Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Punch In?
grantedparole asks: "My company is planning to switch from an antiquated punch card time clock to a software based time clock, and a recent search on Google yielded many results. Searching on Freshmeat for 'timeclock' yielded two results, both of which do not appear to have any recent updates. Searching for 'time clock' returned more results, but all of those seem geared towards project management, rather than real world time keeping for many employees who don't work on projects (ie: sales people). What are the people on Slashdot using and is it running on *nix?"
Oh, and give them root access too.
Here at the bank we have a web page we can go to throughout the week that you basically enter your work/breaks/vacation, and then submit at the end of the week. It's really handy and well programmed (as it should be).
Dave
Chain your employees to their work stations.
That way you know where they are at all times.
It's also easier to get them to work overtime with no notice.
Speech: Free
Beer: $699.00
We use an app called Kronos. Pretty good and very flexible. One of the largest time keeping apps around.
Cincinati Time clocks. Badge style reader, RS-232 data feed (modem mounted inside clock if necessary) converted to RS-485 for long distance runs (4,000 ft).
The clocks are literally quite dumb. They just log everything and upload to a software package which was DOS based when I was installing them.
The DOS application allowed an HR person to edit and upload the data to a company like ADP (automated payroll) to cut the checks.
The software allowed for easy editing and various rounding rules (usually 7min before and after).
I am now required to fill out timesheets on a web based system managed by eLabor which is part of ADP (ironically)... It's used for project tracking mostly (I'm salary not hourly).
Far as I can tell, no one really uses these numbers they just require everyone to fill out their timesheets. It's stupid really... It's not used for payroll. I figure only 5% of the IT workforce actually logs useful data, the rest is worthless. For example, I've logged 40 hours a week for months for nothing special.
I suppose one could get the data file spec and protocol for just about any time clock and write a web based tool or Linux native application with a little bit of effort.
The market for these devices is still out there but many of the small customers are going with those timeclocks listed in the bag of computer magazines, etc. Same with bar-code readers. There are a ton of companies selling the stuff dirt cheap.
The software is where it's at. It's not that complicated either.
Do employers trust employees anymore?
I can understand having a clock in some environments, but I dont see the need for a clock in the typical Office Space style workplaces. My own timesheet doesn't even ask for times, just the total hours worked for each day and for what contract. My supervisor signs the sheet at the end of the week, and I feel it's more than sufficient. If someone feels that there's some tampering or other shenanigans going on, there are ways to figure that out. Like when they're work doesn't get done, or keeping tabs on when they actually show up and leave the office.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
But in my last job, we used a terminal running a SCO OpenServer session. I don't know wich software was used.
The tagreader by the front door just scans the RFID implant in the back of my neck every time I walk by! Ahhh, freedom...
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
unix has this great command called 'last' which tells you who logged in when.
force logouts at midnight, tell everyone to open a SSH session to some server when they come in
Buttsex.
... called IRC. Everyone coming into work makes their presence known on a certain predetermined
channel, their signs of presence get logged with a timestamp... everyone knows where everyone else
is... Works great, unless your server is lagged to Jupiter and back.
Have EVDO, will travel.
Why would a field that seems to be defined by unpaid overtime need timeclocks?
Really, it doesn't matter. The only use I see is if you're using it to find out which of your employees aren't smart enough to figure out how to forge, fake, and abuse the system.
No Zen is good zen
But we use a web-based tool called Planview that tracks time usage pretty well
I don't have a job, you INSENSITIVE CLOD!
Such a product could be written in PHP with a MySQL backend in half a day. It would be very flexible to your company's needs - a reporting page could also serve the HR department when it comes time to pay saleries.
It could also be used to monitor who is at lunch, or in a meeting, or out of the office, etc. This would be handy for the receptionist(s) taking phone calls - they would know where you are without calling your desk phone, then paging you over the whole phone/PA system (keeping the client on-hold during this time).
One issue with this is, how will people remember to go to a web page on the intranet at the start/end of their shift? The browser's start/home page might work at the start of the shift, but what about the end of the shift?
Mike
It was owned by slave labour style jerks and we had to punch in and out for breaks. They had clerks who checked them for extra minutes here and there. The company was bought out, the punch cards were completely eliminated and morale improved. People started coming in a little early (10 minutes sometimes more) and leaving late. We just had a schedule on the wall and everyone showed up for their shifts. Did some people take advantage and cheat the system? You bet but they were warned and some were fired. The end result was happier more loyal employees all in all.
1st known failed CIA coup in South America : http://www.chavezthefilm.com/index_ex.htm
I'm a salaried employee, so I don't punch a clock.
Those of our employees that do, however, use a mechanical punch clock with time cards. There's a lot to be said for an incorruptable paper trail when it comes to money owed.
NO CARRIER
as a true warrior should
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I wrote a PHP/MySQL web app for such a task about a year ago. Feel free to contact me if you're interested.
At a certain Canadian retail chain that is known for selling Tires, we punch in and out on the company's iSeries, which we incidentally use for almost everything else. We don't use any kind of card, paper or magnetic, we just have a password that we tap in and we can clock in and out.
