Clocking In Systems

Freakbro

Freakbro

Freakbro

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Has anyone got any experience or advice about a Clocking in (Time & Attendance) system?

We are looking to upgrade the way we record employee hours, from currently a manual, paper based system to an automatic computer/RFID based system.

I have initially contacted a national firm, who came back with an all singing & dancing system for £6k + vat with ~£2k / year support :eek:

This is slightly (completely) out of our budget! As we are probably looking at ~£1k max all in.

With a quick google and there seem to be lots of standalone systems, ranging from £100 - £500 + extras.

Someone has put a printout of a range of Safescan systems on my desk but I've no idea if they are any good or not.

We have ~50 employees and I appreciate a standalone system isn't going to be as good as the all singing & dancing version, but we are just looking for something that's easy to use, and can output the data into software that does what you want it to.
 
For around £1k you'll probably get an install with paid support if you need it.

We had a fingerprint attendance system where we worked before (it wasn't uncommon for employees to put in each others codes!) and the HR department just wanted a text print out every month so we had to make it as simple as possible.

Try the system you have to see if it works! If not, at least you have a starting point and know a bit more as to what you need.
 
I'd be interested to know if any additional 'work time' is gained by excessive time monitoring or is the lost trust translating into reducing employee engagement & performance more significant.

All the jobs in which I've worked in recent years have avoided that kind of staff monitoring, as by simply hiring hard working & trustworthy staff you shouldn't be getting anybody taking advantage & those individual cases can be dealt with in isolation.

The only reason I ask is that in my experience businesses tend to go for solutions without fully understanding all the metrics involved & as to if there is a problem significant enough to warrant the investment of time to begin with.
 
Spooky - this is actually my job, well, supporting them anyway - has been since joining the company many years ago.

I won't name names or specifics, as I'm sure you can find out more with a bit of searching, though with the prices you quoted, you may have already contacted us... a big US company starting with "S" :D

I believe we offer two 'entry level' systems for T&A, one is just a clocking in terminal - it hosts an internal web-based application - I believe it's sold as is, with no training or support; possibly an install visit though. Unfortunately, I have no ideas on costs, but it's aimed at smaller sites looking to keep costs down - possibly with ~20 employees.

The next system up actually has a dedicated software installation on your PC, with a SQL database, and a basic terminal - unless they have changed the model, it's a POE (power over ethernet one) - that's sold with installation, training and support; though there are ongoing costs - i.e. support contracts if needed.

There are off the shelf products, ranging from a couple of hundred quid up - the second system I mention is/was about a grand; and was pushed out at a price to replace the electro-mech system (punch cards).

You get what you pay for though, I have heard that some cheaper kit (not ours mind) has issues with the units actually keeping the time - a must for T&A really! Some of the simple software will hit limitations, if you need nice reports and such, as they may not include them - same goes for any working patterns that need complicated rules or breaks (most cheap things just calculate from clocking A to clocking B).

Sorry for being vague, not sure how much I can mention, without getting myself in trouble - if 'big brother were to ever look on here'! :D
 
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elmarko said:
I'd be interested to know if any additional 'work time' is gained by excessive time monitoring or is the lost trust translating into reducing employee engagement & performance more significant.

All the jobs in which I've worked in recent years have avoided that kind of staff monitoring, as by simply hiring hard working & trustworthy staff you shouldn't be getting anybody taking advantage & those individual cases can be dealt with in isolation.

The only reason I ask is that in my experience businesses tend to go for solutions without fully understanding all the metrics involved & as to if there is a problem significant enough to warrant the investment of time to begin with.
Click to expand...

Oddly enough I work at a multinational Engineering firm which has about 2000 people working on site. They recently got rid of the clocking system (swipe your pass through a reader at the door) and doing it all on trust.

My guess is that they didnt want to pay the on going charges and cost of administering the system (people forgetting to swipe in/out etc.) more than the trust issue
 
Scort said:
Spooky - this is actually my job, well, supporting them anyway - has been since joining the company many years ago.

<snip>
Click to expand...

Heh, thanks Scort. I haven't contacted your company, it was one that begins with 'A' ;)

We aren't needing anything that complicated. And it's not about staff monitoring as much as reducing the time everyone puts in filling out a timesheet, for that to be checked, manually input onto a spreadsheet then input into sage....which for 50 staff takes more time than necessary in todays world.

I'm sure our needs are fairly straight forward, the business is open M-F 7.30-5.30 and some people work shifts within that, some are full time etc.
 
elmarko said:
I'd be interested to know if any additional 'work time' is gained by excessive time monitoring or is the lost trust translating into reducing employee engagement & performance more significant.

All the jobs in which I've worked in recent years have avoided that kind of staff monitoring, as by simply hiring hard working & trustworthy staff you shouldn't be getting anybody taking advantage & those individual cases can be dealt with in isolation.

The only reason I ask is that in my experience businesses tend to go for solutions without fully understanding all the metrics involved & as to if there is a problem significant enough to warrant the investment of time to begin with.
Click to expand...


When I first started at my company we did this but it wasn't to keep track of employees it was to have an official account of hours worked that can billed to the clients such as government. They don't like if you just bill Xhundred person hours at $150 an hour. They need a break down of who worked how many hours each day.

After a year I moved projects and just use the system to enter vacation.

