Manufacturing company improves payroll with new biometric system
A Scottish manufacturing company has been able to streamline its payroll and attendance processes after implementing a new workforce management system. In turn, this has helped to improve employee morale and job satisfaction, which has also led to an increase in productivity too.
Ashley Ann Ltd, a kitchen and bedroom furniture manufacturer and retailer, employs 129 people, including 60 people at its headquarters in Wick. Two years ago, its managing director contacted timeware, a workforce and time management solutions company based in Manchester, to install new attendance and payroll systems in Wick, and haven’t looked back since.
The biometric attendance software installed at Ashley Ann Ltd is part of the timeware Professional Package, and uses fingerprint identification to track personnel throughout the day. The software is also able to distinguish between different shift patterns and automatically calculate overtime using its unique script engine. This eliminates human error and minimises delays from the payroll process, which had occurred regularly when Ashley Ann Ltd was using the previous card-based clocking-in system.
Ashley Ann Ltd also installed timeware's payroll link system, having previously used a very time-consuming pen-and paper-based system that was again susceptible to human error and delays. As well as automatically calculating an employee’s hours, pay and deductions, the system issues a reminder to all line managers to approve employee timesheets to further help in the prevention of delays to the payroll process. When all the employees’ timesheets have then been approved, the system electronically transfers the information to the company’s accounts team to be actioned.
In addition to the biometric attendance and payroll link systems, the timeware Professional Package covers other areas of personnel management too, such as absence management, access control, cost centre analysis, reporting and Employee Self Service (ESS) systems.
Julie Baxter, account manager at Ashley Ann Ltd, said; “Moving to the biometric systems has been really helpful as it means that all of our employees’ attendance information is now recorded in one place.
“It’s a much more efficient intermediary, as my team now don’t have to collate all of the time cards and work out for ourselves each employee’s hours and pay. In this sense, the payroll system has been a godsend as it saves us so much time when paying our staff.”
As well as providing ongoing software support for Ashley Ann Ltd’s Wick site, timeware also oversaw the initial installation of the new systems and ran a training programme for all of Ashley Ann Ltd’s staff. Ashley Ann Ltd has worked with timeware for 12 years, having initially installed some of timeware’s systems in 2003 before then also having the biometric attendance and payroll systems installed in 2013.
Simon Birchall, managing director at timeware, said: “We have had a relationship with Ashley Ann Ltd for a long time, providing them with a number of our systems over the course of 12 years.
“This exhibits the strength and reliability of our systems as it was us Ashley Ann Ltd came to when they were looking to upgrade some of their other systems.
“We look forward to continuing our strong relationship with Julie and her team, and we hope they'll continue to find our support useful as we start to introduce updates to all of the software in the timeware Professional Package range.”