PayPilot — Development Story

01

CLIENT

About the client

One of the leading domestic management consulting firms, "Nihon Consulting Co., Ltd."

A management consulting firm with about 5,000 consultants, engineers and back-office staff across 3 domestic and 3 overseas offices. With pay structures varying by role, grade and location, semi-annual reviews and monthly payroll were a heavy operational burden on the HR department.

As the overseas offices (Singapore, Hanoi, Bangkok) grew rapidly, a platform supporting multiple currencies, languages and per-office approval flows became essential. Breaking away from operations reliant on Excel and email had become a management priority.

Number of employees

5,000 staff

Domestic + overseas

Offices covered

6 offices

JP 3 + Overseas 3

Pay template

32 types

Role × grade

BUSINESS FLOW

Four steps of the monthly payroll cycle

STEP 01

Apply a template

Auto-calculates base pay using role/grade templates

STEP 02

Reflects changes

Records raises, bonuses and allowance changes with full history

STEP 03

Per-department approval

HR and management approve by department and office in one click

STEP 04

Pay distribution

Auto-delivers payslips to staff in multiple languages

02

CHALLENGE

Design challenges to solve

Four design challenges threatening HR continuity.

Not a technical problem, but Management challenges directly tied to payroll reliability, history management and global support — and we needed to design, from scratch, a system that could break free from Excel.

Design challenge ①

How to build a system that reliably completes monthly payroll on time

Due to Excel formula errors and transcription omissions, An average of 2 deadline delays per month occurred. The HR department was in constant overtime at month-end.

Design challenge ②

How to build a platform that lets you trace the history of pay changes after the fact

The basis for raises, bonuses and allowance changes scattered across emails, requiring enormous effort to reference past years and respond to audits.

Design challenge ③

How to build a system that centrally manages role-based templates

Excel templates branched per department, and 20+ versions proliferated. When templates were revised, it frequently became unclear "which one is the latest."

Design challenge ④

How to build a platform that supports overseas offices, multiple currencies and languages

Because it was Japanese-only Excel, 3 overseas offices (~1,860 staff) ran on local Excel. Company-wide labor-cost visibility and unified management were impossible.

03

ARCHITECTURE

The architecture we built together

From scratch, in-house — four domains brought onto a payroll SaaS platform.

After deeply understanding Nihon Consulting’s organization and operations, "Speed and reliability for HR, transparency for employees, visibility for management" — we built an HR/payroll SaaS in-house from scratch, unifying these three-sided needs into one platform.

EXECUTION

8

Duration (months)

48

Total effort (person-months)

Domain ①

Pay template

Challenge

20+ Excel-derived versions proliferated; the latest was unclear.

Solution

Role × grade: 32 templates centrally managed

With version control, and the number of staff applied is visualized.

Domain ②

Change history

Challenge

The basis for raises and bonuses scattered across emails, making audits difficult.

Solution

All changes auto-recorded with approver and reason

Referencing past years and handling audits done in one click.

Domain ③

Monthly calculation

Challenge

Manual Excel calculation took 3 days, with frequent errors.

Solution

Auto-calculates for 5,000 staff (done in 4 hours)

Per-department approval flows + bulk approval streamline operations.

Domain ④

Global

Challenge

With Japanese-only Excel, about 1,860 staff at 3 overseas offices could not be served.

Solution

JP/EN/VI 3 languages + multi-currency (JPY/SGD/VND/THB)

Overseas staff can also check their pay on the same platform.

TECH STACK

Frontend

React 18

Vite

TypeScript

Ant Design

i18next

Backend

Django

Python

Celery

Redis

Infra & DB

PostgreSQL

Docker

Jenkins CI

04

IMPACT

The value the platform creates

Nihon Consulting’s HR operations move to the next stage.

After adopting PayPilot, the reliability and efficiency of monthly payroll operations improved dramatically over the Excel era.

OUTCOME ①

Gained reliability in monthly payroll

Excel errors and transcription omissions dropped to near zero. Deadline delays disappeared, and the constant end-of-month overtime in HR was eliminated.

OUTCOME ②

Established an audit and analytics data asset

All pay changes are recorded automatically, becoming a management asset for labor-cost analysis and labor audits.

OUTCOME ③

Creates capacity for HR strategy

Monthly payroll workload was cut dramatically, freeing the HR department to focus on strategic HR planning.

OUTCOME ④

Unified global company-wide operations

The 3 overseas offices can now run on the same platform, enabling company-wide labor-cost visibility and unified management.

STAKEHOLDER

HR Staff

Operations & analytics role

Typically,

3 days of manual Excel calculation at month-end + 2 deadline delays per month, constant overtime.

With PayPilot,

Calculation done in 4 hours, freeing time for strategic HR planning.

Business impact

Payroll: 3 days → 4 hours

Achieved work-style reform for the HR department

STAKEHOLDER

General staff

~5,000 staff

Typically,

Payslips came as PDF emails; the reasons for changes were opaque.

With PayPilot,

Payslips viewable instantly in multiple languages; the basis for raises made transparent.

Business impact

Established pay transparency

Improved employee engagement

STAKEHOLDER

Overseas staff

SG/VN/TH ~1,860 staff

Typically,

Excluded from the Japan HQ system, dependent on local Excel operations.

With PayPilot,

With an English UI and multi-currency, they join the same platform as full members of the company.

Business impact

Unified global operations

Overseas office participation 100%

STAKEHOLDER

Management

CFO & HR Lead

Typically,

Labor-cost data scattered across per-office Excel files; company-wide analysis impossible.

With PayPilot,

Company-wide labor costs visualized in real time by department, office and currency.

Business impact

Management decision data → real time

Labor costs of ¥144B visualized centrally

05

DEMO

Three scenarios

Experience payroll operations with a live, working demo.

FLAGSHIP

SCENARIO 01 · HR Staff

Payroll Board

·Monthly pay for 5,000 staff shown in real time
·Filter by department and status
·One-click approval + bulk approval
·Multi-currency support (JPY/SGD/VND/THB)

Launch demo

SCENARIO 02 · HR & Management

Change history

·Full history of all raises, bonuses and allowance changes
·Visualizes the amount difference before and after a change
·Records approver and reason for every entry
·Used for past-year reference and audits

Launch demo

SCENARIO 03 · HR Administrator

Template management

·Central management of role × grade pay templates
·Version control + update history
·Visibility into applied staff count
·Adding new templates is smooth too

Launch demo