How to organize staffing agency operations in one place

Most staffing agencies do the same handful of things every week: find and register candidates, take orders from clients, fill shifts, record who worked, approve hours and bill. The trouble is rarely any single step. It is the hand-offs between them.

Map your workflow before you choose tools

Write down each stage from the first client call to the final payment. For most agencies it looks like: register candidates, receive orders, schedule workers, record attendance, approve hours, invoice clients, pay candidates, review results.

Next to each stage, note where the information currently lives and who retypes it. Every retyping step is a place where a number can drift.

Keep one record per candidate and per client

A candidate record should hold contact details, the roles they can fill, documents, availability and status in one place. A client record should hold sites, contacts, departments, roles and agreed rates.

When these records are scattered across spreadsheets and inboxes, coordinators spend time hunting for facts instead of filling orders.

Treat approved hours as the source of truth

Attendance data is only useful if someone reviews it. Decide who approves hours, by when, and what happens to exceptions such as late arrivals, absences and missing punches.

Once hours are approved, both billing and payroll should read from them, rather than from separate copies.

Review a few numbers every week

You do not need dozens of reports. Start with these:

• Orders open versus filled
• Late and absent patterns by client or site
• Hours approved but not yet invoiced
• Invoices outstanding, and how long they have been outstanding

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