matterco

HACKERNEWS50

Use this discount code and receive 50% off Perq for six months.

What is Perq? Perq is my startup's application for small business and HR folks to track and manage employee Paid Time Off (PTO).

Our Business Plan: First, through our research and personal experience, we have learned that small companies are often overlooked when it comes to business software. Employee benefits management, like PTO, is often bundled into large, expense payroll services from ADP and the like. For us who do not want to sink our fledgling capital into overpriced payroll services, there is a need for HR tools.

Second, by tracking PTO, saving one day of employee's time by preventing vacation 'overages' recoups the cost of our software instantly. Companies can save thousands of dollars by making sure employees comply with their company policies.

Our Goal: To save business owners money, by giving them control over attendance policies and paid time off.

Our Invitation: If you are a small business owner or manage groups of people, we may be a great tool for you. We invite you to check our Perq, and save with the discount code.

If you do not fall into the group above, take a look anyway, and any feedback on our application is welcomed. We are looking for ways to improve our product and our offer.

Happy Holidays, Team Perq

Hello HN, Some of you may remember, I asked for feedback on my startup's new web app Perq (http://www.perqworks.com). At that time, a credit card was required to sign up for the free account. That has changed -- now anyone can sign up to view the application for free.

Perq is a web-based app for companies to create policy, and manage and track employee Paid Time Off (PTO). We created this application out of a frustration with the lack of good quality software in this niche. At Matter (www.matterco.com), we pride ourselves in our ability to create compelling User Interface and Interaction Design. Our application design strives to make the HR administrator's job easier by automating PTO leave requests. For employees, we wanted to focus employee attention on an often undervalued form of compensation, PTO. To literally highlight the value of leave time, we use a gauge metaphor to show current PTO balances, earning potential, and amounts used.

As both designers and developers, we are looking for more good, critical feedback. Try it out by entering your company's leave policy and let us know what you think.

For those interested, our application uses:

* Symfony PHP Framework (www.symfony-project.org) -- We found this MVC framework excellent. The code is well written and the documentation is accurate and thorough. We considered Rails, but were won over by the proven success of the LAMP stack as epitomized by DIGG, Yahoo, and Facebook.

* jQuery -- What a godsend... Perq relies heavily on AJAX to make the UI function fluidly. jQuery, by abstracting away cross-browser nuances, allowed more time spent developing functionality rather than fixing IE bugs.

* Doctrine ORM (http://www.doctrine-project.org/) -- SQL and Database design not being my strong suit, a good ORM is critical to the maintainability and performance of the application. The Doctrine syntax is excellent at grabbing records and manipulating them without spending time tweaking SQL statements.

* And Others... -- Our application supports calendar integration with ICS. We rely on email as a communication channel, and employed SwiftMailer (http://swiftmailer.org/). Rackspace is our host.

Again, your feedback and any forwarding of the link to small business or HR people who manage employee benefits is extremely appreciated.

-- Perq Developer

For companies who provide paid time off ("PTO") as an employee benefit, Perq helps create company policy and tracks vacation, sick, and other time away from the office.<p>Designed and written by a small team, Perq is a PHP application using the Symfony framework, Doctrine ORM, jQuery library, and Google Minify tool.

We are particularly proud of our UI/UX design. Perq is a product of Matter (www.matterco.com) and PRTCLR (www.prtclr.com). We are a design shop that believes we can create kick-a software.

Please view the application with the 'Three for Free' option. Right now we ask for a credit card number, even though the product is 100% free. We will be changing that soon.

Please critic.