Atlas Scaffolding's leading hands fill out two on-site forms in Appenate - a Site Diary or a Direct Labour entry. We connected those through Make.com into Airtable, with a Xero-ready payroll CSV waiting at the end. The admin team's biggest weekly task is now handled automatically.
Client
Atlas Scaffolding
Industry
Trades & Construction
Tools Used
1 day
Of weekly admin work
eliminated
1
Source of truth
across every site
0
Manual data entry
steps required
The Problem
Atlas Scaffolding runs crews across multiple sites. Every day, leading hands submit site diaries and direct labour forms. Every week, someone on the admin team had to collect all of them, key the data into a master spreadsheet, separate subcontractor entries into their own table, and tally up employee hours for direct labour invoicing - all before payroll could even start.
That was consuming a full day of admin work every single week.
Beyond the time cost, the process relied entirely on manual data handling. Hours could be missed, subcontractors mixed in with employees, or direct labour jobs left un-invoiced. There was no single source of truth - and no automatic checks built into the process to catch any of it.
The Solution
We built an end-to-end hours capture and payroll workflow that starts on-site and flows through to Xero without any manual data entry in between.
Site leads now fill out one of two forms in Appenate - a Site Diary for project-based work, or a Direct Labour form for hours billed by reference. Make.com routes every submission into the right Airtable table, flags entries that need allowance review, and when payroll is run the master log produces a Xero-ready CSV.
What happens automatically
Appenate form submitted on-site
Make.com routes entries into Airtable
LAHA & travel entries flagged for review
PM verifies hours, Mgmt reconciles billing
Xero payroll CSV exported, pay run ready
How It Works
Leading hands submit daily hours via Appenate
On-site, on any device. Either a Site Diary for project work or a Direct Labour form for hours billed by reference. Same source of capture, every site, every day.
Make.com pushes each submission into Airtable
A router fans the data into the correct table - employee hours, subcontractor log, or direct labour invoicing - so payroll, billing, and contractor records never get mixed up.
LAHA and distant travel entries are flagged automatically
Anything with a Living Away From Home Allowance or distant travel claim is pushed to Atlas Management to review and add the right allowance - rather than relying on someone to spot it during reconciliation.
Project Management verifies Site Diary hours
Before any invoice goes out, PM signs off that project hours are accurate. Built into the workflow rather than chased over email.
Atlas Management reconciles Direct Labour billing
Management confirms all billable hours are invoiced and reference numbers are recorded - so nothing direct-labour billable slips through unbilled.
Airtable generates a Xero-ready payroll CSV
The master log produces the CSV in the exact shape Xero expects. Import, run pay. No spreadsheet wrangling between the data and the pay run.
Under the Hood
The Appenate webhook feeds a central router with three branches - Site Diary Employees, Site Diary Subcontractors, and Direct Labour Entries. Each branch iterates over the line items in a submission and writes them straight into the matching Airtable table.
Make.com scenario - Appenate webhook into a router, with iterators and Airtable writes for each entry type
The Results
Before
A full day of manual data entry every week
just to get payroll ready to start
Subcontractor hours mixed into the master sheet
someone had to manually pull them out
Direct labour hours tallied by hand
billable jobs at risk of going un-invoiced
No built-in checks for allowances
LAHA and travel relied on memory
Manual CSV prep for payroll
re-shaped each week before importing
After
Zero manual data entry
forms push straight into Airtable
Subcontractors auto-separated
routed into a dedicated subcontractor table
Direct labour ready for reconciliation
automatically logged and waiting for sign-off
LAHA & travel flagged automatically
allowance review built into the workflow
Xero-ready CSV out of Airtable
import, run pay - that's the whole job
The Impact
Atlas Scaffolding now has a single point of capture for all hours across every site, feeding into a single source of truth in Airtable. Payroll, invoicing, and subcontractor tracking all run from the same system - with oversight for allowances and direct labour billing built into the process, rather than relying on someone remembering to check. The biggest admin burden this client had is now handled automatically. What used to take a full day each week now takes minutes.
