Page 132 - Essentials of Payroll: Management and Accounting

Payr oll Best Practices
I N THE REAL WORLD
Reducing Staff Efforts with

an Automated Clock

A major candy manufacturing facility employed hundreds of hourly
employees in its operations. They all punched in their time using a
manual time clock, which required the services of a full-time payroll
clerk to calculate hours worked, as well as to track down employees
who had forgotten to punch in or out. She also had to consult with
supervisors about employees who appeared to be clocking out
much later than they should, as well as those who did not take
mandatory breaks. This effort became overwhelming as the facility
continued to grow and add more employees.

To keep the problem from worsening, the plant controller bought an
automated time clock, which had a direct linkage to the payroll
clerk’s computer. The plant’s security officer was taught how to cre-
ate bar codes with a simple bar-code label printer and accompany-
ing lamination machine. After a brief training period for the staff and
supervisors, the payroll clerk found that the bulk of her work had
been eliminated—the new clock prevented employees from clocking
in too early or too late, and required a supervisory override if any
employees tried to do so. The system also alerted the payroll clerk
when anyone had failed to clock in or out on an exception basis, and
even gave the clerk the name of the employee’s supervisor, so that
she could track down the person immediately and correct the situa-
tion. Of course, the system also summarized all hours worked by
employee, so there was no need to laboriously summarize this data.

The payroll manager concluded that the installation of just one bar-
coded time clock had probably saved the company from hiring a sec-
ond payroll clerk to perform menial data collection and correction
activities.

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