Delighting your workers
ATS vs staffing agency software
An ATS can help you manage applicants, resumes, hiring stages, and recruitment pipelines.
Temporary staffing agencies often need more than that.
Once you are managing active workers, client job requests, availability, compliance, scheduling, timesheets, pay and bill rules, and payroll-ready exports, the work has moved beyond applicant tracking.
Scissors includes applicant screening, but its real strength is temporary staffing operations: the work that happens after application and before payroll or accounting handoff.
An ATS helps manage applicants, hiring stages, resumes, and recruitment pipelines.
Staffing agency software for temporary agencies goes further. It supports workers, clients, jobs, compliance, schedules, timesheets, rates, and payroll-ready exports.
If your agency mainly places permanent roles, an ATS or recruitment CRM may be enough. If you manage temporary, casual, contract, or shift-based work, you may need staffing agency software built for operations after application.
An ATS can be the right tool when the main problem is recruitment pipeline management.
That often includes:
There is nothing wrong with using an ATS for those workflows.
The question is whether your agency's work stops there.
For many temporary staffing agencies, it does not.
Temporary staffing creates operational work that an ATS may not be designed to handle.
Your team may need to know:
When that information sits across an ATS, spreadsheets, inboxes, SMS, forms, timesheet tools, and payroll prep files, recruiters have to do the connecting work manually.
Scissors is designed to bring more of that temporary staffing workflow together.
| Workflow area | Typical ATS | Scissors staffing agency software |
|---|---|---|
| Applicant intake | Often strong for applications, resumes, and candidate records | Supports custom intake forms, applicant screening, references, documents, applicant chat, and recruiter review. |
| Applicant screening stages | Usually supports recruitment pipeline stages | Supports configurable multi-stage applicant screening workflows for temporary staffing intake. |
| Candidate database | Stores candidate information | Connects applicant and worker information to availability, compliance, jobs, timesheets, and client workflows. |
| Permanent hiring pipeline | Often a good fit | Not the primary Scissors use case. Scissors is optimised for temporary, casual, contract, and shift-based work. |
| Active worker availability | Often limited or separate | Workers can manage availability and leave, with conflict checks against confirmed jobs. |
| Compliance and credentials | May store documents | Tracks credentials, expiry dates, verification logs, and talent pool eligibility rules. Human recruiters still approve verifications. |
| Client job requests | Often handled outside the ATS | Clients can create jobs or use controlled self-service workflows where enabled. |
| Shift-based job creation | Often not the core workflow | Supports shift-based jobs with dates, times, talent pools, locations, and worker requirements. |
| Qualification-based filtering | May vary by ATS | Filters by rules such as talent pool, credentials, availability, overlap, visibility, organisation type, and distance. |
| Candidate suitability support | Often pipeline or search-based | Supports rule-based eligibility filtering using criteria such as talent pool, credentials, availability, overlap, visibility, organisation type, and distance. A human still decides who to invite. |
| Worker mobile app | Often limited or add-on | Workers can use mobile and web workflows for jobs, availability, documents, timesheets, notifications, chat, and reviews where enabled. |
| Client portal | Often limited or separate | Clients can use controlled self-service for jobs, candidate visibility, timesheet approvals, chat, documents, and reviews where enabled. |
| Timesheets | Often separate | Supports digital timesheets with worker submission, client approval, admin processing, and export preparation. |
| Expenses | Often separate | Supports expense claim submission and approval where enabled. |
| Pay and bill rules | Usually outside an ATS | Supports configurable pay and bill rules across talent pools, skill levels, pay levels, charge levels, timing tags, surcharges, bounties, and promotions where configured. |
| Payroll-ready exports | Usually outside an ATS | Prepares export-ready data for payroll systems, including supported CSV formats and iPayroll integration where relevant. |
| Accounting-ready billing exports | Usually outside an ATS | Prepares billing-ready export data for accounting handoff. Scissors is not accounting software. |
| Reviews and feedback | Often notes-based or separate | Supports internal, agency-moderated reviews and ratings tied to completed jobs where enabled. |
| Branded agency experience | Often vendor-branded or limited | Supports agency-branded mobile and web app experiences for workers and clients. |
For temporary staffing agencies, the workflow often looks like this:
That is the work Scissors is built around.
