Ask two agency owners what "recruiting software" means and you will get two different answers. One is thinking about the system that finds and places candidates. The other is thinking about everything that happens after. Both are right, and the difference is the whole point.
Front office vs back office
Agency software splits cleanly into two halves. The front office is the ATS, or applicant tracking system: sourcing, screening, submitting, and placing candidates. The back office is everything that turns a placement into a paid, profitable piece of business: onboarding, timesheets, payroll, billing, margin, and commissions.
You will also hear the term middle office for the layer in between, roughly time and expense capture through to invoicing. It is the same post-placement operation, so this guide groups the middle and back office together and refers to the whole thing as the back office.
| ATS (front office) | Back office | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Find, screen, and place candidates | Run the business of each placement |
| Core features | Sourcing, pipeline, submissions, placements | Onboarding, timesheets, payroll, billing, margin |
| Primary user | Recruiters | Operations, finance, and payroll |
| Stops at | The placement | The paid invoice and reported margin |
| Examples | Bullhorn, Loxo, Crelate | GorillaWorks FlexBackOffice |
Where the ATS stops
A great ATS ends at the placement. The instant a candidate is placed, the work leaves the recruiting pipeline and becomes operations: work orders, document collection, timesheet approvals, pay runs, client invoices, and the margin math behind the deal. Done in spreadsheets, that is where hours leak and profit quietly disappears.
The ATS tells you who you placed. The back office tells you whether it was worth it.
Do you need both?
Almost always, yes, and ideally integrated. The ATS runs the candidate pipeline; the back office turns each placement into accurate pay, billing, and margin. When they are connected, a placement recorded in the ATS flows straight into onboarding, payroll, and billing with no re-keying. GorillaWorks does not replace your ATS; it integrates with any ATS that has open APIs and picks up from there.
What the back office actually does
Once a placement lands, the back office runs the lifecycle:
- Onboarding: document collection and compliance tasks before day one.
- Timesheets: captured once, approved, and fed into pay and billing.
- Payroll calculations and client billing from the same approved hours.
- Recruiter commissions calculated from live placement margin.
Curious how the margin behind each placement works? See how staffing agencies get paid.