Lucca
Modular HR SaaS suite (scheduling, leave, working time, expense claims) widely used by hospitality businesses.
Each building block (leave, expense claims) can be rebuilt on its own. Making them work together reliably, with the right labour-law rules, is the work that justifies the tool.
What you lose
- Interconnected HR modules (payroll, talent).
- Accounting integrations.
- Regulatory compliance tracked by the vendor.
Existing alternatives to Lucca
- Frappe HROpen source
Open-source HR (GPL-3.0): leave, attendance, shift schedules, expense claims and payroll (payroll not suited to France).
- OrangeHRMOpen source
Open-source HR suite (GPL-3.0): employee records, leave, time tracking and expense claims.
Team schedule for bars and restaurants, free up to 4 employees, hour totals and overrun alerts.
The prompt to build it yourself
Build me a leave, working-time and expense-claim tool, for my venue, to replace a subscription. Stack: web app (Next.js or Node/Express) with SQLite, hosted on my small server, usable on phone and computer. No mandatory paid service, no telemetry. Core of the tool: - Leave request and approval, balance per type of leave. - Working-time and absence entry, monthly summary. - Expense claims with photo of the receipt and approval status. Requirements: - Weekly schedule by position and by shift, with drag and drop, copy of the previous week and publication to the teams. - Availability and leave requests entered by the employee, approved by the manager. - Configurable alerts: 11 h rest between two shifts, 10 h of work per day, weekly working time. Default values from the French Labour Code, to be adapted to the HCR collective agreement by my accountant. - CSV export of hours per employee and per period, for my accountant. - Employee data: role-based access (manager, employee), password or magic link, change log. Out of scope: payroll, talent management and accounting integrations. README: installation, backup, and a reminder that this tool is not payroll software and calculates no salary, no DSN, no DPAE, and that legal counts remain to be checked by my accountant.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Lucca be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. Each building block (leave, expense claims) can be rebuilt on its own. Making them work together reliably, with the right labour-law rules, is the work that justifies the tool.
- What is Lucca used for?
- Modular HR SaaS suite (scheduling, leave, working time, expense claims) widely used by hospitality businesses.
- What alternatives to Lucca already exist?
- Frappe HR (open source), OrangeHRM (open source), Planning Restaurant (free). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
Community feedback
Readers tell what they built instead of this tool, or what broke along the way. Every entry is reviewed before publication.
No feedback published yet. Have you tried replacing this tool? Tell us about it.