As to the question in hand, we used a home made python server with PSQL database. This was CL driven but later on someone made a simple web interface.
 
elmarko said:
I'd be interested to know if any additional 'work time' is gained by excessive time monitoring or is the lost trust translating into reducing employee engagement & performance more significant.

All the jobs in which I've worked in recent years have avoided that kind of staff monitoring, as by simply hiring hard working & trustworthy staff you shouldn't be getting anybody taking advantage & those individual cases can be dealt with in isolation.

The only reason I ask is that in my experience businesses tend to go for solutions without fully understanding all the metrics involved & as to if there is a problem significant enough to warrant the investment of time to begin with.
Click to expand...

Tends to be useful at either end of the scale - the low paid roles in call centres etc... high turnover of staff most if whom probably don't like the job - monitoring is probably useful there.

At the other end you've got Solicitors, Consultants etc... who's time is billable - they don't clock on/clock off per say but do need a system to log time through the day. I work in software and we need a time system both for billing purposes and as useful information for planning future projects, resources required etc....
 
elmarko said:
I'd be interested to know if any additional 'work time' is gained by excessive time monitoring or is the lost trust translating into reducing employee engagement & performance more significant.

All the jobs in which I've worked in recent years have avoided that kind of staff monitoring, as by simply hiring hard working & trustworthy staff you shouldn't be getting anybody taking advantage & those individual cases can be dealt with in isolation.

The only reason I ask is that in my experience businesses tend to go for solutions without fully understanding all the metrics involved & as to if there is a problem significant enough to warrant the investment of time to begin with.
Click to expand...

I kind of agree with your point but places like I work would be a nightmare without some kind of clocking system.

We have people on salaries who do fixed hours and don't get paid overtime, people on fixed hours who get paid over time, people who have a set number of hours a week but no set rota, shift workers and temps who have access to large amounts of overtime and can most weeks clock in or out a couple of hours either side of their shift if they want to earn a bit extra and so on.

Doesn't always run smoothly though as in recent events (would take a long post to explain) someone was nearly fired as HR was convinced they were swiping in an hour early and then going and sitting in their car for an hour before actually starting work when they weren't.
 
Indeed, it does depend somewhat on the staff composition & make-up in question.

In my previous roles it was all salaried/bonus based compensation as opposed to hourly pay with over-time (making the motive behind it pretty clear whenever it was suggested/eventually scrapped).

I have worked in places which had an on-line portal, but this was only applicable to over-time clocking, shift staff & contractors. The core of the department wasn't involved for the reasons mentioned above.
 
Most of our employees are hourly paid, a few are salaried.

Like I say, it's just to cut out the excessive paperwork and time spent filling it in and transferring it over.

I don't even care if it doesnt integrate directly into Sage payroll, just get a printout or excel s/sheet to manipulate the data with.
 
The other times a clocking system is useful if for flexi time workers. You may not care if they do exactly 40hours a week and in all likelyhood people will work more, it is all about the work that gets accomplished. However clocking hours is a useful way for flex workers to get an estimate at the end of the week if they were working at approximately the right amount. If people work 4 hours Sunday afternoon, 10-11 hours Monday but sleep in Tuesday, start at lunch time Wednesday but work to 10pm, start early Thursday but then have a 3 hour lunch and on Friday go to beach and sunbathe at 3pm then it is hard to know if they worked as much as they should have or indeed worked too much.i work somewhat flexi time remotely and I used to clock hours on my own accord. It turned out I was perking considerably more than when I was working in the office because you have less defined boundaries.
 
I would have thought you could just purchase an rfid reader/writer of ebay and log what it reads and when to excel.

Obviously this doesn't stop people forgetting to sign in/out. You could go with a UHF version and place it by the entrance so it records them going in/out without interaction but then they may forget their card.
 
I saw a news article the other day with click bait about some company that has microchips implanted beneath the skin for clocking in lol.
I think it was somewhere in Scandinavia
 
Yeah I saw that. Used for system login and printers.

Looked like the same chips they implant in animals. Wonder if they take back their property when you leave the company :eek:.
 
Freakbro said:
Heh, thanks Scort. I haven't contacted your company, it was one that begins with 'A' ;)

We aren't needing anything that complicated. And it's not about staff monitoring as much as reducing the time everyone puts in filling out a timesheet, for that to be checked, manually input onto a spreadsheet then input into sage....which for 50 staff takes more time than necessary in todays world.

I'm sure our needs are fairly straight forward, the business is open M-F 7.30-5.30 and some people work shifts within that, some are full time etc.
Click to expand...

Think I know the company - unless they're just a reseller.

Direct links to payroll systems are typically optional add-ons, the ones I configure are chargeable modules, which only spit out a CSV with the necessary formatting really.

Of the 12 different systems I have worked on and supported over the years, the lower end ones tend to struggle to offer an export to payroll; its often an expectation that the nice detailed info you see on a clockcard report, can be easily exported... Often its the case that it cannot, maybe a PDF, but not the IN and OUT bookings and dates etc. Payroll data from these systems are often just the totals for the period you exported - you'll see X basic, Y overtime and Z absence.

Plenty of our customers just use the systems as you detail, some do use it to keep an eye on the shirkers, and others my be using cost centres for jobs...

There are plenty of systems out there that offer all the bells and whistles - fingerprint readers, facial recognition, iris scanning, all sorts. But most people are happy with just plain old proximity fobs, or magnetic cards, and trust in employees.

Just go for the system that suits your budget I guess.
 
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