R&D team for an HR tech time & attendance product

Rebbix joined the client’s team, a then-startup and now an enterprise-level time tracking & timesheet platform, as an R&D team to help build and launch two time & attendance mobile apps for small companies in Brazil. The main challenge of this phase was to effectively confirm that a particular person was in a particular place at a particular time.

The choice of country for launching this MVP was not coincidental: employee time theft is a common occurrence in Brazil, and local labor laws are largely employee-centric, costing many domestic and international companies significant money in labor settlements. The focus on micro and small businesses (under 10 employees) was not coincidental either: they make up 98.5% of all Brazilian companies and account for 41% of the total payroll. 

We’ve crossed many big milestones with our partners since the MVP stage, and our cooperation is still ongoing.

Key outcome

• 3 months to run R&D and build and launch an MVP

What we did

• R&D: we researched three ways to confirm a person’s location for companies to choose from:

  • Bluetooth beacons — highly secure option but one that required companies to purchase beacons

  • WiFi network metadata — reliable and widely available option that required initial configuration

  • GPS — fallback option as it’s easy to manipulate and unreliable on cheap phones

• Development of a complex system that included an iOS and an Android app for employees, an admin panel for company management and support, sign up and team management functionality, and basic payroll report generation

• Development of a sophisticated data synchronization mechanism that enabled the mobile apps to remain fully operational while offline (important since the internet connection in Brazil is often unstable)

Team setup

• 1 Engineering Manager

• 1 iOS Engineer

• 1 Android Engineer

• 1 Back-End Engineer