Attendance and Payroll Portal

Payroll took the HR team the first week of every month. The company provides customer support for clients in other time zones, so its two offices in Pune and Ahmedabad run round the clock in rotating shifts.

Attendance came from biometric machines at each office and was pasted into spreadsheets at month end. Night shifts that crossed midnight, late marks and overtime were worked out by hand. Leave requests went round on paper forms that sometimes went missing. Payslips were printed and handed out, and employees queued at the HR desk for leave balances, salary certificates and tax questions. Two offices in two states meant two sets of rules for professional tax and holidays.

We spent time with HR, payroll and shift managers at both offices, and wrote down every rule they applied from memory.

• The roster was the source of truth, but it lived in a spreadsheet that attendance never saw.
• Night shifts broke every simple rule. A shift from 10 pm to 7 am looked like two half days to the attendance machines.
• Most HR desk visits were simple questions: leave balance, payslip copies, tax declarations.
• People joined and left often, and every leaver’s final settlement was worked out by hand.

The portal starts from the shift roster. Managers plan rosters for their teams: general, morning, evening and night shifts, with rotating weekly offs. Employees see their roster in the portal, and swaps follow a simple flow: the employee requests a swap with a colleague, the colleague accepts, the manager approves, and the roster updates.

For night shifts, the roster also produces the transport list, so cabs are arranged for every employee leaving or arriving at night.

Attendance is imported from the biometric devices at both offices every night and matched to each employee’s rostered shift, including shifts that cross midnight. The company’s own rules are applied automatically:

• grace minutes, late marks, and half days after repeated late marks;
• absences, weekly offs and holidays from each office’s own calendar;
• overtime beyond the shift, at the company’s rates;
• night shift allowances for every night shift worked.

Exceptions, such as a missed punch, go to the employee and their manager to resolve before month end, not after.

Every employee logs in to see their attendance and roster, apply for leave (casual, sick and earned), request shift swaps, download payslips and Form 16, and submit tax-saving investment declarations with their proofs. Managers approve leave and swaps in the same portal, and every request is on record. Most questions that used to bring people to the HR desk are now answered on screen.

Payroll runs from attendance that is already complete and checked. Each employee’s salary structure covers basic pay, house rent allowance, conveyance and special allowances, with shift allowances and overtime added from attendance.

Statutory deductions follow the rules of the time:

• provident fund at 12% of basic pay, within the wage ceiling then in force;
• ESI for employees within its wage ceiling;
• professional tax on Maharashtra’s slabs for Pune and Gujarat’s for Ahmedabad;
• TDS worked out from each employee’s investment declarations, with Form 16 at year end.

The portal produces the bank transfer file for salaries and emails every employee a PDF payslip.

New joiners are set up once, with their salary structure, shift and documents. When someone resigns, the portal works out the full and final settlement: salary for days worked, leave encashment, notice period recovery and any dues, ready for HR to check and pay. Gratuity is calculated for employees who have completed the qualifying service.

The portal is a PHP application on CodeIgniter and MySQL, with jQuery for the interface, running on Linux servers at the company’s main office. A small service on each office’s network collects the biometric devices’ records every night and sends them to the portal.

Payroll ran in parallel for a full cycle: the old spreadsheets and the new portal, compared line by line until every payslip matched. The portal then went live at one office, followed by the other, with team leaders trained first so they could help their teams sign in. In the years after, we updated it for every budget and statutory change, including the PF wage ceiling rise in 2014.

Month-end payroll now starts from attendance that is already complete and checked, instead of a week of spreadsheets. Night shifts are counted correctly, each office follows its own state’s rules, and leavers are settled accurately. Employees answer their own questions about leave, attendance and pay, and every approval is on record.