Founderwright for staffing & recruiting
AI for staffing agencies and recruiting firms. Margin on every hour you bill.
We connect your ATS, front and back office, client VMS portals, payroll, and accounting into a single AI brain, then build the tools your desks actually need to watch spread, cash, and recruiter output. All of it is built in-house around the way your agency recruits, places, and bills.
Private-equity-grade operations. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- Light industrial staffing
- Clerical & administrative
- IT staffing
- Healthcare staffing
- Engineering & technical
- Accounting & finance
- Direct-hire recruiting
- Executive search
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a staffing agency.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Revenue by client
Gross margin per hour after burden, overtime, and VMS fees
An account billing thousands of hours a week can still be your thinnest margin.
Accounts receivable
Payroll cash gap: weekly pay against client terms and the funding line
You fund every hour before the client pays for it.
Placements by recruiter
Gross profit per recruiter, net of fall-offs and early ends
The recruiter with the most starts isn’t always the one building the business.
The same numbers carry a staffing agency through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Monday, 7:05 a.m. · What the owner sees before the branches open
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 1Chase 38 unapproved timesheetsToday$41K of billing held · 22 in one client’s portal
- 2Warehouse contract below target marginThis weekSpread down to $4.10 an hour · overtime billed at straight time
- 3Funding line at 86% ahead of payrollThis weekTwo clients past 60 days · $118K due this week
- 4Day-shift fill rate up to 91%On trackTime to fill down to 1.6 days · two recruiters lead
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Have Maria chase the Riverside timesheets before billing closes, get Jordan three forklift candidates for Thursday’s order, and what’s our spread on the warehouse account this month?”
- New taskMaria: chase 22 unapproved Riverside timesheets · due before billing closes
- New taskJordan: submit 3 forklift-certified candidates for Thursday’s order
- AnswerWarehouse account spread this month: $4.10 an hour · down $0.60 on overtime
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Payroll goes out Friday. The client pays in 60 days.
Payroll runs ahead of cash
Your workers get paid every week, and your clients pay in 45 or 60 days. Every new contract widens the gap, and the funding line fills up before anyone sees it coming.
Timesheets stall the invoice
One missing approval in a client portal holds up the whole week’s billing. The hours were worked, payroll already went out, and the invoice waits on a supervisor’s click.
Spread leaks out of the markup
A bill rate that looked right at signing erodes with overtime, burden, comp codes, and a discount nobody wrote down. Margin per hour drifts, and you find out at month end.
Recruiter output hides in the ATS
Submittals, interviews, and starts sit in one system and gross profit sits in another. Your busiest recruiter and your most profitable one look the same until placements are tied to margin.
What we’d build
What we’d build for a staffing agency.
Every module starts with how your branches really work. Founderwright builds it in-house, you own it outright, and it runs on your live orders, assignments, timesheets, and invoices from week one.
Owner’s command center
Hours, gross profit, spread, open receivables, and next Friday’s payroll for every branch and client on one screen. The morning list is sorted by dollars at stake, and any number opens down to the assignment and timesheet.
Spread and markup tracker
Bill rate, pay rate, burden, and gross margin per hour on every assignment, with overtime, comp codes, and discounts flagged the moment a contract drifts below the margin you priced.
Timesheets to invoices
Missing and unapproved timesheets are chased daily, portal submissions are tracked, and draft invoices are assembled for review as soon as hours are approved, so billing stops waiting on Monday.
Payroll cash and funding
Weekly payroll set against collections, the funding line, and receivables by age, with a 13-week view that shows what a new contract does to cash before you sign it.
Recruiter and desk scorecards
Submittals, interviews, starts, and fall-offs tied to gross profit by recruiter, account manager, and branch, so pay and coaching follow the placements that make money.
Open orders and fill rate
Every open order by client, shift, and skill, with time to fill, fill rate, and candidates in play, so you see which orders are at risk before the client calls.
Client profitability
Margin by client after overtime, burden, bad debt, and VMS fees, with concentration shown plainly, so you know which accounts carry the agency and which quietly cost it.
Onboarding and credential watch
Expiring credentials, unfinished onboarding, and screenings still in progress flagged by assignment, so nobody starts a job before the paperwork is done.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
For a staffing agency, the line sits under your books, payroll and payroll tax, I-9 and E-Verify records, workers’ comp and unemployment filings, background screening, and banking. Orders, recruiting, timesheets, billing review, and reporting sit above it, and that is where our work happens.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Agencies often keep their ATS, front and back office, and screening vendors, and we’d build the margin, cash, and recruiter reporting around them. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a staffing agency.
Trace one order
We start with you and your branch managers, following one order from the client’s request to the collected invoice: how you set bill rates, source and submit candidates, capture time, run payroll, and which numbers nobody trusts until month end.
Connect the ATS and back office
We connect your ATS and front and back office first, and the command center starts showing real orders, assignments, hours, and invoices. Nobody re-keys a timesheet.
Add payroll, portals, and books
Next come payroll, the VMS portals your clients use, the funding line, and the general ledger. Spread, fill rate, and cash then come from one set of definitions, not a recruiting report, a payroll register, and a borrowing-base sheet that never agree.
Replace the workarounds
From there we retire the patchwork one piece at a time: the margin workbook, the Monday timesheet chase list, the branch recap someone rebuilds every week. Each replacement is built above the compliance line and belongs to your agency.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to replace our ATS or back office?
No. Your ATS and back office are where we plug in first, and they keep running exactly as they do today. The margin, cash, and recruiter tools sit on top of them. If you later decide to retire something above the compliance line, we write its replacement around your order, placement, and billing process, using the candidate and client records you already have.
Which systems stay below the compliance line at an agency like ours?
Anything that carries legal or financial weight: the general ledger, payroll and payroll tax, I-9 and E-Verify, workers’ comp and unemployment filings, background screening, and your bank and funding or factoring accounts. Those keep running in the systems designed for them. Founderwright reads their data, and where a system accepts writes over an API, it only posts entries a person at your agency has approved, with each one logged.
How do the agents handle timesheets and billing?
They take on the chasing that eats a branch manager’s Monday. Agents spot missing and unapproved timesheets, compare hours to what the client’s portal shows, draft invoices, and catch assignments running below the margin you priced. Every item lands as a task with a named owner, and nothing reaches a client, a worker, or your books until someone at your agency signs off. Each sign-off is logged.
Can it show what a new contract does to our cash?
Yes. Weekly payroll for the new headcount is projected against the client’s payment terms, your funding line, and the receivables already outstanding. You see the week the gap is widest, what the contract earns per hour after burden, and whether the terms, the markup, or the start date should change. The decision stays with you. The brain makes the tradeoff visible before you sign.
Do we keep the system if our engagement with you ends?
Yes. You own it: the software above the compliance line, the definitions behind every margin and fill-rate report, and all of the data it holds. Continue developing it with us, or hand it to an internal lead to run. There is no lock-in, so the only reason to keep working together is the quality of the work.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Request a briefing logan@founderwright.com