How a small team in Costa Rica stopped stressing over payslips and saved hours each month

We're a small company. My wife and I are the owners. We have four operational employees and one customer service agent. That's it. The company is 18 years old. I'm the general manager, the public figure. But she's the boss. She runs the administration. For years, I've been trying to take as much work off her hands as possible.

We pay twice a month, on the 15th and 30th. That means calculating overtime, deductions, time off, and getting payslips out to every employee. In the early days, that was all manual. My wife would go through a notebook where overtime and deductions had been recorded by hand. She'd enter a few numbers into an Excel sheet to do the calculations. Then she'd take that information and write it into a Word template. Print two copies. Have the employee sign the hard copy. File the other one. One payslip could take 15 minutes when you factor in the calculations, the writing, and the filing.

We only have four or five employees. But do the math. Twice a month, every month, for years.

Document Studio sent blank quotations and never warned us

I've always been inclined to use technology. Over the years I tried different tools to automate what I could. I used Document Studio for quotations. Many of the quotes we sent to customers were blank because the workflow didn't run or didn't work. We didn't get any warnings. I'd find out later that a customer never received a proper quote. Things had to be done two or three times. It was very hectic.

There was always a rush at the last moment. Payslips not sent. Quotations empty. I kept telling myself: at this point in time, there has to be a solution for this.

I found Portant and it just started working

I honestly can't remember how I found Portant. But right away, something felt different. I always say my nose is more of a quality than a defect. I had a feeling this might be it.

At the beginning, we had some of the same issues. The workflow didn't start when my wife was going to do the payslips. James from Portant was very helpful and patient. I know I can be annoying asking questions. But he stuck with it. And then, all of a sudden, it just started working smoothly.

Now it's not a concern for me anymore. I turn the workflow off when we're not in a pay period. We only run it on payday. My wife does the payment data, and the rest is done. That's what I want.

Google Sheets calculates the salary, Portant generates the payslip

Over time I built what we call our operations logbook. Employees use a Google Form to register every movement during the day, including when they check in and check out. That feeds a Google Sheet where salary is calculated. By the 15th of every month, the numbers are already there. All my wife has to do is check them, transfer some data to another sheet, and Portant takes it and generates the payslips.

I found that using Google Slides gave me a better end product in terms of how the payslip looks. I can structure the document the way I want. The payslip is saved as a PDF and sent to the employee. It's done.

Most of what I do, I learn by doing. I didn't take courses. I just sat down and figured it out. The setup was intuitive. I made the connection, transferred the data fields, and it worked. Using Slides also let me do some design work. I like that kind of thing.

Reliable means I don't have to think about it

The difference now is that I don't worry about it. Before, there was always something. A payslip not sent. A quotation that went out blank. Something done twice because the first time didn't work. Now I know the workflow runs. When payday comes, I turn it on, my wife enters the data, and it's handled.

I'm also considering bringing quotations back into Portant. We use HubSpot, not to its full potential yet, but it's there. I'd like to use Portant as the bridge to send quotations. It's a lot more reliable than what we had before.

If you're a small team and payslips or documents are eating your time, start for free at portant.co.