“Solve a real problem and the world is yours.”
- Aaron Patzer, Founder Mint.com

All of us would have ups and downs at some point in our lives. Some of us overcome the tough situations with sheer grit, while some just succumb to them. What we need to remember is that almost every problem has a solution, we just need to figure it out.

And, just like human beings, organizations too face problems as they grow bigger in strength and size. The 2 most common problems every organization faces is “Communication/Collaboration & HR Management”. And, we’ve resolved to solve them forever.

Communication & Collaboration: the essence of every organization is communicating & collaborating. Teams/Co-workers rely heavily on chats, emails, meetings, etc., and these options are definitely very useful. However they are often not effective, relevant or easy in every situation.

HR Management: human resources form the organization, and often growing companies are unable to cope with the increasing HR tasks/operations that come with bigger teams, and great responsibilities.

These problems gave birth to the idea of sumHR. sumHR is a SaaS platform that will help you “Communicate, Collaborate & Uncomplicate Your Work Place”.

And this is our first official shout out to the world at large – watch out, “We’re on our way to rid you of all things inefficient, unscalable, and un-cool in your organization”!

When you start a business, you never know where it will lead you. Sometimes, while running one business, you strike an idea for another – and that’s what happened to us at Sutra. When we started off with Sutra, we knew that we will do something different, something that revolutionizes the world of recruitment. We did manage to do a ‘good job’ so far.

However, while running this recruitment business, we met several hundred entrepreneurs, HR professionals/managers, and it was during these meetings we realized that finding the right candidate is just the beginning. These startups/small/medium businesses were also facing a challenge when it came to managing the basic or routine HR operations for their company workforce. This is what led us to our ‘eureka moment’.

In December 2010—after three years of running Sutra and earning the love and respect of hundreds of happy clients—we decided to work on something that would better enable our clients to manage their talent (in a majority of cases, supplied by us). After doing thorough research, we zeroed in on the idea of offering a SaaS-based HRMS (Human Resource Management System) to small and medium-sized businesses.

Though we came from a non-technology background, serving technology startups equipped us, to a certain extent, to face challenges. At Sutra, we believe that we should always focus on quality rather than quantity. So for spearheading such a monumental project we needed someone who was not only an expert in product technology but also as passionate about the project as we were.

Just like all good things in India, we got our guy—Siddharth Gomez—in Kolkata, after searching for nearly a quarter! We are Sutra and in the business of supplying the best talent, and we know when we find a gem. Wanting him to join us, we rented out an apartment in Mumbai for him and sent him pictures of it. Impressed, he decided to fly down and thus began the endeavor that is sumHR.

According to us, the product would sum up all the activities of HR, and that’s why we called it sumHR. Being a part of The Morpheus, the Indian equivalent of Y Combinator, Sameer and Nandini were part of our think tank in guiding us towards the product vision/roadmap and branding initiatives.

Anyways, the dough has been kneaded and the oven is hot. We will soon be releasing sumHR to the world. Until then, keep watching this space for more updates.

What happens when two entrepreneurs who happen to be pioneers in the recruitment industry and a software developer get on a conference call for an hour? You get one of the best cloud-based HRIS (Human Resource Management System) ever made – sumHR.

sumHR is a SaaS-based solution that is now in the pre-launch stage. According to us, it is Human Resource Information Simplified! We know that you have been eagerly waiting for the launch. Just hold your horses for a while as our team is busy applying the final touches to the beta product. Till then you can read the feature list below:

Employee Data Bank
Store, update and refer to all employee data from anywhere. Employees can manage and update their own profiles too.

Attendance, Leave and Payroll Management
This is the most basic HR task but often gets very tough to track and maintain when teams grow bigger. Now, ensure accurate tracking of employee attendance and leaves in a couple of clicks.

Employee and Performance Dashboard
Enable employees to view reports, HR Policies, upcoming events, their leave status, etc. Now allow them to cut your HR efforts, and bring efficiency in employee management. Empower them with the right tools and you’ll be surprised at the time and money you save!

Security and Back-up
Our state-of-the-art data centers stores all your data under a 3-level strong security mechanism, with technicians supervising them 24/7. Data is backed up every 24 hours, and stored in 3 different locations around the world, to ensure multiple retrieval points.

Reports and Analysis
Generate simple, yet powerful reports to analyze your HR operations. We will give you a bird’s eye view, as well as a ‘hawk eye” view of your entire HR. Optimize your HR, maximize your performance.

Document Sharing
Upload and store important policy documents, training manuals and tax forms in a secured manner. Share them with relevant employees to keep everyone in the loop.

