About fifteen years ago, I wrote a payroll program that took input from a time clock. I think it was in dbase II.

Employees were given plastic cards with magnetic stripes for clocking in/out and the time clock just accumulated the punches (I think the client purchased 1000 precoded cards). Once a day the punches were downloaded to a computer and my program then appended the punches into a dbf. The rules concerning the punches were contained in my program/tables.

If you purchase a time clock, you should ensure it comes with computer interface and a control program for time clock/computer communication.

I think there is a better way that using a time clock though. Computers are so inexpensive now, so you should be able to buy one for what a time clock would cost you.

Using the computer approach, you can print barcode labels that you can tape to laminated cards for clocking in/out. You can print barcodes that represent regular, overtime, job, work order, etc. and post this list at the computer clock. You write a simple program that accepts the barcode from a scanner (a keyboard wedge wand works good for this type application) into a dbf. The employee would scan their card, scan regular or overtime, scan job or work order, etc. You could also have a in/out barcode (the more information, the better)

Once you have the punches and another program that processes the punches according to the companies rules they can then be accepted into the payroll system. The nice thing about this approach is you have "total" control over the whole process



>Hi. I am programming in VFP 6.0 and am looking for a third party timeclock. What I need is a product that runs with a time clock (to allow cards to 'punch' a user in and out and record the time. I would prefer if there were options available as to the type of time (regular, over time, etc.), the job or work order they were working on, the employee name or code and the date and expended time. We want to be able to take an output file from this and integrate it into our accounting package, payroll and job costing modules.
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>Anyone know of any products???
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>TIA
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>Sandi.