Advantex, an IT services company based at Follingsby Park in Gateshead, has won two million pounds’ worth of contracts over the last few months, which will create ten new jobs. 

 

This is expected to produce a 27% increase in revenue as well as create engineer and account manager vacancies to deal with the increase workload. 

The new contracts achieved are:

 

• Hitachi Rail: to provide network infrastructure for nationwide train depots

• Hays Travel: to supply an internet-based phone system at their HQ and other offices

• Rockliffe Hall: to improve IT and network security

• Northumberland Estates: to supply them with a new IT system and disaster recovery system.

 

Steve O’Connell, sales and marketing director, said: "We have worked hard to secure significant growth, so achieving more than £2m in sales is great news. With that comes the opportunity to expand the company, bringing on more people to fill key roles across the business.

 

"As a partner of leading global technology companies, we’re also going from strength-to-strength, winning more and more work, both nationally and regionally, through our focused approached on benefits-led and quantifiable technology solutions."

 

Source: Insider Media North East

 

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A major increase in staff numbers, such as Advantex is intending to carry out, can cause unforeseen problems for staff performing HR, admin and accounts job roles if the company’s method of recording time worked has not been updated. 

 

For example, it is very easy for staff to fill in paper timesheets incorrectly. Sometimes this can be deliberate time fraud, but sometimes it is just new staff getting confused, or people forgetting to fill in their timesheets until a week later, by which time they’ve forgotten their exact shift details and are likely to just fudge it. 

 

Even if the details are all correct, most paper timesheets must then be manually transferred to a database (usually an Excel spreadsheet) before being sent to payroll software. 

 

There are many opportunities for human error to kick in during this time-consuming process – e.g. making an unrecognised typo in entering, or misreading employee’s handwriting (1 or 7? O or 0 or D?).

 

Incorrect data can also foul up HR tasks too, making it much more difficult to spot issues like adherence to the Working Time Directive or someone taking three 30 minute breaks plus lunch.

 

At Time and Attendance North East, we offer specialised attendance management software which can work either with smartcards or with biometrics.

 

Our smartcards are about the size of a credit card and fit nicely into most wallets. The radio frequency technology means that you don’t need to physically swipe the cards, just hold them up near the reader terminal. This reduces wear and tear.

 

For the ultimate deterrent against time theft, we can provide a hand scanner and/or a fingerprint reader. Smartcards can be lost, or swapped with colleagues to input fake times. This isn’t the case with hands and fingers!