Privacy & Confidentiality
We have extremely stringent privacy policies and high level of confidentiality agreements in place. Every piece of your information is completely secure and private.

The great American chemist Linus Pauling once said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Well, we decided to put that theory to test by using the crowdsourcing method to design the logo of sumHR, by holding a contest on LogoTournament.com. At stake was an amount of USD 250 and the privilege to design a logo for one of the best SaaS-based solutions for HRMS.

Our design brief to the contestants was simple – we told them we wanted the logo to communicate these things:
1. User-friendly, easy to use, and simple.
2. Save time, money, and efforts.
3. Automate, streamline, and manage processes.

We then explained them that sumHR was targeted towards HR professionals working in startups / SMEs as well as small business owners and entrepreneurs. The adopters of sumHR would be HR executives who traditionally use manual methods of storing and managing HR data (for example: spreadsheet applications like MS Excel). These users would also most likely be familiar with using other online tools like email, CRM, payroll software, etc.

To further enable the contestants to design better, we mentioned research that points out HR departments have a stronger female presence than male. The contestants were also informed that sumHR service is first being sold to companies in India and the US, and the platform would then cater to a global audience.

Though the contest started off slow, it quickly picked up momentum. We were continually going to LogoTournament.com and posting comments and interacting with the participants. Finally after just seven days and 141 logos, we chose the winner. Yep, you are right. The current logo that you see was the winning entry.

As a startup ourselves, we would recommend that crowdsourcing activities such as logo designing surely helps in getting better quality work at cheaper price.

Once we got sumHR up and running, the next logical step was to establish various media channels to publicize the product. In addition, for a SaaS-based solution like ours, we continually need to broadcast product updates through various channels, including Twitter. However, when we tried signing up with the handle @sumhr, we realized that an individual in the US was already using it, but not posting any tweets. But our hearts were set on that particular handle only as it was relevant to the sumHR brand.

So how do we claim the Twitter handle?
Being an internet company, we decided to take a non-aggressive yet professional approach to get that username. First of all we went and scoured the web for information on the policies related to claiming a Twitter handle. We came across this page by Twitter which was very helpful. There were other useful sources too. You can head over here and here for more information (links updated) on the subject. After thorough researching, we decided to take this matter to Twitter as we were sure they would understand our plight and help us out.

Our Interaction with Twitter
We wrote to Twitter via a web form, first explaining what business we do and the situation we had at hand. We then informed them how critical tweets would be for our future marketing efforts. We requested if the individual could either trade the handle @sum_hr with us, or let go off @sumhr for any other available handles.

We got a reply from Twitter in about a week’s time. They wrote back saying we had to confirm that we want Twitter to replace our existing username, @sum_hr, with the requested username, @sumhr. This was necessary for them to process the requested inactive username transfer. In addition, Twitter did explain to us that they wouldn’t be unable to merge profiles or migrate data (tweets, following, or followers) from one account to another, and our previous username will then be released immediately for use by other accounts.

Immediately we replied to Twitter confirming the details and in three days they replied to us saying, “We have now associated @sumhr with the account you provided.” Yay!

And this is how we got our handle. Oh, in case you want to follow us on Twitter, click here.

Hello people! We have been busy. In addition to getting a new logo designed and reclaiming our Twitter handle, we were working hard on something really awesome. You guessed it right. The first version of sumHR is up and running. Below is the first screenshot of sumHR (alpha):

The server side technology of sumHR comprises Yii PHP Framework and NodeJS while the technology used for the database is MySQL and MongoDB. For the features, our programmers are brainstorming and tapping away on their keyboards to ensure that an awesome experience awaits you. We are also exploring new color themes, maybe green and grey that would complement the new logo.

Of course, feel free to share your thoughts too. We would love to hear your expectations from an HRMS in the comments section below.

We have received a lot of feedback from sumHR users about the Leave Policy feature. We do agree that managing leaves is important as it is directly related to employee happiness, and even payroll. As labor laws in India are quite complex, we decided to first do an in-depth research on the various leave policies in place in Indian companies and then put on our thinking caps. In all, we researched over 20 types of different leave policies present in India before enhancing the Leave Policy feature in sumHR. We have now developed and included a host of flexibilities to customize leave policies extensively. Leave Policies such as Prorated, Accrual, Half Day, Unused Leaves Carryover, Intervening Holidays, Applying for Previous Dates, Clubbing with others, and Over Utilization have been added. Do let us know what you think about the new Leave Policy enhancements in sumHR.

