FounderHR OS

Google Sheets · Apps Script · nothing else

Your HR department is one spreadsheet and fifteen minutes on a Friday.

Applications, contracts, onboarding, leave, payslips, and your SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and TIN records. The system does the paperwork. You make about six decisions a week, and most of them are a single tap in your inbox.

5–70 employees ₱0 a month, forever One spreadsheet you own Free Gmail is fine

The actual thing

Try it before you read another word.

Not a video. The real interface, running on a made-up six-person company.

be either person →
script.google.com/macros/s/…/exec sample data · nothing here is real
  1. 1Be an employee. Leave → request one day. It approves itself, takes the day off your balance and blocks the calendar.
  2. 2Now ask for seven days. Too long to wave through, so it goes to the founder.
  3. 3Switch to the founder. It is waiting at the top. One click settles it and emails them.

You would not really open the portal for step three. That request lands in your inbox as an email with an approve and a deny button in it, which is the whole trick.

What changes

Same work. Nobody doing it.

Nothing gets skipped or done badly to save time. What changes is who it lands on.

Your week now

  • Reading every application that comes in, eventually
  • Retyping the contract, changing the name, missing a field
  • Remembering to book the day-one calendar invites
  • Being asked how many vacation days someone has left
  • Working out SSS and PhilHealth in a second spreadsheet
  • Building payslips one at a time on a Sunday night
  • Chasing four government numbers over chat

Your week with this

  • Read the good ones. Weak applications never reach you
  • Type a salary and a date. The contract writes and sends itself
  • Nothing. Record, folder, invites and laptop are already done
  • Nothing. They look it up themselves
  • Nothing. Deductions are calculated on the 25th
  • Check the totals, press send. Every payslip goes out at once
  • Nothing. People enter their own numbers

We are not removing HR. We are removing the HR job.

Every function still happens — hiring, records, leave, payroll, compliance. The system does the admin, you approve the handful of things that genuinely need a person, and employees answer their own questions. That is the entire design.

What is in it

Six pieces, one spreadsheet.

01

Hiring

Post a role, share the form. Applications are scored against that job's own wording and filed. The strong ones reach your inbox as they arrive.

02

Contracts

Enter a salary and a start date. The contract is built from your template, filed by year in Drive, and emailed to the candidate. Re-issue it if the terms move.

03

Onboarding

One action creates the record, the document folder, the orientation and 30-day invites, claims a laptop from inventory, and sends the welcome checklist.

04

Leave

Short requests with the balance to cover them settle themselves. Longer ones become one email you answer with a tap. Balances accrue monthly on their own.

05

Payroll

Monthly drafts with SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG deductions, then payslips built, filed and sent. Two steps on purpose: nothing goes out without you.

06

Self-service

Everyone signs in to see balances, request time off, download payslips and enter their own statutory numbers. The questions stop arriving.

The honest part

What it does not do.

Better to find out here than on payroll day.

Cost

Nothing, because it is your copy.

No account to open, no seat to buy, nobody to cancel with. You paste the files into your own Google account and it is yours.

FounderHR OS

Every module. Data stays in your Drive. You hold the source, so you can change anything, and no vendor can raise the price or shut it down.

₱0

HR software, per employee

At thirty people that is roughly ₱9,000–14,000 a month, indefinitely, with employee records sitting on somebody else's servers.

$5–8

An HR admin

The right call eventually. Rarely the right call at eight people, which is how most founders end up doing this themselves at midnight.

₱25–45k

Indicative market ranges, not quotes. Check them against your own situation.

Setup

Half an hour, most of it Google asking permission.

No terminal, no hosting, no pipeline. If you can paste text into a box you can install it.

  1. Make a blank Google Sheet

    It becomes the entire database.

  2. Open Extensions, then Apps Script

    Paste in the files and save.

  3. Run setup from the new menu

    Builds every tab, folder, default and automation. Approve the permission screen — it is your own code asking.

  4. Create the document templates

    One click writes the contract and payslip templates. Edit the wording, leave the placeholders alone.

  5. Deploy the portal

    Deploy → New deployment → Web app. Execute as Me, access Anyone.

  6. Grab your founder link and bookmark it

    One menu click. That is your dashboard from then on.

  7. Run the system check

    Inside the portal. It lists what is missing and how to fix each thing, in plain English.

Questions

Before you ask.

Does it really work on a free Gmail account?

Yes. Three things differ: sign-in uses a password or a private link rather than a Google session, application forms take a résumé link instead of a file upload, and you can email 100 people a day instead of 1,500. All three are handled, including finishing a big payroll run the next morning without you touching it.

Can I put it on my own domain?

Partly, and it is worth being precise about this. Google does not let you point a DNS record at an Apps Script web app, so the included page serves the portal from an address like hr.yourcompany.com by embedding it. Your domain is what people type, bookmark and see. Anyone who opens developer tools can still find the underlying Google URL.

What happens to my data if I stop using it?

Nothing at all. It is a spreadsheet and a folder of PDFs in your own Drive, and they stay exactly where they are. There is no export to request and no account to close.

Can an assistant help without seeing salaries?

Yes. The employee, payroll, config and audit tabs are locked to you. Share the file and they can work in applicants, jobs and equipment while pay stays invisible to them.

How does sign-in actually work?

Two options, switchable in settings. A permanent private link per person, which is simplest for a small team, or a username and password, which is what you want if the portal sits on a public address. Passwords are salted and hashed with PBKDF2, sessions expire after twelve hours, and five failed attempts locks the account.

What happens when we outgrow it?

Around seventy people the daily email limit starts shaping payroll day, and you will want real single sign-on and somebody whose job this is. That is the moment to move to Workspace or proper HR software. Getting there without having paid for either is the whole point.