“Who is on site today?”
Attendance lives in notebooks and WhatsApp messages. You find out who was absent when the month is already over.
Business management system
Run your people, pay, books and operations from one system. On your own server.
Keelsum brings HR records, attendance, leave, payroll, accounting, safety compliance and hiring into a single system, and it is installed on your own hosting, so your data never leaves your control.
Installed on your serverWorks on any phoneAccounting built in
Interactive — scroll to explore, or click for the full demoInteractive — scroll to explore, or tap for the full demo
Your server, your data
Installed on hosting you own or control.
Payroll built in
Tax, pension, loans and payslips, with rates you set. Ready for PAYE, pension and NHF in Nigeria.
Clock in by location
Site check-in by GPS or QR code, even offline.
One login for everyone
HR, managers, staff and your accountant, each with their own view.
The problem
Sound familiar?
Most growing companies run people operations on a mix of spreadsheets, paper files, WhatsApp groups and memory. It works, until it doesn't.
Certificates that quietly expire
A safety certificate lapses and nobody notices until a client audit, or an incident.
Payroll that takes days and still has errors
Tax bands, pension, loan repayments and unpaid leave calculated by hand, then checked by hand, then argued about.
Leave and approvals by phone call
Requests get lost. Managers approve things they cannot see. Nobody knows who is covering while the manager is away.
Staff files in a cabinet, or in five folders
Contracts, IDs and bank details spread across cupboards, laptops and inboxes. One resignation, and it is a scramble.
Your people data on someone else’s servers
Cloud HR tools keep your staff records, salaries and IDs on a vendor’s platform, under their rules and their pricing changes.
You do not need more tools. You need one system that already fits how you work.
The solution
One system for the whole employee journey
From the day someone applies to the day they leave, everything about them is in one place, and everything that needs doing gets done. Follow one person, Ngozi, from the day she applies to the day she leaves. Press Next when you are ready, or just watch.
- Hire. Ngozi applies, and HR sees her straight away
- Onboard. Her first day, and nothing is forgotten
- Work. She clocks in at the site gate
- Get paid. Pay day, without the spreadsheet
- Stay safe. Cleared to work, and kept that way
- Grow. Goals, a review, a next step
- Leave well. When she moves on, it ends cleanly
Ngozi Uche
IT Support Officer
One record. Seven stages. Nothing to chase.
Everything that happened to Ngozi, from her offer to her exit, sat in one place, and most of it happened without anyone having to remember.
- 1 recordfrom the first interview to the last day
- 7 stageshire, onboard, work, get paid, stay safe, grow, leave well
- On your serverher data never leaves your control
Features
Everything HR, operations and finance need
Complete enough to replace your spreadsheets, simple enough that people actually use it.
Everything in one place
People, attendance, leave, payroll, safety, hiring, performance and events, connected.
People records that stay current
Profiles, departments, reporting lines, an organisation chart, contract and remote staff, nationality and next of kin, as cards or a table, with a quick look at anyone without leaving the list. Keelsum shows what each record is missing and asks the person to fill it in, in one click. Every photo is checked against passport-photo rules, so you know it will do for an ID card. Import your staff sheet in minutes, and export to Excel or PDF.
Leave that approves itself along the right chain
Staff request from their phone; managers approve; HR gives final sign-off when needed. Hand over approvals to a colleague while you are away, and the system tells them.
Recruitment from vacancy to first day
Post a vacancy, move candidates through screening and interview, send an offer with the contract attached, and let the candidate accept from a private link. Hire them, and their record and onboarding checklist are created for you.
Letters and documents, without the printing
Employment confirmation, reference and warning letters from templates. Staff can request one, read it, and confirm it in the portal. Share a contract or document with the employee when you choose.
Clear, fair performance records
Set goals, write reviews, and let staff read their review, add comments and confirm they have seen it. Keep disciplinary records in the right place.
Work conversations out of personal WhatsApp
Staff message each other one to one or in groups, reply to a message, react with an emoji and share files, inside the system. Read ticks show when a message has been seen. A message sent on a weak signal waits on the phone and arrives by itself, exactly once. A message can be corrected for a few minutes, but HR still sees what was first written, so there is a complete record if a complaint ever needs looking into.
Events and training, approved by HR
Your ICT team schedules trainings, workshops, meetings and notices of IT downtime, for everyone or for chosen departments. HR approves or rejects each one before staff see it. Once approved, the right people are told, and they tap “I’m going” so the organiser knows how many to expect.
To HR, when ICT schedules it
Training to approve: Cyber security awareness, Friday at 10:00. Approve or reject it.
To the staff it is for, once approved
New training: Excel for reports, Tuesday at 2:00 PM in the conference room. Tap to say you are going.
To the organiser
Approved by HR. 18 people are going.
Built for people on site
Clock-in by location, clearance to work, PPE, phones first.
