Worked hours are where operations meets the back office. Your AVM/CAD-AVL system knows what actually happened on the road — who drove, when, for how long, with which breaks. Your HR and payroll systems need that truth to pay people correctly and stay compliant. The question is never whether to connect them, but how.
Here are the five integration patterns we see in the field, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. Most operators start at pattern one and move down the list as their needs grow.
1. Manual export / import (the starting point)
The AVM produces a file — worked hours per driver, per period — and someone imports it into payroll. It's unglamorous but it works, and for a small network it's often enough. The risk is human: every manual step is a chance for an error or a delay.
2. Scheduled flat-file transfer (SFTP)
The same file, but automated: the AVM drops a structured file onto an SFTP server on a schedule, and the payroll system picks it up. No one re-keys anything. This is the workhorse pattern for mid-sized operators and integrates cleanly with systems like Hastus or established payroll suites.
3. Pre-payroll validation layer
Before anything reaches payroll, a validation step compares planned vs actual: scheduled shift against GPS-confirmed worked time, flagging overtime, missed breaks and anomalies. A human approves, then the clean data flows on. This is where compliance lives — and where disputes get resolved before they become grievances.
4. API-based synchronisation
Instead of files, systems talk directly through APIs. The AVM exposes worked-time data; the HR system (SAP, Acerta and similar) pulls or receives it programmatically, often daily. This reduces latency from weeks to hours and removes the file as a point of failure — at the cost of a more involved initial integration.
5. Bi-directional sync (the mature state)
The most advanced pattern: data flows both ways. HR pushes driver master data, contracts and absence rules into the AVM; the AVM pushes back actual worked time. The two systems stay continuously aligned, and the schedule itself becomes compliance-aware.
Which pattern is right for you?
Start with the simplest pattern that meets your compliance and payroll-cycle needs, and plan a path to the next one. The mistake we see most often isn't choosing the wrong pattern — it's over-engineering the integration before the underlying worked-time data is clean and trusted. Get the data right first; the integration pattern is the easy part.