BRU Payroll Hub
How OPEN turned a working fingerprint attendance scanner and its CSV exports into structured attendance, exception checking, payroll calculations, payslips and management reporting, without replacing the hardware.
What was actually happening
BRU is a hospitality business in Pattaya with a team working shifts across the week. Attendance was already being captured properly: a standard fingerprint scanner recorded every clock in and clock out, and it could export the raw data as a CSV file.
The hardware was not the problem. The problem was everything that happened after the export. Each pay period, someone had to open the file, work out who had actually worked which shifts, spot missing punches and odd timings, apply the pay rules, calculate what each person was owed, and produce something that could be handed to staff and understood by management.
That work was repetitive, easy to get wrong and dependent on one person knowing how it was done. It is a very common pattern: a working system at the front, and a spreadsheet holding everything together behind it.
Observe first, then build only what was missing
The first decision was the most important one. We did not recommend replacing the scanner, moving to a new HR platform or re-enrolling every employee on different hardware. The scanner worked. The data was already there. The opportunity was the workflow around it.
We mapped the process end to end: where the CSV came from, what it contained, which rows needed a human decision, what the pay rules actually were in practice, and what management needed to see at the end. Then we built only the missing layer.
The result is a focused internal system. Import the export, review the exceptions the system has flagged, confirm, calculate, publish payslips, and read the reports. The scanner carries on doing what it always did.
How the work flows now
- 01
Fingerprint scannerKept
Existing hardware, unchanged
- 02
CSV exportKept
Existing export, unchanged
- 03
Import
File read and validated
- 04
Structured attendance
Shifts, breaks and days built from raw punches
- 05
Exception checking
Missing punches, unusual hours, duplicates flagged for review
- 06
Payroll calculation
Pay rules applied consistently every period
- 07
Payslips
Generated per employee, ready to issue
- 08
Management reporting
Totals, trends and exceptions by period
The existing hardware and export stayed exactly as they were. Everything after the import is the new layer.
Attendance
- CSV import from the existing scanner
- Raw punches turned into structured shifts and days
- Late, early, missing and duplicate punch detection
- Manual corrections with a record of who changed what
Payroll
- Pay rules applied automatically and consistently
- Period-based calculations with review before publishing
- Payslips generated per employee
- Adjustments handled inside the system, not in a side spreadsheet
Management
- Reporting by period, department and exception type
- Clear view of what has been checked and what is still open
- Access controlled by role
- Owned by the business, hosted in its own accounts
Do not replace a working system when the real opportunity is improving the workflow around it.
Most businesses already have something that works: a scanner, a till, an accounting package, a spreadsheet that everyone trusts. The waste is rarely in that system. It is in the manual work that connects it to the next step.
A good review looks at the whole chain, keeps what works, and builds or connects only the missing piece. That is cheaper, faster to adopt and far less disruptive for the people who have to use it every day.
Facing the customer: the owned ordering channel
BRU Direct
Third-party delivery apps brought orders but owned the customer, the data and the margin. BRU wanted an additional channel it controlled.
Read the case studyIs there a similar gap in your business?
A working system at the front and manual work behind it is the most common pattern we see. Tell us where the time goes and we will say honestly whether a review is worth doing.