Half your Dundee studio is contractors. BambooHR was built for the other half.
If a Dundee studio runs half its headcount as contractors on IR35-sensitive day rates, BambooHR and Workday, built for salaried employees, will leave the most important part of your workforce unmanaged. Custom HR (Human Resources) software runs £40,000 to £110,000 over 3 to 6 months and earns it when contractors, projects, and onboarding are core, not edge cases.
Dundee's studios, agencies, and labs scale up and down with contractors. A title goes into crunch and you bring on freelancers; a grant ends and a research post closes. Off-the-shelf HR is built around the permanent salaried employee, so it treats your contractors as an afterthought: no IR35 status, no day-rate management, no link between a person and the project that funds them.
The result is a split system. Employees live in BambooHR; contractors live in spreadsheets and the finance team's head. Onboarding a freelancer for a six-week sprint means recreating the same details across three places, and when a payment dispute or a tax-status question arises, the answer is scattered exactly the way every other process in the studio is scattered.
Where the off-the-shelf tools fall short
- Contractors, often half the team, managed in spreadsheets because BambooHR is built for salaried staff
- No IR35 status, day-rate, or project-funding link for the freelancers driving delivery
- Onboarding a short-term contractor recreates the same details across HR, finance, and project tools
- Tax-status and payment-dispute answers scattered across docs and people
Custom hr: what Dundee teams actually get
Custom HR software treats contractors as first-class: IR35 status, day rates, project assignment, and onboarding all in one place, alongside permanent staff. For a Dundee studio that scales with freelancers, that means one register of everyone working on a title, what they cost, and which budget funds them, instead of a salaried-only tool plus a parallel contractor spreadsheet.
- Contractors are a large share of your team and off-the-shelf HR ignores them
- You need IR35, day-rate, and project-funding handling built in
- Onboarding repeatedly recreates the same data across systems
- Labour cost needs to map to projects and budgets
- Your team is mostly salaried and BambooHR or Gusto fits
- You rely on standard payroll and benefits integrations
- Contractor management is genuinely an edge case for you
- You need an HR system running quickly with minimal build
- One register of employees and contractors with IR35 status and day rates handled natively
- Onboarding that captures a contractor once and flows to finance and project tools
- People linked to the projects and budgets that fund them, so margin is visible
- Compliance trails for tax status and right-to-work that survive an audit
- Integration with payroll, accounting, and project management instead of a split system
- Custom HR means you own compliance updates as UK employment and IR35 rules change
- BambooHR and Gusto ship payroll and benefits integrations you'd otherwise build
- A bespoke system needs maintenance as your hiring model evolves
- For an all-salaried team, off-the-shelf HR is the cheaper, faster choice
Feature priorities for Dundee teams
HR services we deliver in Dundee
Digital Heroes builds the full HR stack for Dundee teams. Typical engagements cover employee onboarding system, time and attendance, applicant tracking system (ATS), BambooHR alternative and Workday integration.
The honest cost picture for Dundee
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Core HR + contractor management | £40k to £65k | 3 to 4 months |
| Add project budgeting + compliance trails | £65k to £90k | 4 to 5 months |
| Full HR platform + payroll integration | £90k to £110k | 5 to 6 months |
Timeline: what happens, and when
Exactly what you get
You get an HR system where contractors and employees live in one register, with IR35 status, day rates, and project funding handled natively. Onboarding a freelancer once flows to finance and project tools, and labour cost maps to the budgets that pay for it. For a Dundee studio that scales with freelancers, that ends the split between BambooHR and the contractor spreadsheet.
How to choose a developer in Dundee
Find a team that understands project-based, contractor-heavy workforces and UK IR35 rules, not just generic HR. Ask how they'd model a freelancer's day rate, tax status, and project assignment in one record. The right partner integrates with your existing payroll and accounting rather than rebuilding them, and keeps the compliance logic current as employment rules shift.
- !They treat contractors as a checkbox on an employee record. Ask how IR35 and day rates are modelled
- !No link between people and project budgets. Ask how labour cost maps to work
- !They ignore your existing payroll. Ask how it integrates rather than gets rebuilt
- !Weak on UK compliance. Ask how IR35 and right-to-work changes are handled
- !No reference in project-based or contractor-heavy businesses. Ask for one
Teams investing in hr in Dundee usually scope it next to pos, warehouse management, helpdesk & ticketing, since these systems share data and budgets.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't BambooHR work for a Dundee games studio?
BambooHR is built for salaried employees, but Dundee studios often run half their team as contractors with IR35-sensitive day rates. Those people end up in spreadsheets, leaving the most delivery-critical part of the workforce outside HR entirely.
Can custom HR software handle IR35 and day rates?
Yes, and that's the core reason to build. Contractors become first-class records with IR35 status, day rates, and project funding, instead of an afterthought bolted onto a salaried-employee tool.
How does HR software link people to project budgets?
Each person is assigned to projects and the budgets that fund them, so labour cost maps directly to the work. That makes project margin visible and ties HR to your project management and accounting systems.