DIGITALISATION
Time records do not close on time. New software is not the first decision.
Before you compare software vendors, follow a single month of time records from end to end. It is worth checking whether the blockage is in the tool or in the fact that nobody has the final word.
THE HUMX TEAM
~3 MIN READ
Take a hypothetical company, with production across three shifts and a few dozen people on site. Time records close three or four days late every month. Everyone agrees that „a system" is needed. Few can say, without looking it up, who validates the hours of an operator who changed shift halfway through the month.
The path of one month, step by step
There are four questions whose answer has to be a name, not a job title.
Who enters the data. The shift lead, at the end of the shift, or an administrator who receives paperwork the next day?
Who validates. Is there one person who says „these hours are correct", or is validation split between three people?
How corrections come in. Through which channel does a correction arrive, and until when is one still accepted?
Who confirms the close. Who declares the month closed, and from whom is nothing accepted after that point?
In our example, the last question has no answer. Corrections keep arriving until someone stops them by phone, and payroll calculates twice. No software solves that on its own: if the deadline is not set and owned, it will be missed inside the system too.
Three different things, often mixed up
Time-of-work records means who worked, when and how much, including overtime and absences. It is an employer obligation and the source for everything that follows.
Payroll calculation turns hours into money: allowances, deductions, contributions, payslips. It consumes the data from the records, but it is a separate process, with a different owner and a different deadline.
The employee register has nothing to do with monthly hours. It holds contract data and its changes. From 1 January 2026, REGES-ONLINE replaced the REVISAL application, according to the ITM Dâmbovița announcement of 21.01.2026. The frequently asked questions and the official guide are published on reges.inspectiamuncii.ro. Concrete deadlines and obligations are checked there, not in articles.
Confusing the three produces the wrong solutions: a payroll module is bought for a records problem, or a time-recording tool is sought for a reporting problem.
A simple test: take the last closed month and ask who answered the complaint of someone who was missing two hours. If the answer came from payroll, check whether the team only passed on the explanation or had to repair the time records themselves. Correct the error at its source and follow the calculation through to the update.
A pilot on a single workflow
Take one department and one month, note four indicators before any change and compare them after two complete cycles.
How to run the pilot
Before rolling out across the whole company, take one department and one month. Measure, on your own data, four simple things: how many days pass between month end and closing, how many corrections appear after the first validation, how many hours people spend collecting and checking hours, and how many employee questions about hours reach HR.
You note them before any change and measure again after two full cycles. The comparison is with your own earlier situation, not with a percentage promised in a proposal. If the indicators do not improve, check the process, how the tool is used and the quality of the data again.
Often the first improvement comes before any software: one person is put in charge of validation, a deadline is set for corrections, and a single channel is agreed for them. Only then does the question of which system to buy make sense — and with the measurements in hand, that question becomes much easier.
Shall we follow one month of time records together?
That is how a project in HR digitalisation. If you would rather not keep the process in house at all, we can talk about outsourcing and payroll.
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