Site clock-in that knows where people are
Staff clock in from their phone; the system checks the phone is actually at the site, by GPS or by scanning the QR poster at the gate (the location is checked either way). HR chooses which of these ways staff may use. Late arrivals and overtime are worked out from the shift, and phones without signal can save a clock-in for HR to confirm later.
- The phone has to be there. The code only names the site. Clock-in still checks the phone's location against the site.
- A photo taken home clocks nobody in. No location, or the wrong place, and the tap is refused.
- Live code for sites that need more. A screen at the gate shows a code that changes every 30 seconds, and a copied poster can be replaced in one click.
- Remote staff skip the location check. Marked as remote, they clock in from wherever they're working that day, no site required.
- No signal still gets recorded. The clock-in saves on the phone and sends itself once signal returns, flagged for HR to confirm.
- HR chooses which of these are on. Button, poster, live code, remote — each is switched on or off per company, so a site only offers what it should.
Shifts and rosters
Plan who works where and when. Day and night shifts, grace periods and overtime rules, all set once.
Cleared to work, at a glance
Define which certificates each site or role needs. A live matrix shows who is cleared, who is about to expire and who is not cleared, before anyone is sent to site.
Safety equipment and incidents
Track PPE issued to each person and when it is due for replacement. Staff confirm they received it. Log incidents and follow them to close.
Expiry alerts before it is a problem
Certificates, personal documents, PPE and contracts warn the person, their manager and HR at 60, 30 and 7 days, and again on the day.
To the employee, 30 days before
Your safety certificate expires in 30 days. Please renew it and give the new certificate to HR.
To the manager, 7 days before
Two people in your team have certificates that expire this week.
By SMS or WhatsApp, on the day
A contractor’s insurance certificate expires today.
Contractors, not just staff
Keep subcontractor companies, contract end dates and the certificates they must hold, with renewal alerts.
Pay, books, insight and protection
Payroll you can check, books that balance, numbers you can present, data you can stand behind.
Payroll you can check
Income tax by band or a flat rate, pension and other statutory deductions, employer contributions, staff loans and advances, unpaid leave and (if you choose) absence deductions. It comes ready for Nigeria’s PAYE, pension, NHF and NSITF, and the rates can be set for any other country. Your accountant sets and confirms the rates. Payslips as PDF, and a bank payment schedule for your bank’s bulk upload.
Books that balance, with payroll already in them
Chart of accounts, journal entries and a general ledger. Invoices to customers with VAT, sent as PDF by email, and supplier bills with the scan attached, each with payments tracked. Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance on an accrual or cash basis, as PDF or CSV. When payroll is marked paid, it posts to the books by itself, employer pension, NSITF and ITF included.
HR numbers your directors will ask for
Headcount, turnover, absence by department and site, overtime, payroll cost, and how many people are cleared to work. Download a board pack as PDF.
Data protection built in
Staff can see and download what the company holds about them, and ask for corrections. HR handles requests with deadlines. Each person chooses what colleagues may see, such as their birthday or photo, and what they want to see themselves. Consent records, retention rules and the ability to erase a leaver’s personal details, while keeping the records you must keep.
Roles, an audit trail and two-step sign-in
HR, managers, staff, your accountant, the office administrator, safety officers, ICT and drivers each see only what they should, and directors can look at everything without changing anything. HR and the books are kept apart, so no single role controls both payroll and the accounts. Changes to staff, leave, pay and accounting records are logged. Sign in with a second step or a passkey (fingerprint or face), and an unusual sign-in raises an alert.
Alerts where people already are
Notifications in the app and on the phone, email, and SMS or WhatsApp through your own provider account, so approvals and reminders reach people quickly. An announcement pops up on everyone’s screen until they press Read, and HR sees how many have.
In the portal
Your leave request was approved.
By email
Your payslip for this month is ready to download.
By SMS or WhatsApp
You have 2 leave requests waiting for your decision.
One search for everything
Press Ctrl K and find any person, page or record.
Statutory rates start from the current published figures and can be edited. Have your accountant confirm them before your first payroll run.
Self-hosted by design
Your people data lives on your server. Not ours. Not a vendor’s cloud.
Keelsum is installed on hosting that you own or control. Salaries, IDs, contracts and bank details stay inside your own infrastructure, and you decide who can reach them.
You control access.
Nobody outside your company can open your records unless you allow it.
You control backups and retention.
Keep data as long as the law requires, and delete it when you should.
No surprise price changes or shutdowns.
The system is installed and runs on your hosting. It does not disappear if a vendor changes plan.
Easier conversations with your lawyers and auditors.
“Where is our staff data?” has one clear answer: on our server.
We install it on your server (a company server or a cloud server that you rent and control), connect your backups, and hand over the keys. Your IT team, or ours, keeps it running.
