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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?"
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
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.
I wrote a PHP/MySQL web app for such a task about a year ago. Feel free to contact me if you're interested.
My company uses Kronos and it's marketed well, but in our experience poorly implemented. The time clocks are connected to the main system by dial-up modems which means that a computer with a modem has to dial them up every so often to collect the punches. In our case Kronos set this up on a DESKTOP computer. For managers to access the Kronos information, they have to install a client and map a drive to this "server". Unfortunately Windows 2K Professional limits you to 10 concurrent connections which limits how many people can use the Kronos system at once. We've also had problems with it integrating into our Payroll and Accounting systems. I only had 40 hours of vacation this year, but at one point it showed up as me having used 120 hours. As with any system, shop around, get references (and check them).
We use kronos, and aside from it running on windows 2000 and XP (damn no unix), it runs really well. It's the swiss army chainsaw of punch cards. I'm salaried so I just approve my tiemcard once every 2 weeks, but the entire system is web-based, employees jsut log in from their own work stations, or one of the dedicated machines we have scattered occasionally about the building it also has wall-mounts for swiping magnetic strips, which are also tied into the megnetically locked doors through their gatekeeper system. It's really smooth.
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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.
If you did it in as week then you'd still find bugs for some time, plus you've just wasted 3k or so of developer time in order to get this amateurish, buggy system.
And for some reason I never got them working properly (it was my job to), maybe something to do with popularity among my coworkers.
At present we use timesheets, and that's why staff are reluctant to use a computerised system, because for so long they've been getting away with leaving an hour early at night, without it being any detriment to the work! But the company insist they remain for their whole shift even if they finish hours early, and they wonder why the animosity...
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.