Team management
Clock-in, leave, documents, shifts and professional licences in the same place as your calendar. Approved leave closes the calendar on its own.
Portuguese labour law (Art. 202 of the Código do Trabalho) requires employers to keep a record of working time, available for immediate inspection, and to retain it for five years. Most businesses still do this on a sheet of paper or in a spreadsheet.
Modules
Each module came out of a concrete situation in a working business, not from a feature list.
01
Clock-in and time tracking
An inspection asks for the working-time records of the last few months. They're on a sheet pinned in the staff room, full of corrections.
The team clocks in from their phone, with entries, exits and breaks recorded to the minute. At month end the per-person sheet is ready to export, with nothing to reconstruct by hand.
- Clock in from a phone — no terminal to install
- Monthly sheet per team member, ready for inspection
- Optional geolocation, off by default
- Phone biometrics: validation stays on the device
- Retained history, with changes logged
02
Leave and absences
You approved a team member's leave over a message. Two weeks later the front desk booked three sessions on those days.
Requests, approvals and balances in one place. Approval closes that person's availability for the absence; existing bookings need a decision from the team.
- Full days, half days and hourly absences
- Approving leave closes the calendar — no bookings for people who are away
- Annual leave map, ready to share
- Leave balances and history per team member
- Affected bookings shown before approval, with tasks for the team to resolve
- Critical periods with rules for planned requests and exceptions for unplanned absences
Mon
6/08
Tue
7/08
Wed
Leave
Thu
Leave
Fri
10/08
Approved · calendar blocked
03
Team documents
You need to prove everyone signed the data protection policy. Contracts are in a folder, attachments are in email.
Contracts, policies and announcements sent for signature, with a record of who signed and when. The proof stays attached to the document.
- Send for signature with verifiable proof
- Status per person: unread, read, signed
- One archive, visible only to who has permission
- Five default folders per team member when HR documents are enabled
- Up to 20 files per upload, with classification suggestions to review before saving
Informed consent · v3
04
Shifts and rotas
The monthly rota lives in a spreadsheet shared over WhatsApp — and the copy on each phone is no longer the same one.
Rotas published to the whole team, with swaps requested in the app and approved by whoever coordinates.
- Published rotas, always the current version
- Shift swaps with request and approval
- Consistent with the calendar and approved absences
15:30 · Room 2 assigned
05
DifferentiatorCredentials and professional licences
A professional credential expired two months ago and nobody noticed until someone asked for proof.
A register of credentials, licences, professional memberships and insurance, with alerts before expiry. Supporting documents stay linked to the person, with access controlled by permissions.
- Licence and professional-body expiry, per practitioner
- Professional indemnity insurance with renewal date
- Alerts before expiry, not after
- Certificates attached to the team member's record
- AI proposes details from PDFs and images; a person reviews and confirms
- Create follow-up tasks to handle renewal
Professional licence
João P. · Physiotherapy
Alerts at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days
Training
Included in the HR Essentials and HR Complete bundles. From the annual plan to supporting data for the Single Report, with no side spreadsheets.
Annual plan and catalogue
Organise the year's training actions in one plan, with a course catalogue and invitations sent to the team.
Invitations and attendance
Once attendance is confirmed, each person's hours are recorded automatically. No paper sign-in sheets, no manual counting.
Validated external training
External training is entered with its certificate and validated by the manager. Only validated records count towards the hours.
My training
Each team member sees their required hours, completed hours, accumulated credit and its expiry date.
Compliance panel
Coverage against the organisation's annual target and credits about to expire, per team and per person.
Estimate when a contract ends
When a contract ends, Farol shows an estimate of what remains payable — outstanding hours times the hourly cost. Always labelled as an estimate.
Annex C support
CSV export with supporting data for Annex C of the Portuguese Single Report. It requires a specific permission and every export is logged.
Calculations follow the organisation's own settings. This is not a substitute for legal advice.
Recruiting
Included in HR Complete at no extra cost. Openings, applications and interviews sit next to the calendar and the team that will welcome the new hire.
Openings from templates
Draft, publish, pause or close openings. Templates are editable example text to review before publishing.
Public careers page
Published openings appear on your organisation's public page, with a required privacy contact and retention periods you set.
Stage-by-stage pipeline
Applications on a board or list, with source, internal notes from evaluators and a timeline of every step.
Interviews on the calendar
Schedule interviews or trial days and the slot is blocked on the interviewer's calendar. Email invitations from templates.
Questions you shouldn't ask
Questions about family life, health, pregnancy, religion, age or pay history are blocked. Detection is word-based: you remain responsible for what you ask.
Hiring without retyping
When you hire, the person is invited to the team, the CV can move to their documents and onboarding starts from there.
The internal reason for a rejection is never sent to the candidate. Each candidate's data can be exported or deleted on request.
