Clock in/out app. What do you think?

albernazj93

Hi guys,

I'm a software developer without a business background. So your opinion here you be much appreciated.
I'd love to hear from you what you guys would look for in a clock in/out system?

Integration with payroll systems?
Notifications?
Automation?

The last year and a half I have been developing a clock in/out (web, android, and iOS) app with geolocation features to help those businesses in which employees work mostly remotely.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.
That would be great to hear from you guys.

Thanks.

This is the app: https://www.uclocker.com/

EDIT:
Very relevant question:

Atomic Pineapple wrote: »

Who is your target market? What sort of an organisation would need remote workers to check in and check out at specific times? What problem does it solve?

Hey, thanks for your reply.



Target market:
All companies in which employees need to be in a specific location at a specific time/day.
Also companies with an old clock-in system which end up having lost in money due to buddy punching.


Companies like:
Cleaning, security, building/maintenance, IT support, etc.


It would solve:
It would make sure employees are at the agreed location (client) at the correct time by capturing the employees' location when he/she clocks in/out.
Also, avoiding buddy punching by capturing a frontal photo (if feature activated and agreed with the employee).
Notifications to the employer (manager, leader, or any superior) when employee clocks in/out outside the designed location or late.

Atomic Pineapple

Who is your target market? What sort of an organisation would need remote workers to check in and check out at specific times? What problem does it solve?

listermint

Its a very crowded market OP, have you done any research on this ?

albernazj93

Atomic Pineapple wrote: »

Who is your target market? What sort of an organisation would need remote workers to check in and check out at specific times? What problem does it solve?

Hey, thanks for your reply.



Target market:
All companies in which employees need to be in a specific location at a specific time/day.
Also companies with an old clock-in system which end up having lost in money due to buddy punching.


Companies like:
Cleaning, security, building/maintenance, IT support, etc.


It would solve:
It would make sure employees are at the agreed location (client) at the correct time by capturing the employees' location when he/she clocks in/out.
Also, avoiding buddy punching by capturing a frontal photo (if feature activated and agreed with the employee).
Notifications to the employer (manager, leader, or any superior) when employee clocks in/out outside the designed location or late.

albernazj93

listermint wrote: »

Its a very crowded market OP, have you done any research on this ?

Yes, you are right. There are loads of companies doing the same. It would be hard to get a slice of the market.

I'd try to compete with them by having a better price. As I'm using the latest technologies I can drop the price to at least half of them.

I can see many old systems on the first page on Google. They are good systems but old and too expensive. Many of them without any update or maintenance at all.


Many of them charging like 5-7 euros per employee? It sounds way too expensive.

PaybackPayroll

albernazj93 wrote: »

Many of them charging like 5-7 euros per employee? It sounds way too expensive.

Sales and especially support are a huge cost. That's probably why it's 5-7 euros per employee.

It'll cost a fair bit to break into this market.

Will you be offering other HR features, or just logging hours?

EagererBeaver

Very crowded market, many solutions already available that integrate with SAP etc.

And I don't want to **** on your dreams, but your proposal absolutely screams privacy concerns. Selfies? Really?!

albernazj93

PaybackPayroll wrote: »

Sales and especially support are a huge cost. That's probably why it's 5-7 euros per employee.

It'll cost a fair bit to break into this market.

Will you be offering other HR features, or just logging hours?

Yea, good point. As the company grows, good support is mandatory.



That's something I want to start developing. I see many similar apps out there integrate with many payroll systems. That would be the first step.


After that I would study the HR system we use in our company, which is called HR Locker and decide which feature would make more sense to include.


What do you suggest?

albernazj93

EagererBeaver wrote: »

Very crowded market, many solutions already available that integrate with SAP etc.

And I don't want to **** on your dreams, but your proposal absolutely screams privacy concerns. Selfies? Really?!

This is a thing now.



Check it out

yabadabado

Doesn't finger print scanning get rid of the "buddy punching " scenario?

Id expect that to be much easier to implement than taking photos.

albernazj93

yabadabado wrote: »

Doesn't finger print scanning get rid of the "buddy punching " scenario?

Id expect that to be much easier to implement than taking photos.

Yes, that's another good and easy to develop option too.

However, thinking on employees working remotely, most likely they will have a phone with frontal camera than finger print.

ressem

If it''s not just the in/out button functionality that you want to implement...

You'll have a large feature-set to implement, and I think you are underestimating the cost of running such a service as you state €7 per employee per month is expensive.

This will typically...

