Automating employee attendance and leave management for accurate payroll processing

¶ … improvement and where the project that will be discussed in this paper will evolve is the problem in monitoring the attendance and leaves of employees which affect the processing of employees' payroll. A proposed solution, which is the implementation of an automated system, shall be discussed in the following section.

The objective of this project is to resolve payroll-inaccuracies wherein the payroll department always receives complains regarding miscalculations of employee salary due to inconsistent recording of employees' leaves, absences, and attendance at work. That is, the absences, leaves, and overtimes are currently being filed manually. By automating the attendance (i.e. Time IN/OUT) and leave/absence application of employees, the payroll department can accurately compute the employees' salaries.

Assumptions Regarding the Project

New technologies continuously emerge, thus it is important that the company should go with the flow of advancing the organization's business operation in terms of using technology-based solutions that facilitate diverse tasks. During the development and implementation of the proposed solution, it is assumed that the employees in the organization will need to attend introduction regarding the new solution. This is to facilitate the objective of making the employees adapt easily with the changes, considering that the solution is based on technology. Moreover, it is anticipated that during the implementation of the project, it may not totally eliminate the problem because not all the employees may be able to religiously use the new solution.

Risks Involved

Generally, there is only one risk involved in the automation of the attendance and leave of the employees. That is, they may tend to forget to use the new solution which may result to lack of records for their payroll.

Since the proposed solution is technology-based, another risk is the provision of accurate maintenance of the system. It is critical that the system will not have a downtime, otherwise, the main objective and purpose of the solution will be interfered by a downtime problem.

Why the Proposal is Considered a Project?

Projects are usually undertaken to provide changes or improvement for a particular subject. This proposal is considered a project because its main objective is to improve the operation of the organization in terms of delivery of payroll to employees. Moreover, it is considered a project because it involves the implementation and use of technology whose goal is to allow the company adapt with what the current industry uses. It similarly prepares the organization in facing more improvements in the future which is anticipated as technology-based solutions.

Project Management Life Cycle

After searching the keyword "project management lifecycle," I found that there are quite a number of web sites that provide a vast array of information on the subject. But, the most common thing from the results is that majority of the project management lifecycle concerns the use of information technology.

One web site provides the following steps that are made simple in a project management lifecycle.

Project Initiation

Project Planning

Project Execution

Project Closure

Developing an Effective Proposal

I have explored the site of IMC ResourceLink on the subject of how to create an effective proposal. The information it contains has basically described nine proposal steps/structure to do the job in which each structure was briefly but clearly described. According to the web site, the following are important parts of a proposal that can provide the reader with a complete view of the proposal. This includes: 1) Table of Contents, 2) Executive Summary, 3) Summary of the prospect's situation and goals, 4) Qualifications, 5) The Process, How You Plan to Carry Out the Engagement, 6) Costs and Payment Schedule, 7) What the Prospect Must Do to Assure Success, 8) References, 9) Getting Started (IMC Resourcelink).

In brief, the content of the IMC Resourcelink provides a good and professional outline of a proposal.