All right folks, the boffins here at sumHR have worked their magic again and come up with a real neat feature for employee reimbursements. On the sidebar, users can click Reimbursements (duh!) and then request repayment for official expenses incurred during work. In addition to entering details such as Date, Item Name, and Item Price, the supporting documents can also be uploaded. It also lists the Approved, Pending, and Rejected claims.

Feel free to post your comments on the Reimbursements feature below.

When we say HRIS is Human Resource Information Simplified, we really mean it. Don’t believe us? Then check out these enhancements that we have just made to sumHR. We are sure it will make your HR management activity a lot easier:

Personal Documents
Users can add and submit their personal documents via sumHR. Just head over to My Profile and click ‘Add New Document’. Documentation files such as .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .jpg, etc are supported. You can upload multiple documents in one go. A text box has also been provided to describe the uploaded document.

Dependents
Users can list their dependents on sumHR. Go to My Profile and click ‘Add Dependent’. Important information such as First Name, Last Name, Relation Type, and Date of Birth about your dependent can now be entered in the database.

Pay Slips in PDF
Users will be able to download their pay slips in the PDF format.

In addition to the above enhancements, we have also revamped the Org Structure. The interface has been modified to make it easier for the users to comprehend the company hierarchy. Users marked in dark green have reportees and the hierarchy path is shown in orange.

A few weeks ago, we had enhanced the Leave Policy feature in sumHR with various flexibility options. Now, based on the detailed feedback and suggestions from you—our customers—we have further enhanced and introduced a few nifty features in leave policies. Here are the details for the same.

1. Set Approval Levels for Leave Applications
Earlier sumHR had a default setting that sent leave applications to the immediate manager and the manager’s manager. Now an Approval Level option allows the Admin to set the option for employees to send their leaves to either the immediate manager only or to both (first level manager and second manager).

2. Loop Anyone When Applying for Leaves
Previously, users could only include the manager and the manager’s immediate supervisor when applying for leaves. But now employees can include anyone they think needs to be informed about their leave request, be it HR or a co-worker. This enables better coordination and communications between key members of the team.

3. Auto CC in Leave Policies
Admins can now set single/multiple employees as auto CC on every leave application. This enhancement is useful for managers, as when one team member applies for the leave, other team members are also in the loop by default.

You know the drill – you give us a feedback on the HR management system and our awesome engineers intuitively find a solution. Yep, we heard you when you wanted more features in the current leave management system. We now have added a new feature on sumHR that allows an Admin to export data related to employee leaves.

Just head to the dashboard on sumHR and click on ‘Export Data’ (just below ‘Import Data’) on the left navigation bar. You will then be able to select the time frame for which the employee leave data is required. After filling in the relevant details, just click on ‘Download Leave Report’ to download an MS Excel spreadsheet that will include information such as Employee Name, Department, Office Location, Leave Duration, Working Days, Leave Type, Approved By, and Paid/Unpaid Leave.

We are sure you are raring to go and try out the Export Leave Data feature. Do let us know about it in the comments section below.

As you very well know, the boffins over at sumHR are continuously researching and finding new ways to improve the user experience. In the last few weeks, we have introduced many new features and enhancements for Admin-level users. From a navigation point of view, we observed that it may get difficult for Admins to find the plethora of features.

The sumHR team decided to innovatively manage the situation by developing a whole page that will enable Admins to manage and control all functions related to the HR management.

So what exactly should you look forward to? Well, first things first, at the bottom of the left navigation panel, you will find ‘Setup Company’ under Manage. Clicking there will lead you to the freshly made setup page that features the following functions:

Company: Add/edit your company profile, departments, and office locations.

Employees: Add/edit employee type, and set employee number either using our automatic system or fill numbers manually if you are already following a set process.

Leaves: Create leave policies, manage leaves and holidays, and set the approval level and auto CC.

Attendance (coming soon): Manage shifts and log options.

Salary: Manage salary structures and salary calculation style.

Permissions: Create new roles and manage them, and assign employees to their respective group – Administrator or Manager.

We know we have made your life easier, but you don’t have to thank us. Instead use the comments section below to give your valuable feedback.

Being from the HR industry, we at sumHR know how difficult the job of an HR professional is. But we are sure you are enjoying the sumHR HRMS experience and must be at ease using the features we have developed to offer you a smooth experience, when managing your HR functions.

