From wage spreadsheet to one tested engine

1. 01

   A spreadsheet nobody wanted to touch

   Pay rules, rates, and exceptions were buried in formulas, so every change risked a silent error in someone's pay.

2. 02

   Raw clock data, manual clean-up

   Scanner data has missing punches, night shifts that cross midnight, and duplicate scans, all of which had to be found and fixed by hand.

3. 03

   No forecast, no audit trail

   There was no easy way to compare actual wage cost against forecast, or to see who changed a figure and why.

A pay week, end to end

1. 1

   Clock

   Door scanners and the manager app capture every clock-in. App clocks carry a photo and GPS position as evidence.

2. 2

   Build shifts

   Every hour, clock events are paired into day and night shifts, missing punches are inferred and flagged, and each shift is checked against the worker's schedule.

3. 3

   Flag

   After 08:00 each morning, shifts that ran outside normal hours are emailed to the factory for correction; Monday's email covers Friday to Sunday. Ten attendance rules run on the exceptions dashboard.

4. 4

   Correct & approve

   Admins fix the clock data with a comment for the reviewer. The approver approves exactly what was submitted, or rejects it with a reason.

5. 5

   Calculate

   The wage engine applies hours, overtime, Sunday and night rates, labour-provider rate cards, production bonuses, and levies.

6. 6

   Deliver

   On Monday at 08:00, every factory receives its wage and shift workbooks, while finance tracks cost against forecast all week.

• Automatic clocking

  Door scans sync from the factory access-control system every five minutes. Managers can also clock workers in and out from a phone, with a photo as evidence.

• One wage engine

  Normal hours, overtime and Sunday rates, night allowances, labour-provider rate cards, capacity-capped production bonuses, and levies, in one engine behind every report and dashboard.

• Exceptions approved, not edited

  A daily check for out-of-hours shifts, plus a dashboard of ten attendance rules with severity levels and wage-tolerance checks. Corrections are approved exactly as submitted, with a full history of who changed what and why.

• Seven dashboards

  Wage cost and hours by day, including staff still on shift, attendance and reliability, production, two exception views, and a door-scanner-versus-app comparison.

• Still Excel where it helps

  The weekly wage workbook opens in Excel with live formulas and optional hour caps, and an automated test proves those formulas match the engine.

• People, sick leave & production

  Staff records with permits, concerns, and terminations, a sick-leave register that tracks missing notes and days lost, and daily production logs per machine.

• Factory managers

  • Clock staff in and out from a phone, with photo evidence
  • See attendance and reliability for their factory
  • Log daily production per machine

• Wage administrators

  • Exceptions listed and emailed, not hunted for
  • Corrections with a clear approval trail
  • The weekly workbook, still in Excel, built for them

• HR

  • Staff records, permits, concerns, and terminations in one place
  • A sick-leave register with missing notes and days lost
  • A daily exchange report of starts, exits, and workforce events, on demand

• Finance & management

  • Wage cost and hours dashboards, day by day
  • Forecast versus actual by process and labour provider
  • Pay figures hidden from anyone without permission

1. Month 1

   Live in production

   The first wage report 16 days after the first line of code, and into production within the month.

2. Mid 2025

   Mobile clocking

   An iOS and Android clocking app with photo evidence for every manual clock-in.

3. 2026

   Scale out

   A second-country instance, multi-factory time zones, labour-provider rate cards, production bonuses, forecasting, and sick leave.

4. Aug–Oct 2026

   One tested engine

   Wage rules consolidated into a single tested engine, then daily exception approvals and formula-driven wage workbooks.

• A pure-function wage engine shared by every report, forecast, and dashboard, with its own automated test suite.
• Excel formulas tested against the engine, so the workbook and the system can't quietly drift apart.
• Approvals that are safe under load: serializable transactions, version checks, and unique run keys mean no double approvals and no duplicate emails.
• Reliable scanner sync that catches late-arriving scans without creating duplicates.
• Every door scanner monitored: one that goes quiet at a time it's normally busy is flagged.
• Encrypted identity and tax numbers, and a permission that hides every monetary value.

• .NET
• ASP.NET Core
• SQL Server
• Angular
• Capacitor
• Active Directory
• GitHub Actions