Celebrating 25 Years of HR Manage
It has been a while since our last update, but that is because we have been very busy behind the scenes. For the past year, our team has been working on one of the largest and most ambitious upgrades in the history of the system, and we are finally ready to announce it: HR Manage version 7 is on track for release at the end of September 2026.
The timing could not be more fitting. 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of HR Manage. First commercially released near the end of 2001, the system has grown and evolved alongside our clients ever since, through changing technology, changing legislation and the changing demands placed on HR teams. Version 7 represents the next major step in that journey.
A new foundation, not just a new look
Version 7 arrives alongside a refreshed identity and a new logo, but this is far more than a visual refresh. At its centre is a completely new web application, built from the ground up on the latest Microsoft .NET platform: faster, cleaner and designed to perform at scale, with information loaded as it is needed rather than all at once. It introduces a modern visual design, simpler theme configuration and full dark-mode support.
The objective has never been to replace what makes HR Manage valuable like its flexibility, depth and customisability, but to carry those strengths onto a platform built for the next 25 years.
What’s coming in version 7
The initial release rebuilds some of the most important areas of the system:
A redesigned Employee File brings personal, employment and organisational information together in a single modern overview, with visual summaries for compliance, leave, training, assets and documents. Managers get a new landing page showing their team’s upcoming leave, events, staff movements and compliance status at a glance.
Leave management has been extensively redeveloped. Applications are faster and more dynamic, with balances recalculated instantly as dates change, a modernised Leave Planner with timeline and calendar views, batch approvals, and automatic daily accrual processing replacing traditional monthly leave runs.
The third generation of our workflow platform delivers major performance improvements, redesigned workflow pages, more advanced forms and conditional logic, document completion and internal signing within workflows, built-in discussions, and a powerful new export wizard. After 25 years of building this platform, we are confident in saying it: no HR system in South Africa comes close to the flexibility and depth of the version 7 workflow engine, and no workflow system comes close to its integration with HR. Workflows in HR Manage don’t just route tasks to a list of names; they understand your organisation: managers, positions, departments and reporting lines. So when your structure changes, your processes follow.
Document signing now works internally as well as externally, with formal tracked signing requests or simpler informal sign-offs, and securely stored signatures and initials for reuse.
AI-assisted compliance and document management lets users upload documents in batches while the system helps identify each document, match it to the right employee and requirement, and extract details such as expiry dates, reducing repetitive capturing to a quick review-and-confirm.
Beyond the web application, version 7 also brings faster-loading dashboards, a redeveloped notification platform with richer contextual emails and quick actions, and automatically generated organisational charts in both the web and Windows applications.
More than a single release
September is a major milestone, not the finish line. The new web application will continue to expand as further modules are migrated to the new platform, while established functionality remains fully available throughout. This phased approach lets us deliver the benefits sooner and refine them with feedback from real users.
Our published version 7 change log offers a preview of what is in development. It is far from a complete list and we will be sharing more about individual features in the weeks ahead.
Here’s to the next 25 years
Very few software products remain in active development for 25 years. HR Manage has reached this milestone because it has never been treated as finished: it has evolved continuously, shaped by new technology, legislation and, above all, the clients who use it every day.
Thank you for 25 years of ideas, feedback and support. We think version 7 is the best thing we have ever built and we are looking forward to showing you what comes next.
