HR software for agencies
Growee HR is an HR platform for agencies and service companies that combines employee management, leave, documents, performance reviews, time tracking, projects, employee cost and billing rates, project profitability and client invoicing, plus an open API and native MCP integration. It fits teams of 5 to 80 people.
Who this is for
Creative studios, digital marketing agencies, development and consulting shops, and service businesses that sell their people's time to clients. It fits teams of 5 to 80 people: big enough that the spreadsheet of client hours has started to cost money, small enough that nobody wants a rollout.
What is included
Time tracking
Hours per client project, approved.
See time trackingProject profitability
Budgets, costs and margin for every project.
See project profitabilityInvoicing
Invoices born from billable hours.
See invoicingLeave management
Requests, balances, planner.
See leave managementDocument management
Expiration dates and alerts.
See document managementE-signature
Sign by link in the browser.
See e-signatureMCP integration
Connect Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client to your data.
See MCP integrationPricing
Published, per person.
See pricingHow a retainer margin is computed
Every project on Growee carries a billing model: retainer, fixed price, time and materials, PPC passthrough, revenue share or internal. The billing model determines how the project revenue is computed, and that revenue compared against logged internal cost produces the margin shown on the project Finance tab.
Margin, billed rates, project budgets and the billing model itself sit behind the manageSalaries and managePayroll permissions, which no default role holds except admin.
The underlying numbers come from two places: a billed hourly rate and an internal cost hourly rate logged on every timesheet row, and a billed rate plus a per-project internal cost, hourly or monthly, set per project member.
Three things this actually replaces
Usually a spreadsheet of client hours, a leave thread in the team chat, and NDAs scattered across inboxes.
Client hours land against the retainer they were worked on
A timesheet week is one row per project. A designer split across two retainers logs two rows, not one lump of 40 hours, and the totals are ready before the invoice is.
- One row per project or task, hours per day
- Reports by week, month, quarter or year, and by project, task or team
- Project budgets read the same logged hours, with billable amounts at hand
Project budgets and billable amounts are on the paid plan; time logging and time reports are not. See time tracking →
Leave gets an answer before the delivery date is promised
A request goes in with dates and type, the approver decides in one click, and the answer stays on the record. Public holidays for 99 countries come from the dataset behind our national holidays pages: check United States, England or Germany for 2026.
- Request, approve, reject or cancel, with every state in one list
- Balances by year and leave type
- A planner with national holidays, weekends and personal leave, and presence sheets from the same records
NDAs and contracts sit on the person, signed and dated
Agency paperwork is per person: the NDA before the client brief, the freelance agreement, the addendum when a rate changes. In Growee each is a document type you define, filed on the person with an expiration date, and templates fill themselves from employee data.
- Document types you define, with tags and filters to pull one team's paperwork
- Expiration alerts by email before the date passes
- E-signature by link, no account for the signer, and the signed file stays on the record with a fingerprint tied to its contents
E-signature is on the paid plan; documents and expiration alerts are not. See document management →
Pricing for a 25-person agency
Growee is free for up to 3 people. Above that the paid plan is priced per person per month, with a lower per-person rate on the annual plan, and once a workspace is over the free limit every person on it is billed, not only the people above the threshold. A 25-person agency is therefore billed for all 25 people at that one per-person rate. CRM, the knowledge base, hiring and AI credits are separate add-ons, priced only if you turn them on.
The per-person figure itself, monthly and annual, is published in full on the pricing page.
What Growee does not do
Growee is general HR software with client-project time and billing on top, not an agency operations platform. The honest list of gaps:
- No payroll engine. Keep running payroll where you run it today.
- No SSO, SAML or SCIM.
- No shift scheduling or rotas. Growee records time and leave; it does not build a roster.
- One legal-holiday calendar per workspace. It cannot be split by employee country.
- The mobile app is iPhone only today, and it covers part of the product rather than all of it.
- No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification. What we do have is on the trust page.
What the money screens look like
Growee vs HiBob vs Zoho People for agencies
Both incumbents keep a dedicated page for creative and media agencies. HiBob goes deeper on multi-brand workforce planning, Zoho People on scheduling, and only Zoho publishes a price (as of August 2026).
