What does HR see at month end?

A month grid with each person's present days, half days, LOP days, overtime hours and projected salary, plus a separate payroll view for the CA.

Five roles: admin, HR, CA, manager and employee. Employees get a self-service home; admins see attendance, people, leave, bills, payroll, incentives and uploads.

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How do you automate attendance and payroll from a biometric machine export?

By Vaibhav Vijay · 2026-10-20

Short answer: Upload the machine's export as it is, map each device ID to an employee, and run every punch through a rule engine for grace, half-day tiers, minimum hours and overtime in 30-minute blocks. The HR system I built for Ekatra does this for a roster of 12 office and 26 production staff, with 36 unit tests pinning the agreed numbers.

Which rules does the engine apply?

Attendance and pay rules in the Ekatra HR system
Rule	What it decides
Grace and forgiven instances	Whether a late punch counts against the employee
Half-day tiers	When a short day becomes a half day
Minimum hours	Whether a day counts as worked
Free half days, PL and LOP	Which absences are paid and which are deducted
Overtime	Counted on hours worked, with a free hour, in 30-minute blocks and with caps

How does the machine export get in?

The biometric machine's Excel report can be uploaded as it is, and the browser converts it. Any CSV with a header row also works: the parser finds the ID column and the date and time columns, and reads slashed dates day-first.

HR sees a preview before anything is saved. Device IDs not yet linked to an employee are listed for mapping, punches are stored so duplicates can't double count, and the original file is kept.

Why pin the rules with tests?

Pay rules are agreed once and questioned every month. The 36 unit tests fix the agreed numbers, so a change that would shift a salary calculation shows up as a failing test. Office and production staff each get their own shifts and rule settings.