At sumHR, our endeavor has always been to go beyond the call of duty to ensure that our customers efficiently use the product. So here are two tips that will enable you to better communicate and interact with your employees on sumHR:

1. Groups
The ‘Groups’ feature, so niftily embedded in the software, not only allows you to create official Work groups but also hobby-based communities called as Interest groups. Our experience with multiple clients shows that a platform to allow employees showcase and/or share their non-professional skills and talents keeps them engaged and thus happy. Bonus tip: Almost everyone loves music, some -prefer to listen, while some love to make it. A ‘Music’ group will surely engage your employees and also act as a team-bonding exercise.

2. Ask
Right from the time the Greeks popularized democracy, polling is an activity that has begged proper tools. As you know we have already incorporated the ‘Ask’ feature that allows you to ask questions and receive almost instantaneous feedback. Again, from our experience with clients and even our own, employees appreciate it when they are made part of the decision making process. Regardless of the management-style at your organization, you can always use this feature either to gauge employee morale or ask opinions on small but important issues such as venue for picnics or the cuisine for that quarterly party!

These two tips on effectively using some of the awesome sumHR features will surely augment your user experience. That’s why we call it Human Resource Management Simplified.

And yes, one more bonus piece of information as you have been kind enough to read this article: The boffins here are furiously typing away lines and lines of code for two new awesome features. Keep watching this space for more details.

Last month, we gave you the option of exporting the Leaves data. Well, it goes without saying that we would have to allow you to import your Leaves data too!

Yes, as an administrator, you can import past leave records of all employees in one go, by uploading a .csv file. However, before importing any leaves, you will have to create your leave policies in the system. Once created, you can go to the setup page via the dashboard by clicking Setup Company. Do ensure that the CSV file has the following information:

• employee email id
• leave policy name (as in sumHR)
• leave reason message
• from date
• to date
• paid/unpaid

On the setup page, click on Leaves (under Imports) to head to the Import Leaves Page. You can then click on Browse to select the CSV file from your computer. In case the first row of your CSV file has field names, then tick the box. You also have the option to select the date format and the delimiters. After selecting these preferences, click the ‘Upload CSV’ button.

Do let us know your feedback about the Import Leaves enhancement in the comments section below.

It’s not just the technology part that the sumHR engineers keep on enhancing. We pay a lot of attention to the UI/UX (user interface / user experience) too. We have just enhanced the UI of the Company Directory by giving the listing an über look.

Here is a gist of what you can expect inside the new sumHR Company Directory:

Smart Search

The highlight of this enhancement is the way you can search for employees. Enter a search term and the users related to that search term will be listed. It can be anything from the profile – an area in the city, a phone number string, etc. For example, if you want to search for all employees with phone numbers starting with ‘555’, just type ‘555’ and see the magic on your screen.

Quick Filters

On the right panel, we have included filters. Now you can filter employees by Employee Type, Department, and Office Location. You can also sort employees in an ascending and descending order by First Name or Last Name. What’s more, employees with uncategorized type, department, or location can also be listed.

Bulk Actions

The eagerly awaited Bulk Action feature has finally been launched! You can now use Smart Search and/or Smart Filters to list out employees and update/change the Employee Type, Department, and Office Location in one go.

Note: Soon, bulk actions will allow you to trigger performance reviews, change attendance shifts, managers, etc. Keep watching this space for more details.

And yes, feel free to use the comments section for any suggestions and feedback.

Click to enlarge

In the last few months, a lot of the startups and small businesses which signed up for our HR Software had one common feedback (or request for feature) – Attendance. Well, we’ve got some very good news for everyone using sumHR. Now, employees can now log in their attendance using our new Attendance feature on sumHR.

To access the feature, you can click on ‘Attendance’ under HR tools on the left navigation bar. Once on the Attendance page you can Clock In and Clock Out using the button next to the navigation bar. The system takes the ‘first in’ and the ‘last out’. In case, you are taking a break, you can Clock Out and then Clock In again, once you return. The Attendance page will also display your shift name, timings, and duration. You can also check your attendance details for the last 7, 30, and 90 days.

HR software bonus tip: Don’t want to forget to Clock In? Open this link in your browser: https://sutra.sumhr.com/attendance/attendance. Then go to Start >> All Programs >> Startup. Right click and select Open All Users. Drag the link to the folder. Now every time you start your PC, the attendance page will open automatically for you to Clock In.

To make the user interface (UI) even more user friendly, our team is now working to include a timer and dashboard access, and many more nifty enhancements. Keep watching this space for more details.

Do let us know your feedback about the Attendance feature of the sumHR software in the comments section below.

Click to enlarge

We have just launched the Attendance feature for sumHR HR software. Users will now be able to record and save their Clock In and Clock Out times. We are sure you would be excited to try out the new feature.

As an Admin, you will have to first set it up for your users, according to your company policies and structure. To do this:

Go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Shifts (Under Attendance) to create the shifts.

