Hiske Braaksma

Hiske Braaksma is COO at Bold, a Utrecht-based scale-up that develops smart, keyless door locks that can be opened via a mobile phone, tag or smartwatch. What began as a secure parcel box has grown into a complete ecosystem of smart locks for both consumers and businesses, operating in the Benelux, Europe and the UK. Over the past few years, the team has grown from a small group to 21 employees. Hiske is responsible for the operational side of the business, including HR.

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Everything in Excel, becoming less and less workable

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.

Why did Bold choose 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.

“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.”

Greater control over leave management and expense claims

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.

When it comes to expense claims, too, the integration with Exact Online primarily saves time. Approved expense claims are imported directly into 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 just really easy to use. People quickly get the hang of it, and it saves a lot of time, particularly when it comes to expense claims and the integration with Exact Online.”

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.