Attendance System: The Head Office and Branches Challenge

The Scene:

Your company has Head Office and Remote Locations like branches, sales outlets, warehouses, factories, staff in buses etc. You have Internet connection at every place or you are ready to provide need based 2G/3G/4G GPRS based Internet connection. You have centralized attendance related activities.

The Requirement:

You want all attendance data recorded on the attendance readers in various remote locations to come to HO.

The Challenge:

If you have setup a site-to-site VPN in your organization, then of course getting all your attendance data from remote locations to your centralized database in Head Office is easy. The problem arises for most solution providers when there is no VPN.

Our Strength:

This is where we shine. If you have normal or GPRS based Internet connections in HO and in Remote Locations, our TAS2000 Time & Attendance solution will get data from branches to HO, even when you do not have the costly site-to-site VPN setup. 

About TAS2000: Please read http://www.softoolsme.com/TASVISION. Even the experienced timekeeping professional will find features in TAS2000 very impressive.

• The graphs help top management in getting overall picture of overtime, punctuality, absenteeism, indisciplined punching with just a glance. 
• Section heads receive automatic emails at start of duty about absence/presence - and also indisciplined punching the previous day.
• Various  screens and reports help staff in-charge of Operations, HR, Accounts and Timekeeping functions by way of providing timely and accurate information.

...these are just tip of the proverbial iceberg.

For more information contact us as below:

Softools Middle East, A Dubai Based Company

TAS2000 & HR2020: Serious Attendance & HR Systems

Alert Financial Controller

Recently I was in a meeting with a Financial Controller of a company for their Time Attendance requirements. They had already purchased some time back few Face cum Fingerprint Readers from another vendor. ZK is one of the well known Chinese brands. However he needed something more than what the existing system was providing. So he wanted a meeting with me.

During our discussions, I informed him only those who are entitled for overtime will get OT. System will not calculate OT for employees who are not entitled for it.

Some time later I told him of another feature which gives automatically full attendance to employees (if they are present), even if as per IN/OUT time, number of hours worked by them is less than the regular hours they are supposed to work. This feature is for employees like marketing executives, managers etc whose job requires them to be out of office.

The FC was appreciative of both features but immediately said that system should not allow a person to be marked both with "Entitled for OT" and "Auto Full Attendance".  This is because those who are paid overtime, also have their salary deducted (usually) for working less than required hours. Therefore it will not be a good idea to give them full attendance automatically. 

I was impressed by how fast he caught on to this point. I have to say that not many get it immediately. He was happy that our system works exactly as he had observed. See below, as soon as one tries to tick both, a pop-up comes up that this cannot be done.

Need clarifications or more information? Contact me as follows:

Softools Middle East

skand@softoolsme.com

+971 4 2680533, +971 50 6340258

Quick Information About Attendance IN/OUT

A timekeeper has many things to do. One of them is also to provide quick information about employees presence and absence in a particular shift. Sometimes also, whether a person is inside or outside office/company. If such information is available to timekeeper quickly, it saves everyone's time. The first screen opened in TAS2000 does exactly that. It has 4 buttons that provide Quick Info to timekeeper for any given day and shift. Obviously for past days the ideal status is "Out" for all, however life is not ideal and using the "Incomplete" status, timekeeper can find out who missed out punching a record.


For example, if you click on "Absent", a list comes up similar to below screen shot:


Not just that, supposing a person was not actually absent but had forgotten to punch his attendance, a manual record can be created in a screen that looks just like below:



TAS2000 gives information quickly and lets you take action in a fast and secure manner.

Need clarifications or more information? Contact me as follows:

Softools Middle East

skand@softoolsme.com+971 4 2680533, +971 50 6340258

Suitability not price, should be the criteria for selecting software

The cost of software has come down drastically in last few decades. This could perhaps be one reason why some companies do not spend enough time ensuring the software meets their requirement! There is no point in blaming the vendor later when the buyer itself spends no time ensuring suitability.

While looking at software price, many forget the cost of time and human resources wasted in training, installing, commissioning and actually using the wrong software! What to say of savings that the right solution would have brought in and it's contribution towards employee morale!!

And yes, the mess created when it is discovered very late in the game that the software was simply not suitable for the company's requirement, can only be imagined!

