412 shifts last year were worked by someone whose paperwork had already expired.
Wrenmark paid every one of those workers. It invoiced every one of those shifts. Then client audits found the gaps and £81,000 was credited back — work done, wages paid, nothing recovered. Nobody in the compliance team was careless. They are tracking 1,840 workers and eleven document types across two desks on a spreadsheet that only tells the truth on the morning somebody opens it. Staffing is a business where the software either knows what expired overnight, or you find out from the client.
We built the screens that make it stop — every one of them live and clickable below. Then we build the same for your agency, with no commitment: the screens your team would use, in your language and your brand, linked up so you can walk your own process through them. Open it, show your team — if it's a fit, we'll make a detailed, priced proposal.
Wrenmark Staffing does not exist. We cannot show live client systems, so this study is built around a fictional agency — invented firm, invented workers, invented clients, invented figures. What is not invented is the work: the compliance regime, the audit mechanics, the fill race and the failure modes are all real, and the screens are genuine working pages rather than pictures of pages. Every mockup on this page opens and responds to clicks.
What this is not: a payroll engine or a job board. It does not run the payroll, calculate the tax or replace the timesheet system your accountant signs off, and it is not something an agency would swap its pay software for. Your payroll, your accounting and your job adverts all stay exactly where they are.
What it is: the layer none of them owns — the document that expired before the shift was worked, the shift that went unfilled because nobody broadcast it fast enough, the client whose margin has quietly slipped, and the back book of workers nobody has called this year. Where a tool already does its job, we integrate with it rather than replace it.
On scope: Wrenmark supplies temporary workers to healthcare and construction in the UK, which is where the compliance burden lives. A permanent-placement agency has a different business and would need a different system. Client compliance standards and framework requirements vary by client and change over time — in a real build these are configuration, not code.
An agency whose biggest asset is a folder of expiry dates
Wrenmark supplies nurses, healthcare assistants, allied health staff, trades and labourers across the West Midlands. Twenty-two consultants, six people in compliance, 1,840 workers on the register and 2,180 shifts filled in an average week. What it sells is not people — it is the guarantee that the person turning up is allowed to be there.
- Workers registered
- 1,840
- — healthcare
- 1,120
- — construction
- 720
- Working in an average week
- 738
- Shifts filled a year
- 104,640
- Consultants
- 22
- Compliance staff
- 6
- Documents tracked
- 17,340
- Turnover
- £28.4m
- Gross margin
- 18.9%
- Median time to fill a shift
- 2h 12m
- Dormant workers
- 1,104
Eight failures, and what each one actually costs
Staffing has two clocks running at once: the compliance clock, which decides whether you can supply at all, and the fill clock, which decides whether you get asked again. Wrenmark is losing on both.
One date per worker that governs everything, and a filter fast enough to win the shift
Two halves, and they are the same data used twice. Every worker has a binding expiry — the earliest live date across their whole file — and nothing can be booked past it without a named person overriding it and saying why. That single derived field is what turns eleven spreadsheet columns into a system.
The same file then powers the fill. Getting from 1,840 workers to the eighteen who are qualified, compliant for that client, available, in range and not opted out is a query, not an afternoon — and once you have the eighteen, you offer them all at once rather than ringing them in whatever order comes to mind.
Seven screens follow. Each one opens as a real page — click through them.
Seven screens. Every one of them real.
No screenshots, no slideware — each screen below is a working page, rendered live in its frame. Click a frame or its link to open the full screen in a new tab and use it.
Compliance desk
Where the register actually stands: 1,840 workers split by whether they can legally be placed today, what expires in the next thirty days sorted by renewal lead time rather than a fixed window, and a twelve-month line of shifts credited after client audits.
Then the row that matters most — the forty-one shifts already in the diary for dates when the worker will not be placeable.
Worker file & the binding date
The screen this study is built around. Eleven documents on one nurse’s file, ten of them fine. Her professional registration expires on 3 September and from that morning she cannot be placed on any shift, for any client, at any rate.
It is not a sequence like a consultation or a mortgage offer — it is eleven parallel clocks where the earliest one governs everything. And it carries the consequence: fourteen shifts already booked past that date, worth £2,772, six of them inside the client’s cancellation window.
Fill board
A ward that needs a nurse for tonight sends the same request to four agencies. It is not a tender, it is a race, and it is over in under an hour. Wrenmark takes two hours and twelve minutes to come back with a name.
The screen shows where those minutes go, and that a hundred of them are a person doing what a filter and a broadcast could do: 1,120 workers down to the eighteen who are qualified, compliant for that client, available, in range and not opted out — then offered simultaneously rather than rung one at a time.
Clients & frameworks
Six clients and six different definitions of compliant. The same worker is fully cleared for one and two documents short for the next, because a framework asks for things a care home does not.
