.
Step by step
How We Work
See How Records Are Kept Now
We look at where data lives, who updates it and how attendance, leave and letters are handled across practices and offices.
Design the Record and the Rules
We draft the record structure, the attendance and leave rules and the correction route, and test them with a partner, a manager and an associate.
Clean and Load the Data
We help gather current records, find gaps and duplicates, and load them into the chosen system.
Configure Workflows
We set up leave, correction and letter requests with the approvals and reminders agreed, on your system or on the GullyHR platform.
Train and Review
We brief managers and staff, record a baseline, and review after the first month to adjust the rules that cause friction.
The difference
Records You Can Find and Rules People Follow
A tidy administration set-up helps the firm to:
We do not promise outcomes. We record a baseline before work starts, covering record completeness, leave queries raised, corrections made without approval and the time taken to issue a standard letter, and report against it, so you can see what changed and what did not.
- Hold one current record per person, with documents attached.
- Know who is on leave, at a client site or away without asking around.
- Settle balance disputes from the record, not from memory.
- Make corrections visible and approved.
- Issue a letter or verification quickly and in the firm's format.
- Track equipment and access from joining to exit.
Find your fit
Who This Service Is For
Firms With People on Client Sites
Auditors, consultants and engineers who are rarely at the office desk.
Firms Moving From Spreadsheets
Which hold records in files and want a single system of record.
Multi-Office Firms
Where leave and attendance practice has drifted between cities.
Staffing Companies
Where deployed consultants, bench staff and internal teams each follow different rules.
Practices With Seasonal Peaks
Where compensatory time and leave after peaks need a rule.
How it usually shows up in professional services
Professional firms hold a lot of information about each person that matters beyond HR: qualifications, membership numbers, articles or training periods, practice, level and client assignments. These are commonly spread across personal files, spreadsheets and the partner's memory. Attendance is loosely tracked because people are on client premises, travelling or working long days, and time recording for billing is treated as separate from attendance and leave. Leave is approved by whichever partner is reachable, and balances are not always visible to the employee. Letters such as experience certificates, confirmations and promotion letters are drafted by hand each time, and the wording varies. Records of who has access to which client system sit with IT or nowhere, which makes exits and role changes slow.
Common challenges
Where it goes wrong in professional services
Credentials are scattered
Qualification, membership and practice details sit in different places, and nobody holds a current list.
Timesheets and attendance disagree
Billing time and working days are recorded separately and do not reconcile.
Leave depends on who is reachable
Approvals come from whichever partner answers, and employees cannot see their own balance.
Letters are written from scratch
Experience certificates and confirmations differ in wording and take days to produce.
A better process
What a working version looks like
- 01
Keep one record per person
Qualification, membership, level, practice, reporting line and key dates in a single employee record. The employee information system describes what to hold.
- 02
Link time and attendance
Decide how client-site and remote days are marked, and how timesheet entries are compared with the attendance record.
- 03
Route leave through the people manager
One approver per person, a visible balance, and a rule for approval when the approver is away.
- 04
Use standard letters
Templates for confirmation, promotion, experience and relieving letters, approved once and issued within a set time.
- 05
Track system access
A list of who has access to which client systems and drives, reviewed when roles change.
What to check this week
- Open five employee files and see which items are missing.
- Compare one person's timesheet with attendance and leave for a month.
- Ask an employee where they would see their leave balance.
- Time how long an experience certificate takes from request to issue.
- List who has access to client folders and check it against current staff.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies depends on your establishment, your state and your sector, and it changes. This page describes a practice; it does not state a legal position.
What this looks like in professional services
The parts of employee administration that are specific to this sector, rather than general.
Qualification and Membership Records
Credentials the firm relies on.
What this coversHide
Qualification and Membership Records
Credentials the firm relies on.
What this coversHide- Professional qualifications
- Membership numbers and validity
- Continuing education records
- Certification tracking
- Renewal reminders
- Practising status where applicable
- Record completeness for client and regulatory requests
Questions on this, in professional services
We agree which record counts, such as a client-site mark, a timesheet entry or an approved plan, and connect it to the leave and payroll inputs. The aim is one entry per day, not a second register to fill in.
Yes, where the firm wants it, but we recommend as few variations as possible. Each variation must be written, explained and held in the system, or it turns back into an informal exception.
No. The leave you offer, and the obligations that apply to your firm, should be confirmed with a qualified professional. GullyHR does not give legal advice. We help you write the rules you have decided and administer them consistently.
They can have records for contact, qualification and membership details and access allocations, where the firm wishes. Partnership terms and remuneration stay outside the employee record unless you decide otherwise.
Where your practice-management or timesheet tool can export data, it can be used as an input to attendance and leave checks. We define the fields and the schedule, and configure what the GullyHR platform or your own system can accept.
We help you set who may see which part of a record, such as limiting salary and personal documents to HR and specified partners, and review that access when people change roles.
Identity and contact details, qualifications and membership, designation and practice, reporting line, key dates, letters issued and assets or access held. Keep them in one place that the right people can see.
Agree a simple way for people to mark client-site, remote and office days, and have the people manager confirm it. Compare it with timesheets monthly.
It saves time and removes the risk of two people receiving different wording for the same event. Templates also make sure the approvals are in place before a letter goes out.
The person's people manager, with a named alternate. Peak-season rules should be written so that approvals are consistent between practices.
Make the Routine HR Work Without Chasing
Tell us where records, leave and time are hardest to track. We will discuss how to set up the administration around the way your people actually work.
Prefer to talk first? Call +91 80958 58589 or write to hello@gullyhr.com.
Discuss Your Records and Leave
Share a few details so we can see where to begin.
The general method — what employee administration covers, the questions it answers and what an engagement produces — is the same whatever the sector, and is set out on the employee information management page. What is above is the part that differs for professional services.
To run this in a system rather than on paper, see core employee management.
Other HR topics for professional services
Where to start
Most engagements begin with a review of how this runs in your business today, then a written process and the sequence to implement it.
See all HR topics for professional services, or another industry.