What should a small-team operations dashboard show first?
Small teams can end up checking one sheet for attendance, another for hours, another for leave, then assembling a payroll estimate separately. I wanted to see whether those handoffs are easier to inspect in one editable workspace.
I put together a sample Workforce Box with Overview / Attendance / Timesheets / Leave / Payroll. It includes sample rows and CSV import/export; the payroll page is an hours-based estimate only. It is not live attendance tracking, a payroll integration, or payroll processing.
If you work with this flow, try editing a sample attendance or timesheet row in the demo: https://blockmade.tech/?utm_source=indie_hackers&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=phase0b_100activated&utm_content=ih_overview_workforce
Which one change would you expect to see on the Overview, and what would you still have to check in a separate spreadsheet?
Really relatable. How much time do you put into this each week?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?
Exceptions, not totals. The three I'd want on the Overview: hours logged on a day someone is marked absent or on leave, approved leave that overlaps a submitted timesheet, and anyone whose week is still missing entries by Friday. Totals I can get from any sheet. The mismatches are what I'd otherwise find by hand the night before payroll.
What I'd still check in a separate spreadsheet: overtime rules and public holidays. They differ by country and contract, and if they're hard-coded wrong, the estimate looks right while being off.
Exceptions over totals is a clear requirement. The current Workforce demo has separate Attendance, Leave, Timesheets, and an hours-based payroll estimate, but it does not flag those mismatches or model country- and contract-specific overtime/public-holiday rules. Those checks should remain explicit rather than making the estimate look more authoritative than it is. Do teams you see keep the rules in a separate table, or inside each employee/contract record?
A separate table, in the setups I've seen hold up. Something like a rule set per country (sometimes per contract type) with an effective-from date, and each employee or contract just points at a rule set.
The date matters most. Rules change on a day: a new public holiday, a different overtime threshold. You want last month's payroll to still compute with last month's rules, and a rerun of March to give March's answer. Rules copied into each contract work until the first change, and then you're editing forty records and hoping you caught them all.
Keeping the estimate honest the way you describe fits that too: "no rule set assigned" is itself an exception worth showing on the Overview.
This resonates a lot — how long did it take before you saw any real signal on it?
Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it for later.
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Thanks for sharing the numbers, that makes it much easier to follow.
Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Interesting. How are you measuring whether it is working?
Whatever you open every morning without thinking. If it's not that, it's decoration.
Agreed—the first view should earn its place by answering the question someone checks each morning. In the demo, I put Overview ahead of separate Attendance, Timesheets, Leave, and Payroll pages; I’m testing whether that hierarchy matches a real workflow. Your point is a useful test: what do you usually need to know first?