A branded HR request portal that takes 10 minutes to set up
Stop being the inbox for every HR question. Employees submit document requests, payroll inquiries, attendance corrections, and confidential concerns through your own branded portal. You handle them in one place, audit-trailed by default.
Free 14-day trial · No credit card required · Set up in under 10 minutes
Why HR teams burn out at 50 employees
Every small business hits a tipping point where the HR team becomes the bottleneck for routine requests. It's almost always the same three reasons.
You're answering the same 5 questions
'Can I get my W-2 reissued?' 'My start date is wrong on my profile.' 'I need a letter for my landlord.' Every email is custom-typed even though the answer is the same. Templates help; they don't scale.
Confidential concerns have nowhere safe
Workplace harassment, salary disputes, manager complaints — employees don't want to email these to a generic HR inbox the whole team can see. Without a confidential channel, things go unreported until they explode.
Compliance reviews are spreadsheet archaeology
When the auditor asks 'show me every document request from Q2,' you spend three hours searching old emails. The data exists; it's just scattered across inboxes.
Document requests
Self-serve the routine asks
Employment letters, salary verification, W-2 reissues, visa-support letters, parental-leave certificates — the requests that take 30 seconds for HR to fulfill but take a day to find in the email backlog. Employees submit through a structured form; HR responds with the document attached. Audit-trailed.
- Built-in 'Document request' type with category dropdown
- Required fields per document type — no back-and-forth on basics
- HR responds with attachment + comment; requester gets notified
- Searchable history — 'show me all employment letters from Q3'
Payroll inquiries
A safe channel for paycheck questions
Paycheck disputes shouldn't happen in Slack where everyone sees them. The 'Payroll inquiry' request type sends the question straight to admins/owners (not the employee's direct manager) with the conversation in a private thread. Compensation conversations stay private.
- Routes to admin/owner — not the manager (avoids awkward 1:1s)
- Private comment thread — only the requester + admins see
- Audit log captures the resolution for future reference
- Email notifications redacted (subject only, no body content)
Attendance corrections
Fix mistakes without re-doing the timesheet
Employee forgot to clock out, system clock was wrong, the punch was duplicated — attendance corrections happen and need a real workflow. Submit the correction, manager reviews, admin signs off if needed. The original record is preserved (audit trail) and the correction is timestamped.
- Submit correction with original time + corrected time + reason
- Two-step approval (manager + admin) for higher-value corrections
- Original record preserved — audit shows both the original and the fix
- Required attachment for evidence (e.g. door log, screenshot)
Confidential concerns
A real channel for harassment and grievance reports
The 'Workplace concern' request type is confidential by default. The submitter writes the concern; only admins and owners can view. Email notifications redact the body — recipients see 'a workplace concern was submitted' with a link. The audit trail is stricter: comments are append-only, attachments can't be deleted post-submit by anyone.
- Confidential flag — only admins/owners can view
- Email body redacted to 'a concern was submitted' + link
- Append-only — no one can edit or delete after submission
- Stricter audit — every view is logged for legal review
Common questions about HR request portals
How is this different from a standalone HRIS like BambooHR or Gusto?
An HRIS is your system of record for employee data, payroll, and benefits — heavy, expensive, and overkill for small businesses. CrewBase is the request layer: where employees submit and HR responds. Most small businesses keep their HRIS for the data and use CrewBase for the conversations. The two coexist; CrewBase costs a fraction.
Can we add custom HR request types beyond the defaults?
Yes. The defaults cover ~90% of cases (sick leave, vacation, document request, payroll inquiry, attendance correction, general HR, schedule change, info update, work from home). For specifics — 'request a referral bonus,' 'apply for internal mobility,' 'request a hardware accommodation' — admins build custom request types from the platform: pick fields, set the workflow, choose visibility. No code.
Who can see confidential workplace concerns?
Only admins and owners by default. The submitter sees their own. Direct managers do NOT see them automatically (the whole point — most concerns are about the manager). Admins can comment and respond; the comment thread is private to the case.
Does this give us legal cover for harassment reports?
It gives you a documented, audit-trailed channel for receiving and resolving them — which is what most labor regulators and employment lawyers want. CrewBase isn't a substitute for a legal review of your harassment policy or HR procedures, but the audit trail (timestamped submission, viewing logs, append-only comments, retained attachments) is exactly the kind of record an investigation needs.
Can employees submit on behalf of someone else?
Generally no — each request is tied to the submitter for audit-trail clarity. For confidential concerns, employees can submit anonymously by leaving the description vague (the audit trail still records who submitted; only the visible content is anonymous). Some companies build a custom request type with a 'whose behalf' field for the rare legitimate cases.
What about employees who don't speak English well?
Today the UI is English-only. The request types and form fields can be customized with any language label (so admins can rewrite 'Vacation' to 'Vacaciones' or 'إجازة'), but the system messages and emails are English. Internationalization is on the roadmap.
Become the HR team your team trusts
One branded portal. 16 request types. Audit-trail every conversation.
14-day free trial · Set up in under 10 minutes · Cancel any time