Attendance and HR
Attendance, leave and daily work
on a server you own
A fingerprint device on the wall posts to your own server. Staff working at a site check in with a live selfie and their location. Leave is requested and decided privately.
Attendance on paper, leave by email, and daily work known only by asking around. That is the normal state of a growing Indian company. This is one system for all three, built once and owned, with no licence for each employee.
The hardware is ordinary. A fingerprint device on the wall posts every punch to a server in your own office. Staff who work at client sites or on location check in from their phone with a live selfie and their location, so no manager has to ring around to find out who turned up. Leave requests go to the person who decides them and nobody else. At the end of the month there is one payroll record, already added up.
The device on the wall posts to you
A fingerprint reader sends each punch to your own server over your own network. The record is written the moment somebody touches the device.
Off-site check-in with a live selfie
Staff at a venue, a site or a client office check in from their phone. The photograph is taken then and there, with the location, so attendance stops being an argument.
Leave stays private
A request goes to the person who approves it, and the decision comes back to the person who asked. Nobody else in the company reads either one.
A short daily task form
Each person writes a few lines on what they worked on. A manager reads one page instead of asking the same question in a group chat every evening.
One payroll record at month end
Punches, off-site check-ins, approved leave and holidays add up into a single record for whoever runs your payroll. Nobody re-types a register.
No licence for each employee
It is built once and runs on your machine. Hiring your nineteenth person, or your fortieth, does not change what you pay each month.
What sits on the wall, and what sits on the server
The device is an ordinary fingerprint reader of the kind already sold everywhere in India. It is put on your network and it posts to software on your own machine instead of a vendor's cloud. If you already have a device, I check whether it can post to your server before anybody buys a new one.
Everything else is a web page your staff open on their phone. There is nothing to install, no app store, and no account for each person to remember. The server is the same machine that can run the rest of your systems, which is why this often arrives alongside a private AI server.
- A fingerprint device, yours or the one you already own
- A server in your office holding every record
- A phone page for off-site check-in with a live selfie and location
- Leave requests, approvals and a private decision trail
- A short daily task form, and one page a manager actually reads
- A payroll record at the end of the month
Why owners move off attendance software
The usual reason is the bill. Attendance and leave are sold as software you rent for each employee, so the cost grows every time you hire, for a system that writes a few lines a person a day. Built once and owned, that cost stops moving.
The second reason is where the records sit. Fingerprint data, photographs of staff at work and the reasons people gave for taking leave are about as personal as a company's records get. India's data protection law, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, has made owners ask where that material actually lives. On this system it lives on your machine, in your office, and I document who can reach it. I am not a lawyer and that is not legal advice.
Who this suits, and who it does not
It suits a company of roughly twenty to a hundred people where some staff are in the office and some are out at sites, and where the owner is still asking who is in today. That is what my own studio runs on, with eighteen people using it daily, and it is what the employee management system for a forty-person wedding studio was built around.
It is the wrong choice in two cases. If everybody sits in one room and the manager can see them, a register is enough. And if what you need is statutory payroll filing, I am not the right person. I do not run payroll and I am not an accountant. I hand your payroll person a clean, added-up record and they do their job with it.
How this is priced
One project price, quoted after the audit, with no licence for each employee and no monthly software subscription. The quote names the device, the server, every part of the system being built, and the handover. The hardware is bought in your name.
What moves the figure is how many locations punch in, whether a device you already own can be reused, how many of attendance, off-site check-in, leave, daily tasks and the payroll record are in scope, and whether your shift and leave rules are written down anywhere today. Undocumented rules are the slow part. Care afterwards is quoted separately and can be stopped.
How it runs
- 01
Check the device and the rules
I look at the device you have, or choose one that can post to your own server, and write down your shift timings, holidays and who approves whose leave.
- 02
Design
We agree what a late punch does, what an off-site check-in must show, who sees which record, and what the payroll record has to contain.
- 03
Build and run one team first
It runs with a single team for a full cycle while your old register continues beside it, so the mistakes are found before the whole company depends on it.
- 04
Handover
Training on the floor, a written note for whoever runs payroll, and then the machine, the code and every record are yours.
Built, not described
Questions people ask
How much does an attendance and leave system cost?
It is quoted once, per project, after the audit, with no fee for each employee. What moves the figure is how many locations punch in, whether your existing fingerprint device can be reused, and how much of leave, daily tasks and the payroll record is in scope.
Can we use our existing biometric attendance device?
Often yes, and I check that before anybody buys hardware. What matters is whether the device can send its punches to a server on your own network. If it cannot, I will tell you what to replace it with and you buy it in your name.
How does attendance work for staff who are never in the office?
They check in from their phone with a live selfie and their location, taken at that moment rather than uploaded from the gallery. That is what site staff, venue teams and field crews use, and it lands in the same record as the punches from the wall.
Where do the attendance records and the photographs sit?
On the server in your office. The fingerprint data, the check-in photographs and the leave reasons stay on a machine you own, and no outside service keeps a copy. I write down exactly who can reach each of those and hand you that document.
Do you run our payroll?
No. I am not an accountant and I do not do statutory filing. The system produces one added-up record of attendance, approved leave and off-site days at the end of the month, and whoever runs your payroll works from that instead of a paper register.
Will the people on the register actually use it?
They use what they already have. Punching a fingerprint device is one touch, and the off-site check-in and the task form are a phone page with no app and no login to remember. Eighteen people in my own studio use this daily and none of them sat through a training session.
What happens if the internet goes down?
The device and the server are both on your own network, so punches keep being recorded when the outside line drops. An off-site check-in from a phone needs a connection and is sent as soon as there is one. Nothing is lost in between.
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