- Growee
- Client hours, leave and signed documents in one record, with invoicing on the same clients
- HiBob
- “Build great client work on a connected workforce”: people data and workforce plans across brands and markets
- Zoho People
- “The HRMS to connect people and simplify work” for media and advertising
- Growee
- Free up to 3 people, then €2/person/month (€20/person/year)
- HiBob
- Not published. The pricing page is a demo request form with module checkboxes
- Zoho People
- Essential HR $1.25/user/month up to Enterprise $4.50/user/month, billed annually; a free edition exists
- Growee
- No. Growee is not a payroll processor: keep running payroll where you run it today
- HiBob
- “Payroll Hub” is one of the modules listed on its own demo form
- Zoho People
- Payroll sits in the separate Zoho People Plus bundle, not in base Zoho People
- Growee
- No. Growee records time and leave; it does not build rotas or handle shift swaps
- HiBob
- Not stated
- Zoho People
- Yes. “Creative people need creative schedules”: schedule a week or a month and notify the team
- Growee
- Yes: hours per project and task, rolled up per person and per project each month
- HiBob
- “Time & Attendance” is one of the modules listed on its own demo form
- Zoho People
- Yes: “Timesheets and time logs help with accurate tracking and reimbursement”
- Growee
- Project time and cost reporting, but no multi-entity workforce planning module
- HiBob
- Yes: “Track workforce costs across practices and entities”, plus engagement and turnover trends
- Zoho People
- Not stated
- Growee
- Yes, in the paid plan at €2/person/month
- HiBob
- Not stated
- Zoho People
- Not stated
- Growee
- Yes: 99 countries, the same dataset behind our public holiday pages
- HiBob
- Not stated
- Zoho People
- Not stated
HiBob statements come from hibob.com/solutions/industries/advertising-marketing/ and hibob.com/pricing/; Zoho People statements from zoho.com/people/industries/hr-software-for-media-ad.html and zoho.com/people/zohopeople-pricing.html (all read as of August 2026). Zoho People prices are USD per user per month billed annually, and its Plus bundle is a separate, higher-priced product line. “Not stated” means those vendor pages do not mention the item, not that the product lacks it; check each vendor's own pages before you decide. Growee figures reflect our live plans.
Weighing more HR-first suites instead? We keep dedicated head-to-head pages for Growee vs BambooHR and Growee vs Personio. Billing from a time-tracking tool today? Read the Harvest alternative comparison.
HR software for agencies: common questions
What HR software do digital agencies use to track time against client projects?
The requirement is that an hour belongs to a client project, not to a blank week. In Growee a timesheet row is tied to a project and a task, so a designer split across two retainers logs two rows rather than one lump of 40 hours, and the same logged hours feed the project budget and the month-end report. Each row also carries a billed hourly rate and an internal cost hourly rate, and every project member carries a billed rate and a per-project internal cost, hourly or monthly. That is what turns logged time into a project margin. Time logging and time reports are in the free plan; project budgets, billable amounts and invoicing are on the paid plan.
Can one system hold employee contracts, project budgets and client invoices?
That is what putting them on one record buys you. Contracts, NDAs and addenda are filed on the person as document types you define, each with an expiration date and e-signature by link. Project budgets read the hours logged against that project, and invoices are raised for the same clients those projects belong to, so the contract, the budget and the invoice are not three tools with three exports to reconcile at month end. Documents and expiration alerts are in the free plan; e-signature, project budgets and invoicing are on the paid plan.
What does HR software cost for a 25-person agency?
Growee is free for up to 3 people. Above that it is one published per-person price per month, or a lower per-person rate on the annual plan, and a 25-person team is billed for all 25 people rather than only the ones above the free limit; the current figure, monthly and annual, is on the pricing page. For comparison, Zoho People publishes $1.25 per user per month on Essential HR up to $4.50 on Enterprise, billed annually, which is roughly $375 to $1,350 a year at that headcount (as of August 2026). HiBob does not publish pricing at all; its pricing page is a demo request form, so the number arrives as a quote (as of August 2026).
One record per person, per client hour
Client hours, leave and signed contracts in one record. Free for up to 3 people.
No credit card required · Free for up to 3 people · Keep your payroll provider