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How Do You Punch In? 105

Posted by Cliff from the daily-work-rituals dept.
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?"
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How Do You Punch In? More

How Do You Punch In?

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  • Use (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aoverify ( 566411 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:56PM (#7029886) Homepage
    A time sheet. You trust all the employess, right?

    Oh, and give them root access too.

    • Re:Use (Score:2, Informative)

      by YOU ARE SO SUED! ( 660105 )
      A while ago my employer "invested" in biometric systems that profile the back of ones hand. Needless to say, almost 80% of employees refused to use them.

      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! Bu

  • "Web Time" (Score:4, Informative)

    by debugdave ( 153189 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:58PM (#7029895)
    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
    • I wonder if we work at the same bank. If so, I helped write that timekeeping system. (AMS??) I don't want to mention the bank name.
      Anyway, the system I'm refering to is a home-grown ASP/SQL server solution. It's big, but nothing terribly complicated about it. The business units love it because we can add time codes (like 'Site closed-Hurricane') on short notice and make other adjustments when necessary. It doesn't have a 'clock-in/out' feature. It's up to the managers to make sure time sheets aren't fa

  • Solution (Score:2, Funny)

    by karmavore ( 618727 )
    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.

  • Time keeping (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We use an app called Kronos. Pretty good and very flexible. One of the largest time keeping apps around.
    • We use that at my university for housing employees. Of course, because of the number of employees we have, Kronos is making us buy 500 more liscences for the 30 more people we have that need access (I don't know the current numbers, but I'm pretty sure the number total is probably around 150). So, I'm still stuck with paper timecards until either Kronos pulls its head out of its ass, or the Uni comes up with something better.
      • We're using Kronos at my school too. Our problem is that we don't have enough supervisor logins, I guess Kronos wants us to purchase more of those. Instead of buying more, they have one lady in charge of solving timesheet problems for all the student employees of the Housing Dept (techs like me, kids that work in the offices, kids that work at the residence hall desks, etc).

  • Used to do that for a living (Score:5, Informative)

    by Whatchamacallit ( 21721 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:08PM (#7029963) Homepage
    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.
    • 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 [linuxnet.com], hook up to a Linux box, and dump times to a logfile/postgres db. On a successful read, beep.

    • 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'm an engineer, and have worked in two shops which used time sheets for project tracking. The first one (a little place where the Dilbert factory approached unity [motorola.com]) had about a gazillion cat

      • I've been wanting a windows program that records how long I spend with focus in any particular window... just to see how much of my time is off-topic.

        For the most part, IE/acrobat is the only program that might be used for both and would need to be checked manually. Occasionally Word is used for non-work, or IM is used for work, but probably both are negligable and could be filed automatically into their respective categories.

  • dumb question.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:09PM (#7029964) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • before some gammar nazi points it out, yes i made a goof. That last sentence should be "Like when their work doesn't get done..."
      • before some gammar nazi points it out, yes i made a goof. That last sentence should be "Like when their work doesn't get done...

        You made an error. Your last sentence should have been, " As when their work doesn't get done."

        Please report for flogging immediately.
    • 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 peopl
    • Do employers trust employees anymore?

      They don't, when they know they aren't providing meaningful and interesting work for their employees.
  • But in my last job, we used a terminal running a SCO OpenServer session. I don't know wich software was used.

  • It's simple, really... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jim Morash ( 20750 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:21PM (#7030032)
    The tagreader by the front door just scans the RFID implant in the back of my neck every time I walk by! Ahhh, freedom...

  • Kronos? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JLester ( 9518 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:31PM (#7030095)
    Have you looked at Kronos [kronos.com]? It is a very nice system with lots of features. You can clock in/out via terminals, fingerprint scanning, web pages, Palm Pilots, etc. It integrates with most payroll systems to keep track of vacation/sick days and such. We were seriously looking at it for a project, but the price was fairly steep for our complexity. With some new workplace regulations regarding leave time though, you would be completely covered with a system like this.

    Jason

    • I work at a small home improvement chain [homedepot.com], and that's what we use to clock in. it seems to work pretty well from an employee standpoint, it's certainly tons better than other, non-digital timeclocks I've seen.

    • Re:Kronos? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bstory ( 89087 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:23PM (#7030456) Homepage
      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).
      • That sounds like an implementation problem for the most part. The terminals in our proposal plugged directly into Ethernet, that was one of the really nice features.

        Jason
        • Exactly, but the implementation was designed and installed by the Kronos people. Software is more than bits, it's also the people that are sold with it.
      • For managers to access the Kronos information, they have to install a client and map a drive to this "server".

        I've seen some of the supervisors at school accessing their supervisor stuff on Kronos via some sort of web interface that uses Java (one guy had some spyware that was screwing with Java). They used to have to use some DOS-type interface via a Novell drive, guess a new version of the software came along.
    • At my last job they were using Kronos. They all hated it though, and it was always having problems. I didn't use it myself though, I was using real paper time sheets instead for various reasons.

    • Re:Kronos? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:13PM (#7030745)
      We use Kronos timecard at my place of employment, and I can tell you - catagorically - that it is a big peice of shit.

