Time and attendance for manufacturing
Labour is usually your largest controllable cost, and it is the one you can see least clearly. Late starts, early finishes and overtime nobody approved all reach payroll the same way: quietly, and every fortnight.
You can price a job to the cent and still not know what it cost to make
Labour cost drives how you price and how you invoice. If the hours behind a job are reconstructed from memory at the end of the week, the margin on that job is an estimate wearing a suit.
Two things go wrong at once on a factory floor. Paid time drifts away from time on site — someone else swipes a mate on, the shift starts at 7:00 but the clock says 6:40, overtime happens because it happened rather than because someone approved it. And the time that is worked gets recorded against nothing in particular, so nobody can say which job, line or product absorbed it.
What we do about it
- Honest punches at the door. Face or fingerprint verification means the person on the clock is the person on the floor — and hands that are dirty, wet or gloved are exactly why facial recognition wins in this environment.
- Schedule lockouts. The terminal refuses a punch outside the rostered window, so paid time does not start forty minutes early.
- Supervisor approval before payroll. Unapproved overtime stops with the person who can say yes or no, not in the pay file.
- Job costing to task level. Department, job, step, operation and task — with transfers captured at the terminal as they happen, and piece rates where you pay by output.
- Bell control. Up to 48 programmed bells a day per clock, with different weekend patterns and a warning bell before the shift bell.
- Budget against actual. Enter budgeted hours and dollars, then compare against scheduled and actual time and forecast the rest from the roster.
What it looks like on the floor
A terminal on the entry door and one at the line. Staff clock on, then press a function key to move between jobs. The software applies your award, your rounding and your shift differentials, a supervisor signs the exceptions off, and payroll gets a file. The job costing reports come out of the same punches — no second system, no second data entry.
Genesis is usually the answer here rather than TA100, because the job structure is the point. Compare the two