HRMS overview — how the pieces fit together

ItzSEO ships a complete HR + attendance system built into the workspace. Every employee can punch in, request leave, and track overtime. Designated HR members can approve those requests, fix missed punches, and pull monthly reports. The workspace owner configures the policy — fiscal year, leave types, shifts, holidays, and approval workflows — once, and everything else follows from that.

Where to find it

Everything HRMS-shaped sits behind a single sidebar entry: HRMS. Click it to land on the hub at /hrms — a role-aware dashboard with cards for every surface (your punch state, leave balances, overtime, HR queues if you're HR, workspace setup if you're owner). Each card click-throughs to the full page where the work happens. Direct URLs like /me/leave or/hr/reports still work as bookmarks.

Who counts as an employee

An employee on the HR roster is a workspace member who has been added to at least one department in this workspace (and isn't a CLIENT-role portal user). Adding someone to a department from /settings/team puts them on the roster; removing their last department membership takes them off it.

What this means in practice:

Full-time staff get a department membership when they're onboarded → they're on HRMS.
External clients with portal access (CLIENT role) are always off the roster.
Vendor accounts, bookkeepers, advisors, freelancers given workspace access for one project — typically have NO department membership → off the roster.
If someone you expect to see on HR Attendance is missing, check /settings/team and confirm they have an active department membership.

New invitations make the distinction explicit upfront: the project Invite member modal opens with a Who are you inviting? picker — Employee or External client. Picking External locks the role to CLIENT so the invitee never accidentally lands on the team list. See “Manage the HR roster + add an HR manager” for the full triage flow if you need to fix a mistake after the fact.

The three audiences

The hub shows you only what you have permission to act on, so an executive sees the "For me" cards while HR + owner see additional sections.

Employees (everyone on the roster). Punch card on the hub + Projects dashboard, monthly attendance calendar at /me/attendance, leave at /me/leave, overtime at /me/overtime.
HR members. Workspace-wide attendance dashboard at /hr/attendance, leave queue at /hr/leave, overtime queue at /hr/overtime, reports at /hr/reports. A user counts as HR when they belong to a workspace department flagged "isHrDepartment", or when they are the workspace owner.
Workspace owners. One-time HR setup wizard at /settings/hr/setup, holiday calendar at /settings/hr/holidays, shift schedules at /settings/hr/shifts. Owners also count as HR everywhere, so this layer is purely about policy configuration.

The eight building blocks

Setup wizard — pick a starter pack (Indian agency, UK, US, etc.) that seeds your fiscal year, leave types, shifts, holidays, and approval workflow in one click.
Punch system — Clock In, Take a break, End break, Clock Out. Builds the work-session record that drives every other report.
Personal calendar — your month at a glance, with click-through to see every event on any day.
HR oversight — workspace-wide attendance dashboard plus per-employee drill-down. HR can also add retroactive entries for missed punches.
Leave system — apply, multi-stage approval workflow, balance tracking by fiscal year, attachment support for sick / exam leave.
Workspace holidays — paid holidays excluded from leave math, with optional and national variants.
Shifts — define when people are expected to work. Drives late detection, OT thresholds, and the nightly auto-close cron.
Overtime + comp-off — hours past your shift, on Sundays, or on holidays auto-generate OT entries. HR approval credits comp-off into your leave balance.

Key terms

Fiscal year (FY). Your accounting year for leave quotas. The Indian Agency pack starts FY on 1 April; US Startup starts 1 January. Quotas reset at the start of each FY.
Shift. The expected work window for an employee on a given day — start/end time, working days of the week, expected hours, OT threshold, grace minutes.
Comp-off. A leave-day credit you earn by working past your shift or on a day off. HR has to approve the OT entry first; the credit then sits in your COMP_OFF balance.
Retroactive entry. An HR-added attendance event for a past date — typically because the employee forgot to punch.
Workflow stage. Some leave types route through Manager → HR; others go straight to HR. Each pack sets sensible defaults.

New here? Read the rest of this section in order. Each article builds on the one before it.