Example:

A hotel has a rule of giving overtime in full hours like 1 hour, 2 hours etc. Further, an hour OT is given only if employee works for 60 minutes or more. No OT is given in this hotel if extra time worked is less than the full hour, even if it is 59 minutes. In other words, they do not round off, they truncate to full hour.

Unfortunately their "FREE with Reader" software could only round off to 30 minutes! Their accounts department realised this after one month of system going operational!

Who is to be blamed? Purchase department? HR department? Timekeeping office? Accounts department? Supplier?

It would not be wrong to lay the blame squarely on the doorstep of management, which allowed the culture of just looking at price and buying without first ensuring suitability. It is management's responsibility to impress upon their buyers, not to look just at price, but first find out whether the product is suitable for their company or not.

TAS2000 time attendance software can calculate overtime with (a) rounding off (b) truncating and (c) as is, with no truncation or rounding. Moreover, the truncation or rounding can be to 15 minutes, 30 minutes or full 1 hour. Hence an extra work of 40 minutes can be calculates as 0, 30, 40, 45 or 60 minutes of OT - depending on what your company requires.

Need clarifications or more information? Contact me as follows:

Softools Middle East+971 4 2680533, +971 50 6340258

Information By Email: Attendance Register as of 09:00:43 09-Apr-2XXX

Managers wish to get periodic information, wherever they may be. TAS2000 can be configured to send an email automatically once or more than once in a day at fixed times.

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Kindly find Attendance Register as shown below.

Report       : Attendance Register
Report For   : 28-Feb-2007
Status As Of : 28-Feb-2009 7:00:43 PM
Status       : A=Absent, T=Tardy, I=Incomplete Attendance

Reported By  : TAS2000 (Time & Attendance System)
Report Method: Automatic

...and the attachment looks somewhat like this:

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TAS2000 has the ability to send such an email daily. Whether in your office or in another country, you are always in control.

Need clarifications or more information? Contact me as follows:

Softools Middle East+971 4 2680533, +971 50 6340258

What Is Incomplete Attendance?

What is "Incomplete Attendance"? This is when an employee has odd number of attendance records on a day.

Why "incomplete"?

Because "complete attendance" will always have 2 or 4 or 6 attendance records in a day. You cannot calculate "number of hours worked" with odd numbers of records. Can you?

So what do you do when an employee forgets a punch? With a good attendance software you can manually and securely create a record to "complete" the attendance. Of course you should be able to see in relevant reports (Daily Attendance & Time Card reports) that this record was not created at attendance terminal, but was manually created. TAS2000 does this PLUS keeps a separate log of such manual activity.

Mostly in companies, there are two attendance records in a day (IN and OUT). However TAS2000 allows 6 (3 INs and 3 OUTs) records per day. In addition, the number of non-attendance records has no limit. By non-attendance records, I mean records which have no affect on attendance hours. Examples of non-attendance records are: job costing in workshop/factory/clinics, door opening in access control etc.

While assessing a system, it is important to find out how it resolves such exceptions. Does it do it easily? Does it do it securely? You would be surprised to find so many other things about the software, while getting answers to such basic requirements of an attendance system.

Have a question or need help? Ask:

Skand@softoolsme.com

+971 50 6340258

Common Mistake While Evaluating TAS2000, the Time & Attendance System

Start-using TAS2000 should be smooth. However sometimes people after downloading and installing the software get stuck as the system won't let them get in!

This is because of the most common mistake they make, which is: they forget to join (JOIN, not Create) SOFTOOL6.MDW workgroup. And since TAS2000 is a secure database application, they are unable to log in!

Here is the link for downloading evaluation version of TAS2000 again:

http://www.softoolsme.com/gulf/uae/timeattendancedownload.htm

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Have a question or need help? Ask:

Skand@softoolsme.com

+971 50 6340258

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How much overtime it is for 40 minutes of extra work?

An attendance system should be able to calculate overtime as per company's existing rules.

Lets assume an employee gets overtime if he works more than 8.5 hours. If he works 40 minutes extra, as per your company policy, how much overtime will he be entitled for?

Different companies would have different rules and the overtime calculated could be 0, 30 mnts, 40 mnts, 45 mnts or 60 mnts. A good time attendance software would allow you to calculate any of these. TAS2000 does that.

Before deciding which Time & Attendance System you buy, it is necessary to find out if it can handle such small but important requirements.

