Back in the dark ages, (around 1993), a very young company (timeware®) released a product called ‘timemaster Junior’ which revolutionised the UK’s ‘entry-level’ time recording industry.
Designed for companies with less than one hundred employees, this serial printer-linked (!) device allowed staff to clock in & out using magnetic stripe badges. At pre-set times of the week, the timemaster would automatically produce a ‘weekly clock card report’ which included basic and four overtime rates. Not very flexible by today’s standards but way ahead of the competition in the early ‘90s! The timestart was an instant hit with UK small businesses and within three years sales had exceeded one thousand units.
As the PC market began to grow, the aging timemaster was superseded by the timestart – a faster, more advanced big-brother version capable of linking to PCs but running under something called DOS.
Time moved on and DOS moved out to be replaced by a swish new platform called Windows which meant the timeware® team had to modify the software yet again. Out went the serial connections & in came network points. By the end of 1999 over two thousand systems had been sold throughout the UK making the British made timemaster / timestart product one of the most successful time recording systems of the 1990’s.
We still have over three hundred timestarts on support, calculating employee hours day in, day out. They even show up occasionally as companies move premises, during upgrades and even on EBAY.
Another Great British product from the timeware team designed to outlive the competition. Twenty years plus service - not bad for a product that cost around £499+vat!
