Where Is Everyone Working Today?
At Vrinda Engineers, answering that meant chasing several sites for their numbers. Attendance was the biggest hassle, and it is where this story starts.
Some employees work from the office. Others work at project sites that change over time. One method of marking attendance cannot serve both.
When attendance is scattered, so is the view of who is where. Planning the next day's manpower then starts from guesswork.
Who Is Vrinda Engineers?
Vrinda Engineers Pvt. Ltd. is an engineering equipment company with 400 employees on TankhaPay, 288 of them active. Its people work across an office and multiple sites.
In engineering work, output depends on having the right people at the right site. That makes attendance and headcount the first records the business needs to get right.
Why Does Attendance Break Down Across Multiple Sites?
Because a method that works at a fixed office does not work at a site with no fixed device. Each location ends up with its own way of recording attendance.
Three gaps followed from that setup:
| Gap | What it meant at Vrinda Engineers |
|---|---|
| Method | Office and site staff marked attendance differently, so records did not match. |
| Location | No dependable record of where a site employee was when they checked in |
| Visibility | Site-wise headcount had to be collected from each location before it could be viewed |
Each gap added manual follow-up for the HR team. The time went into collecting attendance, not using it.
How Do Biometric and Geo-Tagged Mobile Attendance Work Together?
Biometrics cover the office, and geo-tagged mobile check-in covers the sites. Both write to the same attendance record on TankhaPay.
Office employees punch in on the biometric device. Site employees check in on their phones, and the location of each check-in is recorded with the punch.
Because both feed one system, HR does not merge two sets of records. Every employee has one attendance history, whichever method they used.
What Does Geo Tagging Record, and What Does It Not?
Geo tagging records the location from which a mobile check-in was made. It gives HR and site managers a location to review against the site the employee was assigned to.
It shows where the phone was at check-in. It does not by itself block a check-in from elsewhere, which is what geofencing does. Treat geo tags as evidence for review, not as proof of presence.
How Does Headcount Planning Work From Attendance Data?
Headcount planning compares the manpower a site needs with the people recorded there. Attendance supplies the actual figure, so the planning rests on records, not on phone calls to site supervisors.
With every site feeding one system, HR can view headcount by site and plan manpower for the days ahead. Gaps show up before a shift starts, not after.
Our biggest problem was knowing who was at which site. Now office staff punch in on biometrics, site staff check in on their phones, and everything shows up in one place.
What Changed for Vrinda Engineers After Moving to TankhaPay?
Attendance moved from separate methods at each location to one system covering the office and every site. The table sets the before against the after.
The main gain is not speed. Attendance now has one source, so questions about who worked where can be answered from the system.
Multi-site attendance breaks when each site records it differently. Vrinda Engineers did not need another device. It needed office and site attendance to land in the same record.
What Should a Multi-Site Engineering Company Ask Before Choosing an HRMS?
Check if office and site attendance appear in one database. In case they appear in different databases, you have to do manual merging.
There are four questions to ask at any demonstration:
- Is there a way that the mobile and biometric attendance can feed the same system? In case these two are exported and combined, the manual part is still required.
- What does the location capture do? Find out if it captures a geo-tag for verification or allows only geofenced check-ins. Both are separate methods.
- Can I view headcount by site on a given day? A planning view that needs a manual report is not planning.
- What happens at a site with poor network? Ask how mobile check-ins are handled when connectivity drops.
Who is TankhaPay?
TankhaPay is an HR, payroll and compliance platform built by AKAL Information Systems Ltd., which has operated since 2000 and is CMMI Level 5 appraised and ISO 9001, 20000, 27001 and 14001 certified. It runs HRMS, attendance, payroll and Employer of Record services across all 28 Indian states.
