The Decatur Hotel Group (DHG) owns/manages 12 hotels famous for their French Quarter locations. Until the mid-90's, they relied on a manual payroll system; costly in labor, time and errors. The solution: conversion to an Amano automated time and attendance system."When we first converted to the Amano systems in 1994," says Elvis A. McCoy,Jr., DHG controller, "we were replacing paper time sheets and time cards. (DHG first utilized Amano's EMS employee management software in conjunction with four Amano AMX data input terminals and swipe badges. They saw immediate savings. See Figure 1, reverse.) After the switch to the Amano automated system we cut payroll processing more than 50 percent."

Further Upgrades In 1999 - With the successful deployment and operation of the EMS/AMX system, Decatur upgraded to a newer version of Amano TruTime® software in 1999 to provide information for employee reviews unavailable before. A powerful and comprehensive time and attendance software product, TruTime is ideal for hospitality industry applications, and is compatible with most payroll services. "Under the manual system," says McCoy, "it was difficult to persuade department managers to audit and calculate time cards. With 12 hotels and a few hundred employees, tracking every employee manually can be a nightmare, squared. But with daily TruTime Time Card Report distribution at our fingertips, it's easy to edit and approve punch times."

Overtime management is a major concern with so many hourly employees working different schedules. TruTime helps keep extended hours under control before the fact. Managers review report data from their PC workstations by cost center, department, job class and specific employee. Decatur monitors employee attendance habits by running tardy and absence reports, as well as exceptions.

Says McCoy, "We create, verify and/or change employee work schedules to reflect shift changes, vacations, etc., in seconds using the TruSchedule feature."

No More Buddy Punching - "The diversity of our work force automatically drew us to the Amano HandPunch," says McCoy, "the right choice for us for a number of reasons."

Biometric HandPunch Eliminates Buddy Punching, Tightens Security

Many languages are spoken among hospitality industry employees - irrelevant when using a biometric data collection device: no tickets or badges to print, read, distribute, or lose; no paper trails to maintain. It relies on hand geometry unique to each employee, buddy punching - the practice of one employee having another employee punch in for them - is eliminated. It also frees up supervisors' workload, allowing them to concentrate their efforts where better spent. DHG is in the process of upgrading to this system at all New Orleans locations.

Concludes McCoy, "It pays to stay on top of technology."