Many companies need to record employee time and activity, both to ensure that they’re paid correctly and in order to bill clients.

Recording time, however, can be a hit and miss affair unless you use a product such as the Chipdrive Time Recording solution, which uses the latest smartcard technology to bring clocking in and out fully up to date.

The Chipdrive solution comprises several components, starting with core time recording and reporting software which needs to be installed onto a Windows PC. You also get a USB smartcard reader and a set of 25 smartcards to go with it. The cards are used by employees to clock in and out; they simply insert them into a battery-powered mobile time recorder, which can be securely wall-mounted using the special bracket supplied.

As users clock in and out they can also key in project and activity codes via a simple LCD. The transactions are then stored in the recorder module and a separate transport card is used to periodically collect the data and transfer it to the management PC where it can be analysed and used to generate reports.

Multiple recorders can be deployed, as can additional card readers attached to PCs, which can be used to collect activity information, with the data transferred using either TCP/IP or email. A full network implementation with an Ethernet-connected time recording module (£999 ex Vat) has been announced.

The hardware and software took us about an hour to install, mainly because we had to download new drivers from the Chipdrive website to get the smartcard reader to work with Vista. We had to reload the time recorder module with English firmware rather than the German default and reset the clock before we
could start.

That done, we simply started up the main time-recording application and ran through a number of administrative tasks such as selecting the time format to use (12- or 24-hour clock), the pay period we wanted (monthly in our case) and starting date. We then created records for each of our employees, recording both basic contact details and normal working hours. Unfortunately this information has to be input manually, but it didn’t take long and only has to be done once. You can also key in holidays and periods of sickness and manually amend recorded time should the need arise.

Finally we created a time card for each employee using the blank smartcards provided. Employees then clock in and out using the card, with no need to press any buttons or enter information unless you want to capture extra data such as project and activity codes.

From the employee standpoint it’s very easy and once the data has been collected it can be used to generate a number of standard activity reports by employee, by group, project and so on. Flexi-time and carry-over hours can be handled and there’s a useful export tool to transfer the information into Excel.

On the downside we didn’t find the Chipdrive application particularly easy to use, with confusing menus which didn’t always do what we expected. We also felt that the documentation (translated from the original German) could do with attention. Still, we eventually got to grips with the Chipdrive product and, overall, found it to be a very workable and effective time-recording solution that will appeal to a wide range of small-business buyers.