An honest note. Hosting on your own server puts you in charge, and also means backups, updates and server security are yours to arrange. We help you set these up, and offer ongoing support if you want it.
Typical cloud HR tool
Your company
Data leaves
Outside your control
Keelsum
Your team
Stays put
Your server
deleted whenever you choose
Everything stays in your control
Diagram: with a typical cloud HR tool, staff data leaves your company for the vendor's servers, outside your control, and the vendor keeps it on their own terms. With Keelsum, your team's data stays on your own server the whole time, and you decide when it is deleted.
Who it helps
Built for everyone who touches your people data
HR
Stop chasing.
- One record per person.
- Alerts before things expire.
- Requests arrive to be handled, not hunted.
Managers
Approve in a tap.
- See your team’s leave and timesheets in one inbox.
- Hand over approvals when you are away.
- Know who is cleared for site.
Staff
Everything on your phone.
- Clock in and request leave.
- Read payslips and sign letters.
- See your own goals and reviews.
- Join trainings, and report a bug or an idea.
Directors and finance
Numbers you can trust.
- Payroll that posts straight to the books.
- Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet on demand.
- Cost by department and project, and a board pack.
How it works
From first call to your first payroll
We talk.
A short call to understand your company, sites and payroll rules.
We install it on your hosting.
On a server you own or control, with backups set up.
We bring your people in.
Import your staff sheet; set up departments, sites, shifts and leave types.
We train your team.
HR, managers, staff and your accountant, each in a short session.
You go live.
With help on hand for your first payroll run.
We keep it running.
Ongoing maintenance, and features built for how your company works, added as you need them.
How it compares
Spreadsheets, cloud HR tools, or your own system
| Spreadsheets & paper | Cloud HR tools | Keelsum | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where your data lives | Laptops and cabinets | The vendor’s servers | Your own server |
| Site clock-in by location | No | Sometimes, at a higher plan | Included |
| Certificates and PPE tracking | Manual | Rarely | Included, with alerts |
| Payroll with tax, pension and deductions | By hand | Often extra or generic | Built in, editable |
| Approvals with cover when away | Phone calls | Usually | Included |
| Accounting linked to payroll | Separate software | Usually a separate product | Included |
| Recruitment to first day | Separate tools | Extra cost | Included |
| Data-protection requests | Unmanaged | Varies | Built in |
| Ongoing cost model | Staff time | Per person, per month | Talk to us |
A comparison of approaches, not of named products.
Questions
Straight answers
Where is our data stored?
On your own server, or a cloud server that you rent and control. It is not stored on ours.
Do we need an IT team to run it?
No. We install and set it up for you. Someone in your company (or ours, under a support plan) keeps the server updated and backed up.
Is it secure?
Access is by role (HR, manager, staff, accountant, office administrator, safety, ICT, driver and a view-only role for directors), with HR kept out of the books. Sign-in can use a second step or a passkey, an unusual sign-in raises an alert, and changes to staff, leave, pay and accounting records are kept in an audit log. Because it runs on your server, you also control network access and backups.
Does it handle payroll and tax?
Yes: income tax by band or a flat rate, pension and other statutory deductions, employer contributions, loans and unpaid leave. It comes ready for Nigeria’s PAYE, pension, NHF and NSITF, and works for other countries with their own rates. The rates are editable, and your accountant should confirm them before your first payroll run.
Does it do our accounting too?
Yes. Customer invoices, supplier bills, journal entries, a general ledger, and Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance on an accrual or cash basis. Payroll posts to the books automatically. Your accountant works in it with their own role, separate from HR.
Will it pay our staff?
It prepares the payslips and a payment schedule for your bank’s bulk upload. It does not move money itself.
Does it work on phones?
Yes. Staff use it in their phone browser and can add it to their home screen like an app.
What if people have no signal on site?
If you allow it, a phone can save a clock-in and send it once it is back online, for HR to confirm. Chat messages sent without a signal wait on the phone and arrive by themselves when it returns.
Can we import our existing staff list?
Yes. Upload your staff sheet and the system matches the columns for you.
Can we send alerts by SMS or WhatsApp?
Yes, through your own account with a messaging provider. In-app and email alerts work without one.
How is personal data protected under the law?
The system has tools for the work: staff can see and download their data, HR can answer requests within a deadline, consent is recorded, and leavers’ details can be erased while required records are kept. This fits the way laws such as the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and the GDPR work. Your legal adviser should confirm what your company needs.
How much does it cost?
It depends on the size of your company and the support you want. Book a demo and we will give you a clear quote.
Can we try it first?
The best first step is a demo, where we walk through it with your own scenarios.
Book a demo
See it with your own scenarios
Book a 30-minute demo. We will show how Keelsum handles your sites, your leave rules and your payroll, and talk through hosting on your own server.
- A walk-through using your own sites and leave rules
- A clear answer on hosting, backups and support
- Your questions on payroll and data protection