# HR reporting and reminders in BambooHR Scheduled leave reports, approval reminders and employee-change notifications from BambooHR, delivered in Slack and email. Process automation Human resources Built with Rachel Tabone Hall, Head of HR. ## Results returned to the HR team 5 hours a week leave requests still waiting after a week, down from 1 in 4 1 in 20 monthly leave reports delivered on schedule 6 of 6 IT hears about employee changes, previously up to a week Same day Measured over the first six months after go-live, against four weeks of logged time before it. **Four schedules, one reviewer** Each task runs on its own day and goes to the channel its recipient already reads. HR sees every report before anyone acts on it. ## The problem The team needed a repeatable way to prepare leave data, remind managers about pending approvals and notify IT of relevant employee changes. The recurring work crossed three groups. Managers approved time off, HR prepared leave information for payroll, and IT needed to know about starters, leavers and role changes. Before the project the HR team rebuilt the same information by hand. Someone exported leave data from BambooHR, tidied it in a spreadsheet and sent it on. Managers were chased for approvals one message at a time. That took about six and a half hours a week, and it was easy to miss. A late monthly report held up the payroll check. A leave request could sit unapproved for two weeks because nobody noticed it, and IT found out about a new starter when someone remembered to tell them. Rachel and the team helped sort the tasks into two groups: the ones that could run on a schedule and the ones that still needed a person to decide. ## What we built We mapped the scheduled tasks with Rachel Tabone Hall, Head of HR, and connected BambooHR to the channels the team already uses. - Send managers pending leave approvals scoped to a seven-day window. - Prepare the monthly leave report for HR. - Run carryover reminders, absence-pattern flags and zero-hour reports on schedule. - Notify IT of non-confidential employee-profile changes. ## How we built it 1. Listed every recurring task with the HR team: who needs it, which BambooHR fields it uses and when it is due. 2. Agreed the data boundaries. Managers see their own team's pending requests, and IT receives non-confidential profile changes only. 3. Connected BambooHR to Slack and email, with each report and reminder on its own schedule. 4. Ran the schedules beside the manual process for one month and compared the outputs line by line. 5. Handed over with a named owner, a log of every run and a way to pause any schedule. ## What changed Reports and reminders run on a schedule. Managers still approve leave, and the HR team reviews the information before acting on it. Reports and reminders now arrive without anyone asking for them. A manager gets one message a week listing the requests waiting on them, scoped to a seven-day window, with names and dates. HR checks the monthly report instead of building it. The approval backlog shrank because the reminder is specific. Requests waiting more than a week went from about 1 in 4 to 1 in 20, and the monthly report has been ready for the payroll check every month since go-live. What we underestimated was the cleanup. About a third of the first month went into fixing BambooHR records the reports exposed, such as missing managers and wrong leave allowances. The reports have been clean since. ## How the workflow fits together BambooHR supplies scheduled reports, reminders and relevant employee updates ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: BambooHR supplies scheduled reports, reminders and relevant employee updates B[BambooHR] --> R[Leave and absence reports] B --> M[Approval and carryover reminders] B --> I[Non-confidential employee changes] R --> H[HR reviews the information] M --> A[Managers and employees act] I --> T[IT updates its processes] ``` ## What we measured and how Each figure in the results block comes from one of these measurements. | What we measured | How | Result | | --- | --- | --- | | HR time on reports and reminders | The team logged time on these tasks for four weeks before go-live, then again in months three and six. | From 6.5 hours a week to 1.5, so 5 hours returned | | Leave requests waiting more than seven days | Counted from the request dates in BambooHR every Monday. | From 1 in 4 to 1 in 20 | | Monthly report delivered on time | The run log compared with the payroll cut-off date each month. | 6 of 6 on schedule | | Delay before IT learned of a change | The change date in BambooHR compared with the date of the IT ticket. | Same working day, from up to a week | ## Planning a similar project These are questions to resolve with your team before implementing a similar workflow. | Decision | What to establish | | --- | --- | | Report ownership | Who uses each report, which period should it cover, and when do they need it for payroll or HR review? | | Data boundaries | Which employee fields may reach HR, managers or IT? Agree the permitted fields and recipients before connecting the channels. | | Exceptions | Who checks missing data, failed runs or unusual absence patterns? A reminder needs a named owner who can act on it. | ## Questions about this workflow Does the workflow approve leave automatically? No. It prepares reports and sends reminders. Managers keep the leave-approval decision, and HR reviews information before acting on it. Does IT receive the full employee record? No. The workflow sends non-confidential profile changes that IT needs, such as a start date or a role change. A similar implementation should list its allowed fields and recipients before anything is connected. How would you measure the value of a similar HR workflow? Log the time spent preparing each report and chasing approvals before you start. Then compare preparation time, missed runs and approval delays over several reporting cycles. The figures on this page came from that comparison: four weeks of logged time before go-live, then months three and six. ## Discuss your workflow. Tell us which systems your team uses and where the work gets stuck. [Discuss your project](https://www.aigentcy.com/contact/) [Process automation](https://www.aigentcy.com/services/process-automation/) [Back to case studies](https://www.aigentcy.com/case-studies/)