From startup to scale-up: how HoorayHR has grown with Bold for 4.5 years

Hiske Braaksma is COO at Bold. We spoke to her about how Bold made the transition from Excel to a single centralised HR platform in HoorayHR, and how the system has been growing alongside the team for 4.5 years now.

About Bold

Bold Smart Lock is a Utrecht-based scale-up that develops smart, keyless door locks which can be unlocked via a mobile phone, tag or smartwatch. The company offers a complete ecosystem of smart locks for both consumers and businesses, operating in the Benelux, Europe and the UK. In recent years, the team has grown from a small group to 20–25 employees. Hiske is responsible for the operational side of the business, including HR.

The challenge: everything in Excel, becoming increasingly unworkable

Before Bold started working with HoorayHR, HR processes were mainly managed in Excel. This worked well in the early stages, but as the team grew, manual management became increasingly difficult to keep track of. With the arrival of on-call staff and employees with varying working hours, there was a need for greater structure in processes such as time recording and holiday accrual.

“We started using HoorayHR when we were still a small team. We’ve grown considerably since then, and the system still fits in well with the way we work.”

The switch to HoorayHR

The immediate reason for the switch was the increase in the number of on-call staff: with varying working hours, it was no longer feasible to keep track of holiday entitlement manually in Excel. For Bold, the switch was straightforward; HoorayHR was easy to implement as their first proper HR system, without requiring any HR background.

From manual leave management to a more structured approach

As Bold grew and took on more staff with varying working hours, tracking leave entitlement in Excel became increasingly unworkable. HoorayHR helps to organise this process more clearly, so that Bold is less reliant on manual data entry.

Expense claims and payroll processing are more efficient thanks to the integration with Exact Online

For Bold, the integration with Exact Online primarily saves time when it comes to expense claims. Approved expense claims are received directly in Exact Online, reducing the number of manual steps required before payroll processing. According to Hiske, this is the greatest practical benefit of HoorayHR in day-to-day HR administration.

“HoorayHR is simply very easy to use. People quickly get the hang of it, and this saves a lot of time, particularly when it comes to expense claims and the integration with Exact Online.”

A single dashboard for administrators and team leads

In HoorayHR, Bold can see at a glance which tasks are still pending, from hours worked and leave to expense claims and contract renewals. This helps the team to keep HR processes organised and follow them up more quickly.

In conclusion

For Bold, HoorayHR means, above all, greater control over HR processes. Whereas many tasks were previously managed manually in Excel, the team now works from a single centralised platform for areas such as leave, expense claims and contract management. Hiske summarises the key benefits:

• Greater control over holiday entitlement, even with variable working hours
• Less manual work on expense claims thanks to the integration with Exact Online
• A clearer overview of outstanding HR tasks
• User-friendly in day-to-day practice
• Part of a growing team for 4.5 years now

Are you still using Excel for your HR, or does leave management take up an unnecessary amount of your time? Find out what HoorayHR can do for your HR processes.