Time and attendance
Encyclopedia
Time and attendance, or Workforce Management, systems are used by companies of all sizes to record working hours of employees primarily in order to pay their wages. Some companies have a requirement to record the number of hours spent on specific tasks in order to cost jobs accurately. This is referred to as job costing
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A workforce management system enables an employer to have full control of all employees working hours right at an operators fingertips. It is also invaluable for ensuring compliance with labour regulations regarding proof of attendance.
Companies with large employee numbers might need to install several clocking points in order to speed up the process of getting all employees to clock in or out quickly or to record activity in dispersed locations.
Depending on the supplier, identification method and number of clocking points required, prices vary widely.
A Workforce Management System protects a company from payroll fraud and provides both employer and employees with confidence in the accuracy of their wage payments.
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s, biometrics
(hand, fingerprint, or facial), and touch screens in place of paper cards which employees touch or swipe to identify themselves and record their working hours as they enter or leave the work area. The recorded information is then ideally automatically transferred to a computer for processing although some systems require an operator to physically transfer data from the clocking point to the computer using a portable memory device. The computer may then be employed to perform all the necessary calculations to generate employee timesheet
s which are used to calculate the employees' wage
s.
One of the first computerised workforce management systems was the Weeney Clocker produced by a company called Baur Automation in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was available from 1992 to about 2005.
Job costing
Job Costing involves the calculation of costs involved in a construction "job" or the manufacturing of goods done in discrete batches. These costs are recorded in ledger accounts throughout the life of the job or batch and are then summarized in the final trial balance before the preparing of the...
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A workforce management system enables an employer to have full control of all employees working hours right at an operators fingertips. It is also invaluable for ensuring compliance with labour regulations regarding proof of attendance.
Companies with large employee numbers might need to install several clocking points in order to speed up the process of getting all employees to clock in or out quickly or to record activity in dispersed locations.
Depending on the supplier, identification method and number of clocking points required, prices vary widely.
A Workforce Management System protects a company from payroll fraud and provides both employer and employees with confidence in the accuracy of their wage payments.
Manual systems
Manual systems rely on highly skilled people laboriously adding up paper cards which have times stamped onto them using a time stamping machine such as the Bundy Clock. Time stamping machines have been in use for over a century and may still be bought new today for a few hundred EuroEuro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
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Automated systems
Automated Workforce Management Systems can use electronic tags, barcode badges, magnetic stripe cardMagnetic stripe card
A magnetic stripe card is a type of card capable of storing data by modifying the magnetism of tiny iron-based magnetic particles on a band of magnetic material on the card...
s, biometrics
Biometrics
Biometrics As Jain & Ross point out, "the term biometric authentication is perhaps more appropriate than biometrics since the latter has been historically used in the field of statistics to refer to the analysis of biological data [36]" . consists of methods...
(hand, fingerprint, or facial), and touch screens in place of paper cards which employees touch or swipe to identify themselves and record their working hours as they enter or leave the work area. The recorded information is then ideally automatically transferred to a computer for processing although some systems require an operator to physically transfer data from the clocking point to the computer using a portable memory device. The computer may then be employed to perform all the necessary calculations to generate employee timesheet
Timesheet
A timesheet is a method for recording the amount of a worker's time spent on each job.-Use:Originally developed for an employer to determine payroll, timesheets are not just for payroll any more. Timesheets may record the start and end time of tasks, or just the duration. It may contain a...
s which are used to calculate the employees' wage
Wage
A wage is a compensation, usually financial, received by workers in exchange for their labor.Compensation in terms of wages is given to workers and compensation in terms of salary is given to employees...
s.
History
CipherLab Co Ltd, based in Taiwan, released in 1989 its first time clock data terminal.One of the first computerised workforce management systems was the Weeney Clocker produced by a company called Baur Automation in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was available from 1992 to about 2005.