How We Automated Attendance System for an SME—"Saving Hours Every Month with Zero Maintenance" – Detailed Real-Time Case Study
Client: A Chennai based
e-commerce retail company below 12 employees.
Project Goal:
Transforming their long sized manual attendance note into a hassle-free digital
attendance workflow.
Here’s how we did it —
step-by-step.
💡 1. The Challenge that
the e-commerce retail company faced:
The HR of this company
was manually marked the presence of their employees. The errors, delays,
workload (not heavy but avoidable), time consumption became very common, and
also monthly report took hours to compile it.
Let's keep stacking.
- The owner needs to come to the office or call a
representative to check the presence of employee.
- They need to allocate a separate shelf to keep their
attendance log book month wise, since every two months they have to buy a
new notebook.
- They need to secure it for future use, and
maintaining it makes them determine switching to digital.
- The company should allocate a separate person like
HR, Manager, Supervisor to mark the presence of employees (as some
companies do).
💪2. The Challenge we faced
in this project:
At the beginning, we (The
TNY Company) thought it was easy. But when we heard their preference, it
changed the perspective.
"They asked, “It
should be low maintenance.”
And we replied, “That’s
so easy.”
They asked, “Error-free
system, reduce workload.”
We said, “Yeah, we can do
it.”
Because, their
preferences are very valid since they are already tired of this thing. So, we
understand it.
But you know the final
twist...?
“Their budget is just the
cost of a note book.”
We are unexpected this
twist in budget constraint—added a challenge
but we happily accepted as an exciting problem to solve.
⚙️ 3. Project Goal:
Transforming their long sized manual attendance note into a hassle-free digital
attendance workflow.
We took this as a
challenge to create an easy automated attendance system that meets all their
preference.
You may wonder how we
managed it with just the cost of a notebook.
But we don’t only focus
on the project’s budget. We love the challenge, we love solving problems, and
we work for quality.
So, keep read to see the
result.
🔧 4. The Solution –
exactly what we built/implemented:
- Tools/Tech Used: Zapier (automation workflow platform), Tally
Forms, Excel
- Process: The workflow was automated using Zapier.
We created a Tally form
to collect details such as employee name, ID Number, Timestamp, attendance
status (absent/present) and a note section (which employee can use if they are
absent).
Then we linked the tally
form with an excel sheet and set up a Zap in Zapier. Technically the form
submission from employee acts as a trigger of in Zap, and the data
automatically flow excel sheet (Action). Every day a report will be shared with
HR, owners can check the employee status from everywhere—no extra hassle as that business owner particularly
asked.
- Key Features:
- In this case, it’s a no-code, allowing business
owners to understand and edit it in the future as they wish.
- Employees can report their attendance with just a
simple link.
✨ 5. Why this worked for
this e-commerce retail company:
The owner said,
“This
system is very simple, transparent, and fully automated. It reduces manual
work, keeps management updated in real-time and our employees loved it.
Honestly, we felt like Tony Stark, because it’s just a simple link – once they
fill it, the magic happens. I can see the attendance, even when I’m in driving,
outside the office.”
We gave this system to
them for three weeks.
Every day, the company
owner shared the report with us—even though we didn’t ask. Then we realized
that she wasn’t just sharing the report; she was sharing her excitement, shared
her happiness, and pouring out a message full of gratitude: “Thank you sooo much for this.”
After three weeks, we
measured the outcomes, and we are amazed—result was far beyond what we had
expected.
After automation:
- Reduced the manual work – after this HR no needs to mark attendance
by hand.
- Saves hours – 10 minutes/day × 30 days = ~5 hours/month (or ~4
hours excluding holidays), with just simple
attendance automation we can save few hours.
- Time saving – compiling the monthly attendance report now takes
just a few minutes
- Error elimination – manual errors in marking attendance have
been completely removed.
- Real time marking and tracking – status is stored with exact time and date;
owners, managers can check employee status from anywhere, anytime.
- Digital storage – records are safely stored in excel/drive.
Now shelves are free for useful books and replaced the damaged attendance
log book.
- Low maintenance – this automated attendance requires less
effort to run and maintain or edit.
- Employee friendly – they can submit attendance easily via just
a link
- Cost effective – we implemented this system at the cost of a note book; as the business owner requested
Scroll down to download the automated attendance system template for free!!!
👇👇👇
💠6. Lessons Learned:
We didn’t expect the
owner’s preference, but we learned once again that not every business owner
expects complex, expensive software to automate simple business processes. Of
course, no one expects the process to look like a spider web.
Want to build same
automated attendance for your business?
No worries!!
Download my free Attendance Automation Template below, or connect
with me for a quick strategy chat about other automation process for your
business.
Not just for
automation—we specialize in business development—bringing your business to the
next level, helping businesses achieve their goals effortlessly.
👉 Contact:
Tamilselvan Karuppaiah -
CEO, The TNY Company.
Business Development
& Automation Strategis
ℹ️ LinkedIn | 📩 pennedbytamilselvan@gmail.com