      Every time you want to login or log out, gotta wait for the java plugin to load, also it has problems refreshing the timecard after you JUST PUNCHED causing many employees to punch duplicates because it shows they didn't. The interface is bad on so many levels. God, I hate it.
      • Ye gods. We have a saying where I work... if you can't handle punching in and out using a web form, you oughtta not be working at a help desk.

        But that's just where I work. :)

      • Every time you want to login or log out, gotta wait for the java plugin to load

        There's your problem. You still have the java applet. Call them up and tell them you want the HTML version. We have both installed. I approve my timecard perfectly fine from Galeon, none of that fussy Java stuff. I've even tested the HTML version from linx, it works, but it's a little odd to read.

    • Re:Kronos? (Score:3, Informative)

      by nocomment ( 239368 )
      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 gatekeep
    • Kronos Sucks.

      The install of Kronos we had at my previous job was a royal piece of shit. But I also did not let them use serial connections or modems to connect to the time clocks, we purchaced the network card for the clock so we could move them anywhere we wanted to as long as we put a network drop to it. That was about the only redeaming feature that was had. The payroll person hated it, the managers hated it, the employees hated it.

      At my current job, we have ADP's payroll solution, which is just rebra

    • My company uses Kronos and it interfaces via Ethernet directly into our AS400. Works just fine. We even set up a new system to allow some of our remote sales people to dial into a Windows 2000 server and punch in.

      I suppose it all depends on the implementation...
  • 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
    • Indeed, i do the same thing. last | less

      if i'm in the office, i'm logged in _somewhere_, and wheni go home i log out. work on something from home, you guessed it, have to login somewhere.
    • wouldn't a .login and .logout script be more useful?!

      plus, the above implies everyone went home at midnight.
  • ... 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.

  • Less useful than a room full of mimes. (Score:3, Funny)

    by bons ( 119581 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:40PM (#7030157) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • 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
    • Haha - half a day? It's beautiful hearing people who clearly don't do things as their profession talking about how it would take "half a day" to knock up.

      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.

  • I'm salaried... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chester K ( 145560 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @09:55PM (#7030272) Homepage
    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.
    • Hmmm.... A software based timeclock. Can you say Veee Ennnn Ceeee?
    • I'm a salaried employee, and I do punch a clock, or rather, have my "enter" and "leave" times logged using the ID that also opens doors.

      In my perception, this adds to my convenience, as I can work different times every day, and adjust the time I stay to both my own activities and the workload (provided it evens out to 7:36 per day over time, including whole days off in exchange for accumulated time, which can be used like ordinary days off).
      The system also gives an incentive to adhere to legal or contract

  • as a true warrior should

  • Shameless Plug (Score:4, Informative)

    by Alethes ( 533985 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:04PM (#7030341)
    I wrote a PHP/MySQL web app for such a task about a year ago. Feel free to contact me if you're interested.
    • I wrote one along the same lines probably. I've been tasked with making it Java. It's on my "todo" list. In any case, I have one available for demo as well. On one hand, I'm surprised there isn't a common one. On the other, it's not surprising at all. I imagine few people who would want to set it up actually are hourly.
  • 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.

  • No. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

    • Re:No. (Score:2)

      by WoTG ( 610710 )
      A lot of timeclocks have been cheated in the past, just as new higher tech. systems will be in the future.

      I've never used a mechanical clock personally, but others have told lots of stories of people "punching in" for co-workers who are running late - or sometimes not planning on coming in at all!

      No, I don't know the particular laws involved, but I see no reason why an old mechanical system would be inherently more tamper-resistant than 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)
  • 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!
  • 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 Pow
    • Not intended as an attack against you, but I question why management decided to roll their own. What competitive advantage did they get by investing all the time and money into making a time card system? Other companies produce those already. Why did they feel it was the best idea?

      Remember to discuss maintenance costs in your answer.
      • Well - I thought the same thing. But what ended up being the case was- they were already paying me, we didn't fall behind on other work- so they did save money.

        They also get complete control. The problem with a lot of the software they could afford was that it just wasn't that flexible.

        My initial reaction to the project was pretty negative. I asked, "What are you going to do next, ask me to create a word processor so we don't have to pay for office?" But to be honest, looking back, it really wasn't to
    • A good portion of that time involved learning. Prior to that job I had never used Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL or Apache.

      But had you used Apache?
  • 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.
  • I have to use "Oracle Time" [oracle.com] which is the most horrible piece of time reporting software ever invented. It's so complicated, I seriously suggested having a charge code in it for the purposes of filling out ones time. It really does take about 20 minutes to fill out a timecard properly.

    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!

  • Software systems can be unpopular (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rpjs ( 126615 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @05:53AM (#7032219)
    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.

  • Good commercial product (Score:3, Informative)

    by kableh ( 155146 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @10:05AM (#7033454) Homepage
    Journyx Timesheet [journyx.com] 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).
  • 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

  • Excel (Score:1)

    by ebh ( 116526 ) *
    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.

    I
  • 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.

  • My Clock In (Score:2, Funny)

    by ckuske ( 19234 )
    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.
  • 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 syst
  • PeopleSoft is the scourge of the devil. Stay away at all costs.
  • My company (an outsource private security firm) gives each site a pad of forms everybody's gotta sign in and out on. From left to right, you write in your name, the day of the week, the date and the time you started your shift, your signature, and the date and time you end your shift, and the number of hours worked that shift.

    I hate it.

  • 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 ba

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