Petdirect
One system, cleaner payroll data
How a fast-growing New Zealand retailer removed the manual work between rostering and payroll with a platform that talks directly to iPayroll.
At a glance
- Industry: Retail
- Size: 150 users on Simplifi, up from 115 at switchover
- Previous system: An Australian-based workforce management system for rostering and timesheets, iPayroll for payroll
- Modules used: Rostering, Timesheets, Time and Attendance Kiosk
- Payroll integration: iPayroll, via API
The organisation
Founded in 2020, Petdirect is New Zealand’s largest Kiwi-owned pet supply retailer. What started as an online store has become a multi-channel business: a nationwide e-commerce operation with subscription delivery and a loyalty programme, its own distribution warehouse, and a physical store network that opened in Takapuna in 2024 and has continued to expand across Auckland and Christchurch since.
That growth has been fast, and it has been continuous. The team has expanded alongside the store footprint, and new people join every week to fortnight. It was exactly this pace that exposed the limits of the systems Petdirect had in place.
The challenge: two systems that would not talk to each other
Before moving to Simplifi, Petdirect was using an Australian-based workforce management system for rostering and timesheets, alongside iPayroll for payroll. The two had no integration, and the gap between them was filled by lots of manual work.
Three problems compounded as the business scaled.
Work patterns lived in the wrong place. The rostering platform could not hold them, so they sat in iPayroll, disconnected from the rosters they were meant to inform.
Staff had to request leave twice. Because leave balances could not be held in the rostering system, every leave request had to be entered separately in a second system. As Petdirect hired more staff, that friction became visible.
Every pay run ended in manual handling. Once timesheets had been checked and approved, Damask Littin, Petdirect’s Finance and Payroll Manager, had to export them by hand and upload them into payroll.
There was no single failure that forced the decision. There was growth.
“We were growing with both employees and sites. We’d have new managers giving feedback on the system, comparing it to what they’d used before, and it became evident that people were annoyed about having to do the leave requests in two systems. It was just getting too big to be as manual as it was.”
Damask Littin, Finance and Payroll Manager
Choosing Simplifi: integration was the first filter, not the last
Most software selections start with a feature list. Petdirect started with the payroll system they already trusted and worked backwards.
“The first thing for me was integration with iPayroll. That’s how I found Simplifi. I looked at who partnered with iPayroll, took everyone who did, and did a comparison on all those companies.”
Damask Littin, Finance and Payroll Manager
Leave management ranked second. Work patterns ranked third, and for a business adding stores, that mattered more than it sounds.
“As we’re growing and adding more stores, the ability to have rosters already set each week and not have to put them in ourselves is quite big.”
Damask Littin, Finance and Payroll Manager
Implementation: a considered migration, supported end to end
Petdirect was not moving from paper. They were moving from an established digital system, which changes the nature of the work. There was little resistance to the technology itself, but the project turned out to be a larger and more involved one than the team had first anticipated.
Damask is clear about the lesson she would pass on to any organisation planning a similar move. Manager training deserves more time than you think you need, and it is worth planning for deliberately at the outset rather than discovering along the way.
Throughout, the implementation was led by a single named consultant at Simplifi. Having one dedicated person to go to was itself a change for Petdirect, who previously had no equivalent point of contact.
“Sheryl [at Simplifi], who did our implementation, has been fantastic. She’s really responsive and great at explaining things to us.”
Damask Littin, Finance and Payroll Manager
The results
The most significant change at Petdirect is not a feature. It is the removal of a seam.
Rostering, timesheets and payroll now operate as one connected workflow. Work patterns are held in Simplifi, so rosters can be set in advance each week rather than built from scratch as new stores come online. Leave is requested once, against balances the system already holds, instead of being entered separately in a second system. And with timesheets connected to iPayroll through the API, the manual export and upload that used to close out every pay cycle is no longer part of the process.
The effect on data quality has been just as material. Simplifi’s two-level approval workflow means timesheet data is validated before it reaches payroll, and Damask reports the business ends up with cleaner data than it had before.
For managers, the platform has also opened up reporting and functionality the business did not have access to previously. Internal feedback has been positive, and overcoming the specific obstacles of the old system was, in Damask’s words, a big hit with the team.
“It’s the integration with iPayroll. That makes things easier for me, but also for the team, because they’re only having to deal with one system.”
Damask Littin, Finance and Payroll Manager
Why it worked
Petdirect did not buy a rostering tool. They bought the connection between rostering and pay, and that reframing is what made the shortlist obvious. For any organisation running workforce management and payroll as separate islands, the manual work in between is the real cost, and it grows with every new store and every new hire.
Running rostering and payroll in two systems that do not talk?
Book a 20 minute conversation with our team and we will show you what a single connected workflow looks like for your business.
