According to Chris Vandersluis, complex organizations do not break down because of strategy; they fracture because of small, unresolved operational gaps. Few are more persistent than the way time is captured, validated, and translated across departments that each answer to different rules. At the center of that problem sits HMS Software, Vandersluis' Montreal-based firm founded in 1984 that has spent more than four decades building a single, auditable foundation for how enterprises account for time.
HMS is the publisher of TimeControl, a multi-purpose, financially auditable timesheet designed for organizations where time touches everything. Project management, payroll, finance, billing, human resources, regulatory compliance, and tax reporting all draw from the same source. According to Vandersluis, TimeControl was formally launched as a product in 1994, when HMS shifted from being a distributor and consultancy into a software publisher.
Vandersluis came to software from economics, not engineering. In the early 1980s, as personal computers began entering offices, he and a partner started distributing project management software to large organizations that were experimenting with digital planning. To him, that gap became apparent almost immediately. "They had project planning tools," Vandersluis explains, "but they didn't have a timesheet that could work for more than one department."
According to him, payroll needed one thing, project managers needed another, and finance demanded precision; neither side could compromise.
The solution, he notes, was not obvious, and it was not simple. Vandersluis recalls early meetings where one group approved a design, and another rejected it outright. "The only viable answer was a single timesheet that could satisfy all of them at once," he says. "At the time, such a system effectively did not exist."
Unlike single-function timesheet products, Vandersluis notes that TimeControl is designed to serve many purposes simultaneously from one entry. "An employee records time once. From that same data, project managers can get actuals, finance can get auditable numbers, payroll can get exact compensation inputs, and compliance teams can get defensible records," he explains.
In his view, precision matters because the stakes may be different across departments. Projects can tolerate approximation, but payroll cannot. "You can miss a project budget by a thousand dollars, and people might shrug," he notes. "Miss payroll by a penny, and it will keep someone awake at night." TimeControl, he notes, is built to withstand audits, tax scrutiny, and regulatory review, which is why Vandersluis admits it has found a home in mid-sized and large organizations with complex operational environments.
Those environments often arrive at HMS after years of incremental decisions. Vandersluis describes companies running five, seven, or even nine different timesheet systems, each deployed for a reasonable reason at the time. Pointing to that observation, he notes that TimeControl's value emerges when organizations decide that staff should not have to fill out multiple timesheets to satisfy internal silos.
The company prioritizes steady profitability, long-term client relationships, and independence over scale for its own sake. Vandersluis highlights that many clients have remained with HMS for decades.
Implementation reflects the company's pragmatism, where, he notes, deployments are handled remotely and vary based on organizational complexity, from short engagements for focused use cases to longer consultative processes that bring finance, HR, IT, and project leadership into alignment. HMS operates on what it calls a SaaS-plus consulting model, recognizing that technology alone rarely resolves structural problems without consensus.
Timesheets, as Vandersluis admits, will never be loved by the end users. "Our goal, with TimeControl," he says, "is to make people as little unhappy as possible." To him, that means minimizing friction for employees while maximizing clarity and value for the organization. "We're creating software that users would barely notice, and leadership teams can rely on heavily; it's a win-win," he notes.
After four decades, Vandersluis highlights that HMS remains a trusted infrastructure that evades louder promises. "TimeControl does not chase trends or headlines," he says. "It does something more enduring: underpinning operations at some of the world's most demanding organizations, one auditable timesheet at a time."
