Attendance And Time Recording In Labour Cost

Labour cost is essentially purchase of time from the employees at a price. Hence, the recording of his arrival, departure and utilization of time in productive and other activities should be accurate. There are two aspects of recording:

• Attendance - i.e. entry-time to the factory, and department, and exit time.
• Time-booking - i.e. distribution of time present and paid over jobs or process or operations as well as in idle time or other indirect work.  The record of attendance is used for satisfying statutory requirements and for calculating earning of the employee while the record of time-booking helps allocating costs to jobs or process or operations and overheads expenses.

Timekeeping

Various methods of recording attendance are available, which may be grouped under manual and mechanical methods, as under:

• Manual methods:
  • Attendance register method: Under this method, an attendance register is kept at the entrance of the factory and the worker’s in and out timing at the factory gate is noted, either by the worker himself or by a staff of the time office. Later, entries are made to the individual attendance records of the workmen.
  • Disc method: Under this method, metal discs bearing employee’s numbers allotted by the personnel department are placed on hooks on a board provided either at the gate or at the entrance of the department. On entering the factory, the worker removes the disc bearing his number from the board and places it in a box kept for this purpose. The box is taken away as soon as normal reporting time is over. A worker coming late will pick up the disc and put it in the “Late” box provided in the department. Such late box is normally changed every half an hour upto the maximum late attendance time allowed. The timekeeper records the attendance in the register on the basis of these discs.
• Mechanical methods:

Under this method, attendance cards are used in time clocks installed at the entrance of the factory or department. On entering the factory, the worker takes his card from ‘OUT’ racks and press it inside the clock, which will print arrival time in ‘IN’ column.  He then places it in ‘IN’ rack of the department where he reports for duty. Late attendance is normally reported in red ink. Similarly, when the employee leaves the factory, he collects the card from the ‘IN’ rack and punches the time in the clock and keeps it in the ‘OUT’ rack. It is necessary that the timekeeping staff are present at the time of punching the cards to supervise the procedure. The clock cards are Collected by the timekeeping staff daily or weekly for recording in Statutory Attendance Register. Such cards are normally used for two-week period.