Cloud-based SaaS supply staff booking system used by 120 schools across a UK council.

A primary school in the borough needs a supply teacher for tomorrow. It's 6pm. The regular teacher is off sick. The school office has closed. Someone needs to find a qualified teacher who's available, check they meet AWR legislation requirements, book them, get the timesheet approved, and process it through payroll.

Before this system, that process involved phone calls, spreadsheets, and manual tracking. The council's team spent hours matching schools with supply staff, calculating qualifying weeks for Agency Workers Regulations, and reformatting timesheet data for payroll. Schools waited. Supply staff waited. Administrative burden grew with every booking.

The council needed a system that worked around the clock and handled the complexity automatically.

We worked closely with the council's supply service team, school representatives, and supply staff to understand how the system needed to function. Not what a generic booking tool could provide. What this specific operation required.

A GAP analysis mapped existing functionality against the council's exact requirements. AWR legislation compliance. Automated timesheet processing. Real-time availability. Payroll integration. Booking fee calculation.

The development incorporated all of it:

• 24/7 self-service portal for schools to book supply staff and for staff to accept placements
• Automated AWR tracking with complex algorithms replacing manual spreadsheet calculations
• Direct payroll integration eliminating manual timesheet reformatting
• Instant alerts so bookings reach available staff within seconds
• One-click timesheet approval with preset session times
• Automated booking fee processing submitted directly to finance for invoicing
• AWS hosting providing 99.9% uptime and secure, scalable infrastructure

Schools and supply staff actively participated during beta testing. We stayed close during roll-out to ensure everyone was trained and confident using the system.

Booking time reduced from hours to minutes. Schools access available supply staff any time of day. Supply staff receive and accept bookings instantly. Administrative burden reduced across the council's team, freeing capacity to focus on developing the quality of the supply pool.

Tasks that were manually intensive: AWR qualification tracking, timesheet processing, booking fee calculation, now happen automatically. The system handles the complexity. The team focuses on the service.