A lot of companies have used time clocks for hourly workers for a very, very long time. They generally have a very good reason and these people work in jobs in which it is expected that they will clock in and out. The person asking the question did not say that he was working in an Office Space style setting only that they were replacing their old system with someone new. Maybe it's a manufacturing company or a department store with part-time, hourly sales clerks. These places can either depend on people getting time sheets correctly filled out and submitted on time or they can use a system that is easier for the employee and more efficient for the company.
There's a reason why companies use mechanical timeclocks: they're highly tamper-resistant. The Department of Labor and the various state and county workforce commissions have rules governing the collection of employee time data, and those rules are very specific. If you don't use a qualified tamper-resistant system, you're liable. If somebody should decide to sue you for unfairly collecting their time data, you're going to lose.
The solution to every problem is not a whiz-bang gadget.
You know what would be KEWL is a webcam that updates every min and some image processing that says car here or not here for each spot and then given employees assigned parking spots!!!
You could automate the whole process of time clocks for the whole building and even have those too long lunches noted. It's so brillant it's evil. OR the barcode on cars for the whole gate thing, just need to also include it on the exits.
Caveats: car pooling.. (F U environment) and motorcycles (F U rebels.. oh wait) and Bill Gates helo-pad / personal jetpack
There is some software that a client produces called "PC Time Clock." www.pctimeclock.com It is prety cool and that is what I use at my shop. We never have any problems with it but the guy is a freak. It's cheap too!
Erutangis ym si siht.
My company went through the same thing not long ago. We looked at the costs and capapbilities of what already existed and rolled our own.
Our company has roughly 400 employees. We have 2 programmers. Me and another guy. While he took care of normal stuff I designed and coded the new system to replace the punch clocks. The whole thing took me about 6 months.
A good portion of that time involved learning. Prior to that job I had never used Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL or Apache. But we bought a Dell Poweredge server for 6 grand- with RedHat- that runs the web server and the database server. I set up all the functionality for employees and managers using PHP.
The only thing that was not built using free stuff was the reporting stuff I did for accounting. I used Crystal Reports for that. (Their system is antiquated as all get out, they will not change it and entries must be made through the keyboard) This was done to save time since we already had it available and I was familiar with it.
I really enjoyed the project. I learned all kinds of good linux stuff, fell in love with PostgreSQL and enjoyed PHP quite a bit too.
I'm sure what I built would never work for a company of any great size- but for a small business it has been just what we needed and the price was right. The CALs for SQL server alone were more than the server it would run on. Plus the extra cost of win2k on the server, etc.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
As far as I can tell, this is about a hundred line Perl program. Get some nice smart cards and readers (they're quitecheap), use MUSCLE's Perl bindings, hook up to a Linux box, and dump times to a logfile/postgres db. On a successful read, beep.
May we never see th
Man, even at Papa John's we use dumb unix terminals and some dumb Profit System software to clock in. When you boot the term you're prompted for standard user: prompt where you login as pizza.
Now I'm gonna drink a beer.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Although I'm going to get flamed for this, Microsoft Project Central is an absolute godsend - easy to input time from, and you can collect the stats from team members to go into your Project plans easily and efficiently.
BOW before me!
All things in moderation; including moderation
The only place I ever worked that had a flexi-time system and therefore needed clocking on systems used little mechanical clocks, one for each person which could only be switched on or off with a key. Unfortuantely, it was eventually found that a fault in these clocks made them a fire risk, and as the manufacturer had gone out of business they couldn't easily be replaced.
The management toyed with going for a software-based system, but this was unpopular with the staff as it was felt that the time it would take to boot up one's PC in the morning, logon to the mainframe (this was a while back!) and navigate to the timesheets system would cause, cumulatively, a lot of time to be lost to the staff's flexi-time accounts. There was also the issue of the system forwarding late clock-ons to Personnel (what we used to call HR back in the day), which again could have been unfair as you could have arrived on the premises on time, but might not be able to "clock on" for another five minutes before the hardware and software let you.
In the end, we just went to a paper-based system which worked fine.
No timeclock to punch but I do have to log my hours on a web-based timesheet (SAP) twice a week. Let it go past 2 days and you tend to forget what you worked on. Then there's the managers who pull reports mid-period then get on your case because you aren't up to the second or the "no hours report" (note: not "short" hours but "no" hours) that you show up on when you come up 15 minutes short one pay period because you decided to take some comp time for the 10 hours of OT you pulled the previous one.
Journyx Timesheet is a nice, lightweight product, and we just rolled it out at my company. An OSS plus is that it is written in Python, although I believe it is compiled. It is webbased, and uses anything you can hook up via ODBC for the back end. We run it on a beefy desktop and it is responsive enough for 70-some users. Not affiliated, just a satisfied customer and all that jazz.
When I was working for major major defense contractor (you know who you are), my favorite categories used in the time-tracking application to spice up the results were UCOT (uncompensated overtime, pronounced "you-caught") and NIIA (non injury industrial accident, basically when you got cold and stayed home).