Need clarification or more information? Contact me by email or phone!

Skand@softoolsme.com

+971 50 6340258

Attendance Register - Automatically By Email

Managers like predictability and consistency. When information comes every day at a fixed time, it helps managers to plan their work. This is where TAS2000 scores over other systems. TAS2000 has some emails that can be scheduled to go out every day at a given time giving relevant information.
One of these emails contains Attendance Register. When the email reaches manager, the body of the email looks like this:

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Kindly find Attendance Register as shown below.

Report       : Attendance Register
Report For   : 09-Apr-2009
Status As Of : 09-Apr-2009 9:00:43 AM
Status       : A=Absent, T=Tardy, I=Incomplete Attendance

Reported By  : TAS2000 (Time & Attendance System)
Report Method: Automatic


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Need clarification or more information? Contact me by email or phone!

Skand@softoolsme.com

+971 50 6340258

TAS2000 Time & Attendance System and Ramadan

Do you have special working hours during some dates like Ramadan in Gulf? Use Ramadan feature by doing the following, before the period starts.

- Enter From/To dates in "Holidays/Ramadan" appropriately

- Ensure shift timings are correct in the Ramadan section
(in case you did not enter Ramadan dates in advance, recalculation of previous days will have to be done)

Remember: Automatic Deduction is ZERO if Ramadan Feature is used. Therefore if there are going to be automatic deductions during Ramadan, then:

1. Do not use Ramadan feature
2. Create Appropriate shifts

3. Create Employee Schedule to change the shift automatically on Ramadan start date.

Need clarification or more information? Contact me as given below:

Email: skand@softoolsme.com

Mob: +971 50 6340258 

Free Evaluation of TAS2000 Time & Attendance Software

Trying before buying is the best way of making a decision. Link to downloading TAS2000 Time & Attendance system is given below:

http://www.softoolsme.com/gulf/uae/timeattendancedownload.htm

Simply follow the 1-2-3 steps on web site for installation.

Need any clarification or more information? Contact me as below:

skand@softoolsme.com

+971 4 2680533, +971 50 6340258

Daily Report and some other ones too...

The last report shown here is 'Daily Report'. The S1....S6 are Scan 1, Scan2 etc (you will have S1, S2, S3 and S4). Our report gives total time out of which how much was normal and how much OT1, OT2. So let's say you quickly need to find out who have come to duty at the start of the day. Just click on the IN button and you immediately get a list of employees on the screen:

In case you needed a hard copy, you can print it too. It even has a "Remarks" column, where you can pencil-in to write some comment, if required:

And what if you are used to a more "Attendance Register" type of format? TAS2000 gives you a report that looks like the traditional Attendance Register: days are left to right as 1 to 31 and names are top to bottom. But the best part is that this report provides much more information in one concise format than the usual paper register. See below:

It is straightforward to check today's attendance, as it is the last filled-up column. Not only can you see who is present, you also can see who is late (T after "P" or "I"), absent, on leave (with the type of leave), came on holiday and more. So far so good, but what if you want more details like In & Out timings of all employees for a given day? This is where Daily Report comes in! Please check-out some details:

From this report you can find out which shift (SH, more about it later) the person was working in, on a certain day, how many hours he was supposed to work (PH, planned hours), 1st attendance scan (IN), 2nd (OUT)…up to 6th time. How much time was deducted by system automatically (Auto Ded, more about it later) from time calculated based on IN/OUT time. It shows total time and then allocates "normal hours" and overtime (OT1 & OT2). Under Manual it shows if 'timekeeper' made the attendance record manually. It also shows if the person is on leave, late (T in status for tardy and time highlighted pink). Plus more… In other words a complete snapshot of a day for all employees. The range of information provided by TAS2000 to monitor a day's attendance is impressive and easy to understand. It is also very comprehensive. And there is more! You can also take a separate report of absentees on a given day. The whole system gives details and summary of monthly attendance, leave information, late comer and early leaver and a lot more. Additionally, 13 different types of information can be even emailed automatically (needs correct setup) to manager, department head and timekeeper. The over-time and under-time can be rounded off to 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour as per your choice. Plus many other features make TAS2000 one of the best feature-filled Time & Attendance System in the world. Clients are constantly amazed to find how much they can do with the system. Need clarification or more information? Contact me by email or phone! Skand@softoolsme.com +971 50 6340258