Highway Trans Case Study: Replacing Attendance Registers and Manual Shifts With Mobile Attendance and Auto Shift Rotation

Highway Trans at a Glance

Highway Trans provides transportation solutions. It marked attendance in registers and had no proper way to manage shifts. TankhaPay, its first HR system, now records attendance on mobile and runs shift rotation automatically, with employee records, onboarding and payroll in the same platform.

Who Decides the Shift Roster When It Lives in a Register?

At Highway Trans, that decision sat in a register and in a few people's memory. Attendance and shifts were the problem, and that is where this story starts.

A register records that someone was present. It does not assign a shift, track a rotation or show who covers whom.

With 189 employees, every roster change had to be carried by hand. Every mistake then showed up later, in attendance and in pay.

Who Is Highway Trans?

Highway Trans is a transportation solutions provider, with 189 employees on TankhaPay. TankhaPay is the first HR system the company has used.

Transport runs on schedules, so the right people on the right shift is the service. That makes shifts and attendance the records the business cannot afford to get wrong.

Why Do Register-Based Attendance and Manual Shifts Fall Short?

Because a register records presence and nothing else, and manual shifts depend on someone remembering the rotation. Each problem makes the other harder to fix.

Four gaps followed from that setup:

Each gap added manual follow-up for HR and accounts. Time went into compiling attendance, not using it.

What Did TankhaPay Set Up for Highway Trans?

TankhaPay covers eight areas, from onboarding to payroll, in one system. Each reads from the same employee record, so nothing is entered twice.

The list groups them by job:

• Joining and records. Onboarding and employee management capture each person once.
• Attendance and time. Mobile attendance, shift management and auto shift rotation record and organise the working day.
• Structure and control. Organisational units and user management set how the company is arranged and who can see what.
• Pay. Payroll runs from the recorded data.

How Does Mobile Check-In Replace the Register?

Each employee checks in and out on their phone, and the entry goes straight into the system. Attendance becomes a record created at the moment of work, not a book filled in later.

There is no register to collect and no entries to retype. HR sees attendance as employees check in.

Each entry is made from one employee's own login, so the record shows who marked it and when. Every check-in is captured the same way, which removes the gaps that registers leave.

How Does Shift Management Work?

Shift management holds the shift patterns in one place, and each employee is assigned to a shift in the system. Nobody has to remember who works which hours.

HR sets the shifts once, and attendance is recorded against the shift the employee was assigned. Hours worked and shift worked sit in the same record.

If someone asks which shift an employee worked on a given day, the answer is in the system, not in a supervisor's memory.

How Does Auto Shift Rotation Work?

Auto shift rotation applies a pattern set once, so nobody rebuilds the roster each cycle. Employees move through the rotation on schedule.

Before, a roster change meant redoing the arrangement by hand, about 6 hours every week. Now HR defines the rotation once, and it runs on its own.

The rotation follows the shifts held in shift management, so attendance, hours and rotation always agree.

How Do Onboarding, Employee Records and Organisational Units Fit In?

Each employee is created once at onboarding, and that record carries through attendance, shifts and payroll. There is no second sheet to keep in step.

New joiners are captured in about 10 minutes, down from about 45. The same record then serves every other module.

• Employee management. Details are held in one record that other modules read from.
• Organisational units. Employees sit in units that mirror the company's structure, so reports and approvals follow it.
• User management. Access is set by role, so each person sees what their work needs and nothing more.

How Does Payroll Run From the Same Record?

Payroll reads from the attendance and shift data TankhaPay has already recorded. HR does not collect registers and re-enter days worked before a cycle begins.

The same record provides for attendance, scheduling, and salary of the employee. Payroll processing happens through the same record; therefore, any issues regarding the number of working days may be resolved through the system.

"We recorded attendance in the register and made scheduling manually; it took us several days each month to do that right. Now everybody registers his/her attendance using the cell phone; shifts are rotating on their own, and payroll is running through the same record."

What Changed for Highway Trans After Moving to TankhaPay?

Highway Trans moved 189 employees from register-based attendance and manual shifts to one system, and payroll preparation fell from about 5 days to about 2 per cycle. The eight modules in the study all read from the same employee record.

The table compares each area before and after, in time saved and in what each module now does.

"A register cannot run a shift roster. Highway Trans did not need a stricter register. It needed attendance and shifts to live in one system that payroll reads from."

What Should a Transportation Company Ask Before Choosing an HRMS?

Ask if attendance and shifts are part of the same system, payroll getting information from both of them. If not, then the manual cross-over starts again.

Six questions are worth asking in any demo:

• Can attendance be marked from a phone for staff who are away from a desk? Ask whether it works on your staff's phones and in the places they work.
• Is each attendance entry tied to an individual login? Shared logins or shared devices bring the register problem back.
• Can shifts be defined once and assigned in the system? If assignments are kept in a separate sheet, the manual step is still there.
• Does the shift rotation apply automatically? If rosters are rebuilt by hand each cycle, the time saving is lost.
• Can I limit what each user sees by role and unit? Supervisors should see their own people, while head office sees everyone.
• Does payroll read directly from attendance and shifts? If data is exported and re-entered, errors return at that step.