Page 59 - Essentials of Payroll: Management and Accounting

ESSENTIALS of Payr oll: Management and Accounting
A larger volume of data can be obtained by using the just-described
computerized time clocks at every workstation in the production area,or a
modified version thereof.By doing so,employees can easily punch in infor-
mation about which jobs they are working on at any given time, without
having to walk to a centralized data entry station to do so.These worksta-

tions can be time clocks that are directly linked to the payroll system; but
since these clocks are so expensive, this option is not normally used, espe-
cially if many workstations are required. A more common approach is to
purchase a number of “dumb” terminals, which have no internal error-
checking capacity at all, and link them to a central computer that does all
the error checking for employee and job codes, as well as hours worked.
This option is much less expensive, especially for very large facilities.

However, it suffers from one significant flaw: If the central computer goes
down, then the entire system is nonfunctional; this problem does not arise
when using automated time clocks,for each one is a separately functioning
unit that does not depend on the availability of a central computer. This
problem is a particular issue in companies that have large amounts of
machinery that generate electrical energy,for the extra radiation can inter-
fere with the transmission of signals from the workstations to the central
computer, usually either requiring the installation of heavily shielded
cabling or the use of fiber optics, both of which are expensive options.

An employee uses the dumb terminal to enter his or her employee
number, then the start time, and then the job number. All time accrued
from that point forward will be charged to the entered job number, until
the employee enters a different job number. This data entry process may
require a large number of entries per day, which introduces the risk of a
high degree of data inaccuracy.The problem can,however, be minimized
by the use of bar-coded or magnetic-stripe employee cards, as previously

described, as well as bar-code scanning of all current job numbers.
This last option is clearly much more expensive than any preceding
option, since the cost of the central computer can be anywhere in the

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