Pricing
The team management add-on sits on top of any paid plan. The price depends on your headcount band — the larger the team, the lower the effective cost per person.
HR Essentials
The mandatory part solved: hours recorded, absences under control, documents signed.
€39/month+ VAT
€4.88 per person/month
Includes
- Clock-in and time tracking
- Leave and absences
- Team documents
- Tasks
- Internal announcements
- Training
HR Complete
Everything in Essential, plus what a team with rotas and professional bodies needs.
€59/month+ VAT
€7.38 per person/month
Includes
- Everything in HR Essentials
- Shifts and rotas
- Credentials and licences
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Reviews and ongoing support
- Team climate surveys
- AI assistant
- Recruiting
Prices per organisation, excluding VAT. The add-on is added to any paid plan.
Comparison
Structural differences, not opinions: where the software lives, how it's charged and what it knows about your business.
| Dimension | Farol | Generalist HR suites | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where HR lives | Inside the software that runs the business, sharing the same calendar. | A separate system with no access to the calendar. | Approving leave in Farol closes the calendar. In a separate system, approval and calendar remain two jobs. |
| Pricing model | Per organisation, in bands. Cost per person falls as the team grows. | Per employee/month, typically with a contracted minimum headcount. | On a team of 12, the per-person price in Farol is a fraction of a per-employee model — and you don't pay for seats you don't use. |
| Licences and professional bodies | Licence, professional-body and indemnity insurance expiry, with alerts. | Not present. Worked around with a custom date field and no logic behind it. | The difference between being warned before a registration lapses and finding out when someone asks for the certificate. |
| Language and legal framing | European Portuguese, framed by Portuguese labour law. | A translated international product, often supported from outside Portugal. | Less time spent explaining the Portuguese context to whoever answers support. |
| Scope | HR for people who run an appointment-based business: rotas, calendar and team. | Cross-sector HR, including payroll. | If you need full payroll processing, a generalist suite still makes sense alongside Farol. |
The statements in this table describe structural differences in model, verifiable on the public pricing and feature pages of the products concerned. We don't quote customers or reproduce third-party screenshots. If you spot an outdated fact, write to us and we'll correct it.
Design
These three points answer recurring public complaints from users of time-tracking apps — app store reviews and forum posts, not proven defects of any product. We use them as counter-examples.
We don't truncate overtime
Apps that stop counting after eight hours a day are a frequent complaint. Farol records the hours actually clocked and shows them on the monthly sheet — what to do with them is the business's decision, not the software's.
Geolocation is optional and ships off
Being forced to share location when it wasn't chosen is a common complaint. In Farol, location is an organisation setting, off by default; if it is turned on, whoever clocks in is told explicitly.
Cancelling is self-service
Difficulty cancelling subscriptions is one of the most repeated complaints in this market. The HR add-on is cancelled in the app, with no hidden penalty; reading and exporting history stays available.
Context
Built inside a clinic, not around one
These modules were designed and tested with a multidisciplinary paediatric clinic running since February 2026 — with a team on rotas, real absences and professional registrations to keep track of. None of it was written from a competitor's feature list.
Built side by side with a real clinic since February 2026
FAQ
Does the HR add-on replace payroll?
No. Farol records working time, absences, shifts and documents, and exports that information. Payroll stays with your accounting software or your accountant.
Are the time records good enough for an inspection?
That's the point: keeping working-time records available for immediate inspection and retained, as Portuguese labour law requires, and letting you export them per person and per period.
Does the team have to share their location?
No. Geolocation is off by default. If the organisation chooses to turn it on, whoever clocks in sees that explicitly.
What happens to the calendar when I approve leave?
That person's availability closes for the approved period. Existing bookings are shown to the team, who decide how to resolve them and track the tasks; bookings are not automatically rescheduled.
Do I need a paid plan to use HR?
Yes. The team management add-on is charged on top of a paid base plan, and the price depends on your headcount band.
Can I cancel just the add-on?
You can, without touching the base plan. After cancelling you stop recording new HR data, but reading and exporting history remains available.
Is recruiting included?
Yes, in HR Complete, with no price change. It covers openings, a public careers page, an application pipeline, interviews on the calendar and hiring with a team invitation.
Which plan includes Training?
The HR Essentials and HR Complete bundles. Training joins clock-in, leave, documents and the other team management modules, at no extra cost within the bundle.
Does Farol generate the Single Report?
No. Farol exports a CSV with supporting data for Annex C, which the organisation reviews. The Single Report is still prepared and submitted by the organisation.
How are training hours counted?
From confirmed attendance at completed training actions and from external training records validated by the manager. Pending or rejected records don't count.
Put hours, leave and licences in the same place
Add it to any paid plan, with 14 days to try it. Above 30 people, let's talk.