1) allow supervisors / managers to interact with the employee times in order to record absence reasons, clock-out errors, move hours around to make up the required hours per week, swap people in shifts, assign days to paid day off, unpaid, day in lieu etc.
All transactions and access to be logged and stand up to legal challenge.

2) provide data to accounts and payroll in a format acceptable to the common applications, Sage Payroll, SAP etc, or just their own Excel solution. Text file exports customised to a particular software package format usually aren't too tricky from most database query engines, but having to tinker with and store these for every customer is messy.

3) A lot of personalised scheduled HR reports that management will be asked to provide to directors.

4) interacting with existing site hardware, fingerprint readers etc. No-one wants to run 2 clocking systems in parallel.

5) accurate onsite info for fire marshalls & fire drills.

albernazj93

ressem wrote: »

If it''s not just the in/out button functionality that you want to implement...

You'll have a large feature-set to implement, and I think you are underestimating the cost of running such a service as you state €7 per employee per month is expensive.

This will typically...

1) allow supervisors / managers to interact with the employee times in order to record absence reasons, clock-out errors, move hours around to make up the required hours per week, swap people in shifts, assign days to paid day off, unpaid, day in lieu etc.
All transactions and access to be logged and stand up to legal challenge.

2) provide data to accounts and payroll in a format acceptable to the common applications, Sage Payroll, SAP etc, or just their own Excel solution. Text file exports customised to a particular software package format usually aren't too tricky from most database query engines, but having to tinker with and store these for every customer is messy.

3) A lot of personalised scheduled HR reports that management will be asked to provide to directors.

4) interacting with existing site hardware, fingerprint readers etc. No-one wants to run 2 clocking systems in parallel.

5) accurate onsite info for fire marshalls & fire drills.

These are gold info, man. Thanks a lot!!!


Item 1 would be easy to achieve. Some of it has been done, a few others would be easy to include. This would bring to the system close to the competitors' level.


Item 2 is the tricky one for me. To integrate with their API would take me too long.
You mentioned "or just their own Excel solution". Do you mean they accept Excel files to be imported?
Maybe if they all follow a specific format, I could make it quicker.


Item 3 I have made a pivot table that would support this. Being possible to drag n drop and play around with lines and columns. Exporting on charts and all.


Item 4 that's a good one. I will take a look.


Item 5 would it be related to clock in the system?


Again, thanks a lot for the info above. Helped a lot :):)

Jim from Cork

Fair play! I think there are companies out there that do not want the complete HR package but do require the "time control" element.
I'll be keeping an eye. Hell, I might even run a trial!

I indeed it is a competitive market. There are some of your competitors that do not have a geofencing option. Maybe you should have a chat with them.

How have your customers broached the subject of industrial relations where workers have concerns about a tracking app? I take it the app is only tracking "when using the app"?

albernazj93

Jim from Cork wrote: »

Fair play! I think there are companies out there that do not want the complete HR package but do require the "time control" element.
I'll be keeping an eye. Hell, I might even run a trial!

I indeed it is a competitive market. There are some of your competitors that do not have a geofencing option. Maybe you should have a chat with them.

How have your customers broached the subject of industrial relations where workers have concerns about a tracking app? I take it the app is only tracking "when using the app"?

Hey Jim!
Yea, the first idea was to have only the time control, as the whole RH package would take too long to create it and put in the market.

The clock in the system is pretty stable at the moment and I might consider include a few HR features.

I will be happy if you run a trial . Let me know if you need more than 5 users and I will get you a coupon.

Yes, you are completely right the app only tracks "when using the app". It only captures your location when you clock-in or clock-out. Other than that, no location is needed.
On iOS, there are two different types of location permission: "While using" and "Always". We only request permission to While using one.

Thanks for the feedback :)

antoinolachtnai

I think there might well be a gap for this sort of stuff. But I don't know if it's clear what the gap is, or if you have the resources to meet the gap.

I think that you need to understand clearly what financial and HR managers' actual fears, uncertainties and doubts are about their hourly employees' behaviour and about your app, so you can address them head-on.

You also need to address the regulatory issues, I think. There is a big issue in relation to any biometric approach and GDPR in a workplace situation. You would need to show the customers how you are dealing with this and avoiding any pitfalls.

You got a good list of suggestions above. Separately, I have heard that holiday schedules and cover and swapping of shifts are an issue. Of course, now we are moving from timekeeping into scheduling.

I do know there is one (Irish) company in this space already, though slightly different starting point and approach from you.

I do have to warn you that small business is often thought to be an extremely difficult market to start with. The problem is that it is very difficult to get to 100,000 euros of revenue a month, which is sort of the starting point to be able to pay to have qualified personnel for basic functions like finance, marketing and sales.