Why Locavore Group Chose Checkly for Their HR

The Challenge: Managing HR Across Multiple Venues

At Locavore Group, we operate several restaurants, a kitchen lab, and retail concepts across Bali. Our team has grown to nearly 100 people — chefs, front-of-house staff, kitchen porters, managers, and admin staff spread across different locations, each with their own schedule and operational rhythm.

For years, our HR processes were held together by a patchwork of spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, and manual tracking. Scheduling alone consumed 4-5 hours every week. I'd build shift rosters in Google Sheets, share them via WhatsApp, answer questions about who was working when, and then manually reconcile attendance at the end of each pay period. Errors were frequent, and the administrative burden kept growing as we expanded.

What We Needed

When we started looking for a solution, we had a clear picture of what we needed. First and foremost, it had to handle the complexity of hospitality scheduling — we don't have simple 9-to-5 shifts. Our kitchen team starts at 6am, front-of-house arrives at 10am, and some events run until midnight. Schedules change weekly and vary by department and venue.

We also needed reliable attendance tracking. In the restaurant business, knowing exactly when staff arrive and leave isn't just about payroll accuracy — it's about operational planning. If a sous chef is late for morning prep, the entire lunch service can be affected. We needed real-time visibility, not end-of-day reports.

Leave management was another pain point. Tracking vacation days, sick leave, and time-off requests across almost 100 people using a shared spreadsheet wasn't sustainable. Staff would message their managers on WhatsApp, managers would sometimes forget to update the sheet, and by month-end we'd have conflicting records.

Finally, we needed something that actually worked for our team in the field. Many of our staff aren't particularly tech-savvy — they needed something as simple as scanning a code on their phone.

Why Checkly Stood Out

We evaluated several HR platforms, including some global names. Most were too complex for our needs, too expensive, or simply weren't designed for the Southeast Asia market. Checkly stood out for several reasons.

The QR code check-in system was exactly what we needed. We placed QR codes at each venue — one at the kitchen entrance, one at the front desk. Staff scan when they arrive and when they leave. It takes three seconds. No fingerprint readers to maintain, no lost cards, no hardware to install. GPS verification gave us confidence that check-ins were legitimate without being intrusive.

The scheduling system understood our complexity. We could create different schedule templates for each department — kitchen, FOH, events — and apply them with visibility rules. For example, we publish next month's roster on the 25th of the current month, giving staff time to plan while maintaining flexibility for adjustments. Drag-and-drop made shift reassignments easy.

Leave management became transparent overnight. Staff submit requests through the app, managers approve or deny with one tap, and everyone can see their remaining leave balance in real-time. No more WhatsApp chains or disputed records.

Implementation

Getting Checkly up and running was remarkably quick. We set up our company, added all our venues as locations with GPS coordinates, and configured our departments and schedule templates in an afternoon. The next day, we printed QR codes, laminated them, and posted them at each venue.

Training was minimal. We did a quick 10-minute walkthrough with each team during their shift briefing. The most common question was always, "That's it? I just scan this?" — which tells you everything about the user experience.

The admin side required a bit more setup. We configured our availability templates, set up schedule visibility rules, and imported existing leave balances. The Checkly team was responsive throughout — any questions we had were answered within hours.

What Changed

The impact was immediate and measurable. Here's what we saw in the first three months:

Scheduling time saved: What used to take 4-5 hours per week now takes about 45 minutes. The system's templates mean I'm not building rosters from scratch every week — I adjust the template and deploy it. When someone calls in sick, I can see who's available and reassign shifts in seconds.

Payroll accuracy: Our payroll discrepancies dropped by more than 90%. Attendance data flows directly into our payroll calculations — no more manual data entry, no more disputed hours. Overtime is calculated automatically based on actual check-in and check-out times.

Leave visibility: Staff finally have clarity on their leave balance without having to ask HR. Managers can see upcoming leave when building schedules, so we avoid the classic problem of approving too many requests for the same period.

Operational awareness: The real-time dashboard shows us who's currently checked in at each venue. During service, a quick glance tells us whether we're fully staffed or if I need to make a call. Just this visibility alone has improved our ability to react to no-shows.

Staff accountability: Not in a punitive sense — but in a fair way. When attendance is transparent and consistent, it removes the guesswork from addressing someone about a late arrival based on a manager's memory. The data speaks for itself, and it's actually improved team morale.

The Bigger Picture

Beyond the operational improvements, Checkly freed me up to focus on what HR should actually be — people development, building culture, and strategic planning. When you're not drowning in admin work, you can invest in training programs, improve onboarding, and work on retention strategies.

For a hospitality group like ours where staff retention is one of our biggest challenges, having more time for these initiatives is invaluable. We've been able to introduce mentorship programs, improve our benefits communication, and have real one-on-one conversations with team members — things that were always "nice to have" but got sidelined by admin work.

Advice for Other HR Managers

If you're still running HR operations on spreadsheets and messaging apps, my advice is simple: make the switch. The time you invest in setting up the right system pays for itself in the first month.

Look for a platform that understands your specific challenges. For those of us in Southeast Asia, that means Indonesian language support, understanding of local labor regulations, pricing in IDR, and a team operating in your time zone. Checkly checks all those boxes.

Start with one venue if you're nervous about change. We went live across all venues at once and it worked great, but a phased approach is equally valid. The key is to stop delaying — every month you wait is another month of avoidable admin overhead.

Looking Ahead

We're now exploring Checkly's advanced reporting features to understand our workforce data better — things like attendance trends by department, peak sick-leave periods, and overtime patterns. This kind of analysis was impossible when everything was in disconnected spreadsheets.

Checkly continues shipping regular improvements, and the features they're building align with what we actually need from the field — not what some Silicon Valley product manager thinks we should need.

For Locavore Group, Checkly isn't just an HR tool — it's become the backbone of how we manage our team. And that's exactly what we needed.