You can define the Shift Name, Shift Timings, and the employees who will work in that shift. In case, the shift timings are such that they encompass two different days, then select the Next Day option. You can also define the Grace Time for late marks as well as the time duration before/after which an employee can punch in/out. Click Submit to create the shift.

The Attendance management system also allows you to restrict the login to a particular IP address.

Go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Log Option (Under Attendance) to add IP addresses.

Click on the Add IP button to enter the Network Name, IP address range, and the Shifts. Click Submit.

And that’s not all! We are also working to accommodate different time zones, statistics, email notifications, color identifiers, editing of logs by HR/Admin, linking with leaves and company holidays, etc.

Do let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

A few weeks ago, we launched the Attendance management feature of sumHR. We know you’ve enjoyed it, as per the feedback and suggestions received so far. Here is one more reason to rejoice. We’ve enhanced the Attendance feature of sumHR software and now you can look forward to three more things:

Bulk Import Attendance

You can now bulk import employee attendance details downloaded from biometric devices or saved in a spreadsheet.

Go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Attendance (Under Import)

Once you are on the Import Attendance page, click on the Choose File to select the CSV file. Select the relevant date format, time format and the delimiter, and then click on Upload CSV button.

Export Attendance

We have now configured sumHR to enable you to download the attendance data of your employees, which you can use to monitor as well as analyze trends.

Go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Attendance (Under Export)

Select the duration for which you want the Attendance report and then click Download. Though there are 3 default options, 1, 3, 6 months, you can also set a custom time frame.

Edit Attendance

As an admin, you can edit the attendance details of the employees on sumHR.

Go to Company Directory (under HR Tools)

Click on the employee whose attendance details you want to edit. Select More
Options and then choose View Attendance Log. You can then click ‘Edit’ option on the respective date rows.

We are sure these enhancements of the sumHR attendance feature would make your HR management tasks a lot easier. Feel free to share your feedback/suggestions in the comments section below.

As more and more people start using sumHR, we are getting diverse sets of requests for features. Well, we agree that some of them are quite important keeping in mind how attendance is closely related to payroll. At sumHR, we are on a mission to make HR management hassle free. Keeping this objective in mind, we’ve recently added some exciting new enhancements to the Attendance feature.

You can now configure Attendance Policies when you setup a new shift. Go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Shifts (Under Attendance). Click on Create Shift to add a new Shift or click “Edit” next to existing shifts to make changes. After you have finished filling in the shift details, go to the Attendance Policy section.

Attendance Cycle
Depending on your company policy, you can set the attendance cycle to either “Calendar Year” or “Financial Year”. This would generally be the same as the “Leave cycle” mentioned in leave policies.

Mark-In Policy
There are two options available for Mark-In Policy. As per the requirements, you can either choose “Both In & Out Time” option that makes it mandatory for the employee to clock his/her in and out times, or the “In Time” option which makes it mandatory for the employee only to clock the In Time.

Leave Deduction Policy
This option allows you to deduct a leave in case employee doesn’t mark his/her attendance (clock in or clock out) for a particular day, when there’s no leave applied for or a public/weekly off too.

Deduct Leaves From
In case you have chosen to “Enable” the Leave Deduction Policy, this option allows you to select the type of leave that you want to deduct from the employee’s account.

Max Optional Holiday Policy
You can choose the maximum number of optional holidays that can be taken by an employee.

NOTE for existing customers: By default, the Attendance Cycle is set to Calendar Year, Mark In Policy is set to Both In & Out Time, Leave Deduction Policy is set to Disable, and Max Optional Holiday Policy is set to 0. Users who have already created the shifts can make these new changes by editing the shifts. In case you want these changes to reflect retrospectively, kindly write to us at support@sumhr.com or call on +91 922 3131 202.

The modern-day company that offers a lot of flexibility to employees when it comes to HR policies leaves also needs tools to ensure efficient tracking of these policies. Leave policies are probably the most primary aspects in HR policy management. This becomes even more crucial for a company with many departments and different types of employees, which means that there is no ‘one size fits all’ policy.

Our engineers have enhanced the Leave Management features of sumHR to accommodate this pressing need. You can now restrict a Leave type to gender, department, type, or location. Just go to Setup Company (under Manage, Left Navigation bar) >> Create Leave Policy (Under Leaves). This is in addition to the other options for Leaves that were already present in the system.

NOTE for existing customers: In case you want these changes to reflect retrospectively for the Leaves section, kindly write to us at support@sumhr.com or call on +91 922 3131 202.