Shut up man! Don't blow it for all of us. I haven't finished working on my tan yet.
because, done poorly, will create immense pain and suffering for your employees. A system that is slow, first of all, and then requires logging in and several mouse clicks before you can enter a single hour is pure hell, especially when the management wants it filled in daily.
I know of a very large contractor that threw away a slick as spit single-page web form for time reporting in favor of a behemoth three-tier "web application" that did everything from time reporting to expense reporting to management audits. Pure hell. It is extremely complex, does down all the time, doesn't scale for peak times of the day, and is very frequently undergoing "emergency maintenance". Not only that, but they managed to screw up everyone's withholding statuses causing everyone to get smaller paychecks until they figured the damn thing out. The icing on the cake is that the UI looks like college sophomores put it together as a semester project (this is a commercial product, an expensive one).
I've even heard director-level management say how much the system sucks, but "we're stuck with it."
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
We're salaried. Every month, our HR person emails us an Excel spreadsheet into which we plug in any non-holiday time off. We print that out, sign it and turn it in to our managers, who sign them and then hand them back to HR.
Every now and again the bean-counters come up out of their holes and ask what the time is being spent on, so the managers send around another spreadsheet where we plug in the percentage of our time spent on various things. It's OK for that to be a back-of-the-envelope guesstimate.
It's all pretty painless, and the only irritation is that it perpetuates the fiction that we all work eight-hour days.
Because the usual "we trust you to work 40 hours, you'r salaried" gets distorted both ways - "favored" employees seem to get away with stealing an hour or two here and there, and the rest get pushed to work more than that. Documenting comings and going protects both the employee and the employer. Punching in and out also creates a stronger alibi in the rare case of being accused of a crime during work hours.
I believe your problems have been caused by searching for antiquated terminology such as "time clock" when you should've been searching for the latest industry term -- "time cube." Throw that one into Google and you'll get much more informative search results.
Well, generally I come in at least twenty minutes late, I sneak in through the backdoor so Lumberg won't see me, then for the next hour I just kinda space out.
Q: Space out?
A: Yeah, I just kinda stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working... I'd say in a given week I do about, oh, 15 minutes of real, actual work.
We use Onshore Timesheet (it's even a Debian package). The user interface is pretty clumsy, so I added my own "clock in" and "clock out" code that works with the same Postgresql tables that the Onshore system uses.
We use Lucent's CentreVu phone management software. Simply log in and out of the phone for lunch's, breaks, arrival time, etc. and CentreVu tracks it by the millisecond. Maybe not so useful for your manufacturing style job, but I'm sure you could convert it to work in that type of environment.
Seriously,
Get an old 8MHz Mac Plus with 20MB hard drive, put HyperCard and a simple stack to handle the timesheet on it. It'll never die, it won't give you any shit, and it's damn cute sitting there useful after almost 20 years of service.
Have HyperCard dump activity to a textfile on a floppy every 15 minutes. The obscurity of the system (and the lack of eject button on the floppy) means you can have a somewhat secure setup.
If you change the name of HyperCard to 'Finder' and put it into the system 6 system folder it will auto-load at boot time, and you can name the timesheet stack to 'Home' and it will load first too. Using system 6 WITHOUT multifinder would let you 'lock in' users to the stack and prevent them from doing anything else.
My dad still runs his freelance biz off a Mac Classic with a 40MB hard drive. It's a beautiful thing. Of course, he has a 'real' workstation to do the graphics and web stuff, but the classic does all the recordkeeping and back-end work.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
PeopleSoft is the scourge of the devil. Stay away at all costs.
I hate it.
Help us build a better map!
Walmart uses Time in a box, barcode reading time clocks. I dont have any real data on them, I just know that Tiger direct used to carry them, and my still do so.
The associates usually have a unique barcode for themselves on a sticky label on the back of their badge. Some of the more rough and tumble people that tend to drop, mutilate, lose their lame badges keep their barcode on their discount card or a shopping card in their wallet. After losing my badge about five times and noticing one of my older badges turning black, I decided to take the barcode on a sticker route.
The timeclocks themselves offer the ability to list hours worked since last update (usually you can see hours worked up to the day before). Lost badges/missed punches are a big pain in the ass, and require filling out a time adjustment sheet including your social security number, your associate id number and a signature from an hourly manager and a signature from a salaried manager which takes an act of God to find one of each in less than 3 hours unless you break into a meeting, fake a death or accident.. and even then they may not show up. (just kidding)
The time clocks tie into the SMART system running on an AIX server (SMART is some software walmart contracted for themselves if I understand correctly, which runs absolutely everything except the registers, video on demand, music on demand, walmart tv broadcasts and walmart radio. Those as I understand run from NT machines). Reliability? Well, I have been there for 2 1/2 years. During my first year the clocks were always having brain farts. The left one had forgotten everything, and didnt reconize associates several times. The right clock only went bonkers once because the HR lady didnt do a download for a long time.
The associates decided for reliable punches, it is best to use one specific punch clock the entire day, not to switch between punch clocks.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.