It is not just applicant tracking. It is the middle-office workflow that keeps temporary staffing moving.
Scissors is middle-office software for temporary staffing agencies.
It connects the work after applicant intake and before payroll or accounting handoff.
That means Scissors is not trying to replace every ATS, CRM, payroll system, or accounting tool. Instead, it supports the operational staffing layer that many agencies currently manage through spreadsheets, inboxes, SMS, forms, timesheet tools, and manual exports.
Scissors may sit beside or replace parts of your existing stack, depending on your workflow. The important question is not whether you have an ATS. The question is whether your current tools can handle the active worker, client, compliance, timesheet, rate, and export work that temporary staffing creates.
Scissors is most relevant for agencies that manage temporary, casual, contract, or shift-based workers.
It is especially useful when your agency has:
It is often a better fit for sectors such as healthcare, nursing, aged care, residential care, education, ECE, hospitality, events, security, logistics, industrial, cleaning, and other shift-based staffing sectors.
An ATS-only workflow may still be enough if your agency mainly does permanent placement, executive search, or business development-heavy recruitment with little active worker scheduling, compliance, timesheet, or export complexity.
MediHire is a healthcare staffing agency operating in South Africa and the UK.
Before Scissors, MediHire was managing candidates, compliance, rosters, communication, payroll preparation, and invoicing through paper rosters, email threads, Excel spreadsheets, and separate SMS systems.
Scissors helped MediHire bring applicant screening, compliance checking, workforce scheduling, complex pay and bill rules, timesheets, and CSV export/import into a more connected workflow.
After implementation, MediHire reported:
Those results are MediHire-reported outcomes, not guaranteed results for every agency.
An ATS helps manage applicant tracking, resumes, hiring stages, and recruitment pipelines. Staffing agency software for temporary agencies also manages active workers, client jobs, availability, compliance, scheduling, timesheets, pay and bill rules, and payroll-ready exports.
Scissors includes applicant screening and onboarding workflows, but it is not mainly a permanent placement ATS. It is designed for temporary staffing operations after application.
Some can, especially if their operation is simple. But once the agency manages recurring jobs, worker availability, compliance rules, timesheets, client approvals, rate complexity, and payroll exports, an ATS-only workflow often leaves too much work in spreadsheets and inboxes.
Not necessarily. Scissors is not a deep CRM for business development and sales pipeline management. It is strongest as temporary staffing operations software for the work that happens once applicants, workers, clients, jobs, schedules, timesheets, and exports need to stay connected.
No. Scissors is not payroll software and does not process payroll. It prepares payroll-ready export data for the payroll provider or finance process your agency already uses.
No. Scissors is not accounting software. It prepares billing-ready export data for accounting handoff, such as CSV files for systems like Xero where configured.
Scissors should not be described as AI matching software. Candidate eligibility is handled through configured rules and filters, and recruiters or authorised client users make the final selection.
Yes. Scissors helps agencies collect, review, track, and enforce credential requirements. It can track expiry dates and use eligibility rules when filling jobs. It does not automatically verify credentials or perform background checks.
Yes. Scissors supports client portal workflows where authorised client users can create jobs, view allowed worker information, approve timesheets, communicate, and use other self-service features controlled by the agency.
Yes. Workers can use mobile and web app workflows for availability, job details, job responses, documents, timesheets, expenses where enabled, chat, notifications, and reviews where enabled.
Scissors is best suited to temporary, casual, contract, and shift-based staffing agencies, especially in healthcare, nursing, aged care, education, ECE, hospitality, events, security, logistics, industrial, cleaning, care, and similar sectors.
Compare your real workflow
A useful Scissors demo starts with the tools and workarounds your agency uses today.
Bring your applicant workflow, client job process, worker availability setup, compliance requirements, timesheet process, pay and bill rules, and export needs. We will walk through whether Scissors could make the operation clearer.
