At Zedtreeo, we run a remote-staffing business. To operate it, we built our own workforce management platform — attendance, leave, payroll, onboarding, and billing clients for the staff we place, all in one app. It has been running our company for a while.
Today we are open-sourcing a Community Edition of it under AGPL-3.0: free, self-hostable workforce management software for SMEs — usable anywhere in the world, and fully customisable because it is yours to modify.
The repository: github.com/Zedtreeo/workforce-community · live demo · Docker Hub
Why give it away?
Most workforce management software is either enterprise-priced or a walled-garden SaaS you cannot run yourself. If you are a lean team — an agency, a startup, a staffing shop — you want to own your data, run it anywhere, and adapt it to how you actually work instead of paying per seat for the basics. We had already built it; open-sourcing the core costs us little and helps a lot of teams in the position we were once in.
Self-host it in five minutes
A monorepo — NestJS API, Next.js 14 web, Postgres with Prisma, Redis and MinIO — up with one command:
git clone https://github.com/Zedtreeo/workforce-community
cd workforce-community
cp .env.example .env
docker compose upThat is the whole install. Compose bundles Postgres, Redis, MinIO and a Mailpit mail-catcher, runs migrations, and seeds a demo company. Open localhost:3000 and sign in with admin@demo.com — login is passwordless email-OTP, and the code lands in Mailpit at localhost:8025. If you would rather not build, docker compose pull fetches prebuilt images.
What is inside, all free
| Module | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Employees & departments | Directory, structure, records |
| Attendance | Web clock-in/out and shifts |
| Leave & holidays | Requests, balances, calendars |
| Payroll | Pay structures, runs, payslip PDFs |
| Onboarding | Offer letters and document flow |
| Clients & invoicing | Bill for the staff you place |
| Access control | Role-based permissions |
| Self-service portals | Separate employee and client views |
And because it is open source, it is fully customisable — adapt payroll rules, letter templates, roles and workflows to your business and your country.
The honest bit: it is open-core
The Community Edition is the complete core platform and useful on its own. A few modules live in our full internal build and not in the CE: an AI HR and billing assistant, calling and chat, and advanced statutory payroll. A commercial (non-AGPL) licence, managed hosting and support are available on request — support@zedtreeo.com.
AGPL keeps it all open: modify it and run it as a service, and your changes stay open too.
Try it, break it, tell us
It is early — v0.1.0 — and we would like the feedback. Open an issue on GitHub, or email support@zedtreeo.com with feedback or feature ideas. Pull requests are welcome under a lightweight CLA. If it is useful, a star on the repository genuinely helps others find it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Zedtreeo Workforce Community Edition really free?
Yes. It is released under AGPL-3.0, which grants you the right to use, modify and redistribute it at no cost. There is no seat limit, no trial period and no feature gate on the modules listed above.
What does AGPL-3.0 mean for my business?
If you run it internally for your own company, it behaves like any free software — use it, change it, keep your changes private. The obligation applies if you modify it and offer it to others as a network service: in that case your modifications must also be published under AGPL. A commercial licence is available on request if that does not suit you.
Do I need Zedtreeo to run it?
No. It is self-hosted on infrastructure you control. We have no access to your instance and no visibility of the data in it. Support for a self-hosted deployment is community-based through the public repository.
What is not included in the Community Edition?
Three things live only in our internal build: an AI HR and billing assistant, calling and chat, and advanced statutory payroll. Everything else — employees, attendance, leave, payroll runs, payslips, onboarding, clients, invoicing, access control and both self-service portals — is in the CE.
Can I try it without installing anything?
Yes. The demo at demo.zedtreeo.io is seeded with a synthetic company. It is a shared environment and is reset on a schedule, so treat anything you enter as temporary and do not put real employee or payroll data into it.
What is the technology stack?
A monorepo: NestJS for the API, Next.js 14 for the web app, Postgres with Prisma for data, Redis for queues and caching, and MinIO for object storage. Docker Compose wires all of it together, including a Mailpit mail-catcher for local email.
How do I get support or report a bug?
Open an issue on the GitHub repository for bugs and feature requests. For commercial licensing, managed hosting or priority support, email support@zedtreeo.com.
Why would a staffing company open-source its own operating software?
Because the software is not what we sell. We place dedicated remote specialists; the platform is how we run that operation. Publishing it is the clearest evidence we can offer of how the business actually works — you can read the code that runs it.