Which produces the table nobody has ever run: how many more workers would qualify for each client per document added. £292,900 of margin sits behind five training courses.
Back book
1,104 registered workers who have not worked in ninety days, 284 of them still fully compliant and able to work tomorrow. And 318 who completed an onboarding process and were never once called.
The re-engagement sequence is three messages and a call, then the worker is rested for six months — because an agency that texts dormant workers weekly is not re-engaging them, it is training them to ignore it.
Timesheets & pay
Wrenmark pays its workers on Wednesday whether the client has approved the timesheet or not. That is the deal that keeps good workers, and it means every unapproved shift is money out of the door against an invoice that may never be raised.
Alongside it, margin by client — and the fact that fifty-five per cent of the volume sits at the lowest rate. Defensible as a decision; less so as something nobody had seen.
Worker app
The third audience, and the one holding a phone at a bus stop. Shifts booked and shifts offered, documents with the dates that matter, availability in one tap, and pay history.
Crucially it tells Grace about her own expiry in plain English — what runs out, when, what it stops her doing, and how long renewing takes. The agency’s compliance problem is mostly a worker communication problem wearing a different hat.
The compliance file first, because everything reads from it
Four phases of two weeks each — eight weeks end to end. The worker file and the binding date go first, because the fill board, the client gap analysis and the pay exceptions are all the same data seen from different angles. Each phase ends with something the team actually uses, not a demo.
Discovery & data
Weeks 1–2.
- Document types per desk and per role
- Client and framework compliance standards
- Renewal routes and real lead times
- Migrate workers, files and expiry dates
- Certified digital identity checks in onboarding
The compliance file
Weeks 3–4.
- Worker file and the binding expiry date
- Registers and the DBS Update Service checked on a schedule
- Booking blocked past that date, with override
- Renewal chase driven by lead time
- Compliance desk and audit pack
Fill & engagement
Weeks 5–6.
- Eligibility filter per client standard
- Simultaneous shift broadcast and replies
- Substitutes prepared the moment a binding date is set
- Availability collection
- Back book re-engagement sequences
Pay & rollout
Weeks 7–8.
- Timesheets from the worker app
- Pay and bill with exception handling
- Margin by client, worker and desk, checked at booking
- Parallel run on one desk first
Eight weeks is possible because most of it already exists. The worker and client records, document handling, expiry tracking, escalation rules, the SMS engagement engine and the portal are running in production across six sectors already. What actually gets built for a staffing agency is the sector core: the per-client compliance standards, the binding-date logic that stops a booking, and the eligibility filter behind the fill board. That is the part this study is about, and it is the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.
What is real here, and what is not
Real
- The compliance regime — right to work, DBS, professional registration, mandatory training, skills cards, references and employment gaps of three months or more
- The audit mechanics, and what a failed sample does to a framework relationship
- The fill race, and the fact that eligibility is client-specific rather than universal
- The failure modes. All eight are drawn from how agencies actually run
- The screens themselves: working HTML, not images, built the way we build the real thing
Not real
- Wrenmark Staffing, its workers, its clients and the frameworks named. All invented
- Every figure on every screen. The numbers are constructed to be plausible, not measured
- Any claimed outcome. We have deliberately not put a saving or a return on this page, because we would be making it up
- Any resemblance to a client. We do not show live client systems, which is precisely why this study exists
The engine underneath is already in production
The difficult parts of this system exist and run today — they are just doing it for other sectors. Live platforms, with the same client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules and portal at the centre of each:
- Medical tourism
- Student management
- Retrofit & remediation
- Financial brokerage
- Property management
That is why the working mockup is a realistic offer: we are not sketching a new product to sell you, we are showing you what the existing one would look like with your stages, your language and your brand on it — before any build begins.
We would rather show you your own screens
This took a fictional agency and made its process visible. The same exercise works better with a real one — your desks, your language, your brand — and it costs you nothing to find out whether it is worth building.
A conversation about your desks, your clients and where the money leaks.
A working mockup of your own process — clickable, in your language and your brand.
Click through it with your team. If it's a fit, we'll come back with a detailed, priced proposal. If not, we part on good terms.
Ready to see your own screens running like this?
Tell us how your agency actually runs — your desks, your workers, your compliance, where the money leaks — and we'll show you how we'd build it. If it's a fit, we build your screens. No commitment — and a detailed, priced proposal only if you ask for one.
What happens next
- We reply within one working day — a person who has read your note, not a bot.
- If it's a fit, we build your mockup — the screens above, re-skinned to your process and your brand.
- You click through it before anyone commits — if it earns the build, we talk about that.
Every enquiry is confidential — we never share your details, and we never put client work on a website.
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