People is where the workforce lives: who works for you, what they are allowed to do, when their licence runs out, and how much holiday they have left. It sits alongside Warehouse, Transport and Finance, and the records connect, so a licence expiring in People is about the driver on tomorrow’s run rather than a name on a separate list.
One record per person, whatever their arrangement
A logistics operation is rarely all employees. You have people on your payroll, agency drivers, self employed owner drivers and crews from subcontractors, and on any given day they are all on site. People holds one record per person and describes the arrangement separately, as an engagement.
The worker type on that engagement decides what follows, so it is worth getting right:
- Employee. On your payroll, accrues holiday from you.
- Agency worker. Paid by their agency and accrues holiday from the agency, not from you. You still hold their compliance and their shifts.
- Self employed owner driver. Invoices you. Not on PAYE and does not accrue holiday from you. Loaditude will not put them on payroll or accrue holiday for them, because doing so would work against their self employed status.
- Subcontractor’s worker. Works for a haulage company you subcontract to. You hold what you need for the job.
Somebody can have more than one engagement over time, so a rehire keeps their history rather than starting again.
Bringing your spreadsheet in
Under People, choose Import a spreadsheet. Loaditude reads the column names you already use, so Forename, Surname, Payroll Number and Date Started are all understood without editing your file. Dates are read day first, so 03/04/2026 is the third of April.
The file is always checked first and nothing is written until you say so. You see how many will be added, which rows could not be read and why, and whether anybody appears twice. Running the import again later adds only the people who are new: those already on the system are left alone.
Compliance that chases itself
Compliance is a list of what your people must hold, and it comes set up for UK logistics: right to work, driving licence checks, Driver CPC, digital tachograph cards, driver medicals, forklift licences, first aid and more. Every item is yours to rename, retime or switch off.
Three of them work harder than a simple expiry date:
- Driving licence checks. Record the check and the endorsements and Loaditude works out when the next one is due. Six months as standard, dropping to three once a driver reaches six points, because the drivers most likely to lose their entitlement are the ones already carrying endorsements.
- Driver CPC. Hours are shown against the straight line for where they should be by now, not just as a total. Fourteen hours with four years left is fine; fourteen with six months left is a driver about to be off the road, and a total on its own does not tell you which you are looking at.
- Tachograph cards. The next download is worked out from your interval, capped at the statutory 28 days.
An item can be marked as blocking. When a blocking item has expired or was never recorded, that person shows as not eligible for assignment on their record and in the compliance list. Something merely expiring soon does not block: it is still legal today, and that is what the warning is for.
Holiday and absence
Set your holiday scheme once, in People, Setup, Holiday scheme: when your leave year starts, how many days a full time person gets, how many can be carried over, and whether it is granted up front or accrues monthly. Everything else follows from it. Until it is set, balances use a leave year from 1 January and 28 days granted up front.
Balances are worked out from the scheme and the records every time they are shown, never stored. That is deliberate: a stored balance drifts the moment somebody changes their hours, and then nobody can tell whether the number is wrong or the person is. Entitlement is reduced for part time hours and for anybody who joined or left partway through the leave year, and the reason is shown on screen so it can be checked.
Time off is requested, then approved or declined by their line manager or the People team. A decline must carry a reason, and that reason is sent to the person with the decision. Nobody can approve their own time off. When somebody books dates, Loaditude shows who else is already off then, but it will not refuse the booking: whether two drivers off the same Friday is a problem is a judgement for the person running the day.
Sickness is recorded the same way, with self certification covering the first seven days and a fit note expected from day eight. Sickness reasons are treated as confidential and are not shown to line managers.
Onboarding and leaving
Starting somebody creates a checklist from a template chosen to match them: a driver gets licence, CPC, tachograph card and fuel card; a subcontractor gets insurance certificates and O licence details; everybody else gets the standard list.
Every task carries a date worked back from their start date, so the things that must happen first are dated before day one rather than whenever somebody gets to them. Tasks still outstanding that were due before they start are called out separately.
Leaving works the same way from the last day, and includes the things that cost money when they are missed: returning and cancelling the fuel card, notifying that the tachograph card has gone, removing system access, and final pay including untaken holiday.
Contracts and the written statement
Anybody you employ has to have a written statement of their main terms on or before their first day, and an agency worker has to have their assignment details. It is not a formality: leaving out a required item is a failure to comply in its own right, whatever else the contract says.
Loaditude ships with a statement that covers all twelve required items, including the two added in 2020 that older templates usually miss: any probationary period, and what training you provide and what the person has to pay for themselves. Edit it however you like. If an edit takes a required item out, you are told which one, and the contract will not issue until it goes back in or you confirm it is written into the wording instead.
Issuing fills the template from the record: their name, start date, job title, place of work, and holiday entitlement worked out from your own scheme. Anything you have not filled in shows in the contract as not set, in plain sight, rather than as an empty line somebody signs underneath. What gets stored is the wording as it was issued, so editing the template later cannot change a contract that has already been accepted.
The person accepts it themselves, by typing their name. Nobody can accept on their behalf. If a contract went out after somebody had already started, the record says so.
Who can see what
- Everybody can see their own record, book their own time off, upload their own documents and see what is expiring on them.
- Line managers see the people who report to them, directly or through somebody else, and decide on their time off. They do not see confidential information, and they do not edit records. Line management comes from who is named as manager on an engagement, not from a role somebody is given.
- The People team sees the whole workforce, records checks and manages documents.
- Transport managers see driver compliance across the fleet without the confidential detail.
Owners and company admins can do everything in People. Everybody else is given access in Settings, Users, using the shield beside their name: Manager makes them part of the People team, Admin also lets them change the holiday scheme, and the Transport Manager option gives fleet compliance only.
Confidential fields, National Insurance numbers, dates of birth, sickness reasons and case files, are held back from anybody not entitled to them, and opening a record that contains them is recorded. Documents are visible only to the People team unless they are marked otherwise, so anything filed without a decision stays private by default.
Linking a person to their driver record
Somebody in People can be linked to their driver record in Transport, so the compliance you hold is about the driver on the run. The link is made by you and never guessed from a name: two people can share a name, and the consequence of getting it wrong is one person’s licence and file attached to another person’s work. One driver record belongs to one person.
What you are told without looking
A request for time off reaches whoever decides it, and the decision reaches the person who asked. Compliance that is running out is raised before it lapses. These arrive in the same notification bell as everything else in Loaditude and can be turned off one at a time in your profile.