Vultus Connect
Workforce + back-office operations platform for US staffing SMEs - covering timesheets, invoicing, payroll, compliance/documents, and financial visibility.
TL;DR
- What it is: A workforce + back-office operations platform for US staffing SMEs - covering timesheets, invoicing, payroll, compliance/documents, and financial visibility, built to run the post-placement lifecycle end-to-end.
- My role: Owned product direction and workflow design from the ground up; partnered deeply with engineering/design and drove integrations and scale-ready architecture.
- Outcome: Launched publicly in Q1 2016. Scaled to support ~200–8,000 timesheets/month and ~100–5,000 invoices/month, improving payroll accuracy and reducing invoicing errors by generating invoices and payroll from approved timesheets.
Context
Recruiting is only half the staffing business. After placement, teams still have to run the operational engine: timesheets → approvals → invoices → payroll → compliance → cash flow visibility.
For US staffing SMEs, this work is usually messy: spreadsheets, email chains, delayed approvals, billing mistakes, and payroll exceptions. Vultus Connect was built to unify these workflows into one system where finance and ops can run accurately and at scale.
Launch
Vultus Connect launched publicly in Q1 2016, targeted at US staffing SMEs as the post-placement system that completes the lifecycle after recruiting.
What the product does
- Capture and manage employee/contractor timesheets
- Approval workflows that create a clean 'source of truth' for billing and payroll
- Auto-generate invoices from approved timesheets
- Support high-volume billing cycles with fewer manual steps
- Auto-calculate payroll from the same approved timesheet inputs
- Reduce payroll exceptions and increase accuracy through consistent data flow
- Centralized employee/vendor information and documents
- Compliance readiness (documents, audit trail mindset, traceability)
- Financial tracking and cash-flow visibility to support operational decisions
- QuickBooks (accounting)
- E-sign (agreement execution)
- Vultus Recruit integration to connect recruiting → staffing operations seamlessly
Feature highlights
- Timesheet capture + approvals as the base workflow
- Auto-invoicing from approved timesheets (reduces billing errors)
- Payroll calculations from approved timesheets (improves payroll accuracy)
- High-volume monthly operations for invoices/timesheets
- Employee/vendor records + document handling
- Audit-friendly workflow trail across approvals → billing → payroll
- QuickBooks integration to reduce duplicate entry and reconcile faster
- E-sign integration to speed contracting and reduce paperwork loops
- Recruit → Connect integration to unify handoffs (candidate → employee/contractor)
- Handling complex real-world cases: approvals, exceptions, corrections
- Multi-rate structures and multi-client invoicing patterns
- Payroll edge cases and permissioning/access control needs
Core workflow
We built the system so that approved timesheets drive both invoice creation and payroll calculation:
1. Timesheets submitted by employees/contractors
2. Approvals by managers (creating the 'source of truth')
3. Auto-generate invoices from approved timesheets
4. Auto-calculate payroll from approved timesheets
5. Compliance tracking and document management throughout
This creates a unified loop: Timesheet → Approval → Invoice + Payroll → Compliance → Financial visibility
Key decisions
Tradeoff: separate workflows (timesheets in one system, invoices/payroll elsewhere) vs. one unified flow. Choice: build the system so approved timesheets drive both invoice creation and payroll calculation.
Tradeoff: speed vs traceability. Choice: automate invoice + payroll generation, while keeping approvals and changes traceable (so teams don't lose confidence).
Tradeoff: manual exports/imports vs tight integration. Choice: integrate QuickBooks for accounting and E-sign for agreements, and integrate with Vultus Recruit to connect recruiting → operations.
Impact
Technical depth
- Designed and scaled the platform to handle high-volume monthly throughput (thousands of timesheets and invoices)
- Built approval workflows + exception handling for real staffing ops complexity
- Created auto-generated invoices and payroll calculations from a consistent data model
- Handled multi-rate and multi-client billing realities
- Designed with strong auditability mindset (so ops + finance trust the outputs)
- Delivered integrations: QuickBooks, E-sign, and Recruit → Connect workflow
What I learned
- Back-office products win on accuracy, trust, and exception handling more than flashy UI.
- When finance and ops trust the workflow, adoption becomes natural.
- At scale, 'automation' isn't just speed - it's consistency + fewer mistakes.
Collaboration
- Engineering (architecture, scalability, reliability, integrations)
- Design (ops/finance workflows, speed + clarity, reducing cognitive load)
- Operations / Payroll / Accounts teams (edge cases, approvals, compliance expectations)
- Sales & Customer Success (onboarding, adoption, feedback loops)
Testimonial
“Vultus Connect unified our post-placement operations - timesheets, invoicing, and payroll all run from one trusted system now.”