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| Types of time and attendance systems |
Time & attendance devices are used to track entrance and exit personnel at work. ADP time and attendance systems enable an employer to monitor their employees' work hours and late arrivals, early departures, time taken on breaks, and absenteeism. Time and attendance systems are divided into two general categories: manual and automatic. Manual systems were based on papers that personnel's entrance and exit time was printed on it. Using these systems was a very laborious task in calculating salaries, and sometimes it took a few days to calculate the salary. On the other hand, the late payment of personnel's salary caused them to be dissatisfied. With the apparition of computers, cards, fingerprints, and facial access control systems were introduced, respectively.
Card time & attendance :
With the advent of computers, punch attendance devices were replaced with card time and attendance, as soon as card time & attendance devices became widespread everywhere. The work method on the initial card attendance devices was to send a code to the attendance system under DOS by dragging the card into the device. Smart cards of card time & attendance devices include two main categories:
Smart card types :
- Contact Cards:
- Contact cards of time & attendance systems must be contacted by the device to register entrance and exit. They consist of barcodes and magnetic cards that communicate through the slot embedded in the time & attendance device.
- Contactless Cards:
- Contactless smart cards are located only near the time attendance device, and the physical connection between them is not established. Radiofrequency RF is used in these cards. Contactless cards communicate with time & attendance devices at least 10 centimeters to up.
- The most common time & attendance cards are RFID(125KHz) cards and Mifare(13.56MHZ) cards. Mifare cards have a storage capacity of up to 1 kilobyte, and this information can read and write.
Biometric time & attendance :
Biometric technology uses human components such as fingerprints, face, iris, palms, or voice identification. All of these components are unique in every human. The most famous biometric technology used in time & attendance devices is face recognition and fingerprint technology.
Fingerprint time and attendance terminals:
In fingerprint time and attendance systems, multiple fingerprints of personnel are recorded then, when the person wants to record entrance and exit, put his finger on the sensor. His fingerprints are compared with registered fingerprints in a database then personnel identified.
Identifying methods of fingerprint time and attendance :
- Identify fingerprint alone
- Identify fingerprint and password.
- Identify fingerprint and card.
Face time and attendance solutions:
Face time and attendance systems check a person’s identity by comparing the face images with previously registered face images.
Identifying methods of face access control systems:
- Alone face recognition
- Face recognition & fingerprint
- Face recognition & card
- Face recognition & password
- Face recognition & fingerprint & card
- Face recognition & fingerprint & password
- Face recognition & fingerprint & password
- Face recognition & card & password
- Face recognition & fingerprint & card & password
Iris access control systems
The iris is the colored, donut-shaped part of the eye behind the cornea and encloses the pupil. A person's iris pattern is individual and persists unchanged throughout life. Additionally, masked by the cornea, the iris is well shielded from damage, making it a genuine body part for biometric authentication.
Iris recognition is a method that includes examining tiny patterns in the human iris, which are unique to each individual. It is crucial to take photos with a high-quality camera to achieve detailed iris images. Iris authentication typically requires that the user remains at a prescribed location in front of a camera, which is then fixed to the position of the user's eyes.
Mechanism of iris recognition
- First, the pupil's location is detected, followed by detection of the iris and the eyelids.
- Unnecessary parts (noise), including eyelids and eyelashes, are excluded from clipping out only the iris part, divided into blocks, and converted into feature values to quantify the image.
- Matching is then completed with feature data earlier extracted and saved in the same ways.
Features of iris recognition
- Highly accurate and fast, iris recognition shows off having top-class precision among different biometric authentication technologies.
- It remains constant throughout life.
- The iris, varied between the left and right eye, can be recognized independently by each eye or identify twins.
- As long as the eyes are revealed, iris recognition can be used even when wearing a hat, mask, hijab, or eyeglasses.
- Despite being in a dark or at night environment identifying is excellent because of using an infrared camera.
- Without the requirement to touch the device, contactless authentication is achievable, making it hygienic to working use.
Advantages of time & attendance devices:
- Spend less time to calculate salary: An essential benefit to your business is that employees will spend less time tracking, recording, and processing their time spent working each day, week, and month. By upgrading, some businesses cut their time calculating payroll each month by up to 70%. Employees can focus on their respective jobs rather than the additional task of accounting for themselves.
- Prevent time theft: Time theft can include everything from taking a more extended lunch than allotted or clocking in for a friend when they're late to work. The American Payroll Association estimates that over 75% of businesses lose money from buddy punching, but by using the biometric time and attendance systems, this problem has been solved thoroughly.
- Prevent human error: Nobody is perfect, not even if they have a calculator, spreadsheet, or other computation devices handy. Even the most accurate typist makes one mistake for every 300 keystrokes. It's easy to control this problem using face recognition, fingerprint, card, and password time & attendance.
- Keep employees' information: A general question for employees in the business is that they want to know how many hours of leave they have utilized at the end of the year or month. The Palizafzar time and attendance software on the web and Windows base model allow employees to access their work information at any time and place.
- Spend less time and resources on paperwork: Merely sorting through, organizing, and processing paperwork can be time-consuming. Additionally, the cost of replenishing the items needed to maintain an old-time and attendance system, paper, pens/pencils, printer ink, and toner can be prohibitive in the long run.
- A system that can grow with your business: A paper-based system may work in some cases for your small businesses now. Still, if you expect your business to grow or hire more employees in the future and have more information to track, it's better to use the biometric time & attendance devices.
- Create a central database: If your company is spread out across multiple offices or floors, it's better to use a centralized database with guaranteed information practices. This information can be accessed from anywhere. Therefore managers can track information about their personnel. Palizafzar's time and attendance products compatible with time and attendance software and uses a vast database to support employee information.
The disadvantages of relying on time-consuming and outdated methods of employee time-tracking are numerous. It costs time and money; it can lead to stress-related illnesses for those who have to spend hours collecting, correcting, and calculating timesheets; it distracts employees from completing the tasks they were hired to tackle each week. Rather than staying in the past, embrace the future by switching to a quality time and attendance system, and let your company enjoy the benefits of time and attendance machines.
