An ATS and an HRIS cover adjacent halves of the same person's journey and are frequently confused when buying. The ATS holds candidates: applicants against open reqs, with a source, a stage and an outcome, up to the moment an offer is accepted. The HRIS holds employees: the person's record from their start date onwards, with pay, leave, and everything an employer must keep. The handover is the acceptance, and in most small businesses it happens by hand, with someone typing the new hire's details from one system into the other. That is usually fine at low volume and it is worth knowing that you are choosing it rather than discovering it. The question that matters when buying either is what happens at that boundary, and this page sets out what to check, why integrations here are less valuable than they sound, and what a small employer genuinely loses by keeping the two apart.
What each system is for
The ATS ends at acceptance; the HRIS begins at the start date. Reporting on hiring comes from the first and reporting on headcount from the second, which is why a question like time to fill has to be answered by the ATS even though the outcome is an employee.
The handover in practice
Manual re-entry of a handful of fields per hire. On a desk making six hires a year that is a few minutes each and not worth an integration; at fifty hires it is a different calculation and worth pricing against the cost per hire sheet on this site.
What to check before buying
Whether the ATS can export a hire in a form the HRIS can accept, and whether the applicant history stays available after the person becomes an employee. The second is the one people miss, and it is where the recruiting figures live.
Questions people ask about ats and hris
Do I need both?
Eventually most employers do, but rarely at the same time. Hiring pain usually arrives first for a growing small business, and the ATS is what addresses it.
Can one product do both?
Some do, and the trade-off is usually depth: a combined product is often adequate at both rather than strong at either. For a small desk adequate is frequently the right answer.
What about record retention?
How long applicant and employee records must be kept is a legal question that varies, and it is one for your employment adviser rather than a vendor page. Nothing on this site is legal advice.