DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERISED STAFF ATTENDANCE SYSTEM WITH FINGER PRINTING TECHNOLOGY

ABSTRACT
The Design and Implementation of Staff Attendancesystem is an academic work which aims in developing a computerized system to maintain the attendance of Staff in a company.
Attendance in an organization is important to ensure the continuous operation. Aiming at the disadvantages of traditional pen and paper attendance system, an Integrated Staff Attendance System (ISAS) is proposed. ISAS is a system used to record the present of staffs to work. It provides a customization option of using an input device: fingerprint technology. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is used as it gives much faster development process which will guarantee the punctuality of the system delivery. This system allows the workers to take attendance, view their user profile and also attendance, while the manager can view workers' attendance, managing workers' information and generating attendance report. 
It is a computerized robust payment system. It also has the facility of showing all reports of Staff attendance. Overall this project of ours is being developed to help the company, schools, hospitals, secretariat to maintain the attendance in the best way possible and also reduce the human efforts. The Programming language used in developing this application software is Visual Basic.net 2012. It runs in Windows 98 to Latest windows 10. It also requires Microsoft access 2010 re-distribution to avoid errors. It also needs Crystal report to be installed to view the report in the database.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION:
This chapter gives an overview about the aim, objectives, background and operation environment of the system.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The operation of any company is based on the contribution of staff either from executive level or operational level. For example, in a factory, the shop floor operation required full attendance of engineer, technical staff, and operation level staff before they start the operation. Therefore, the attendance system provides the information of the staff's existing to the shop floor. Their information will help them to plan the operation and do any changes for any absent. 
Attendance can be defined as the action of being present at one place or event 
[1] For example present to somebody party or present to work in office. Attendance is one of the important factors in many institutions and organization that need to be followed by people 
[2]. Staff attendance tracking is a common practice in almost all organizations. It is highly important for one organization in order to maintain their performance standards 
[3]. in the previous implementation, there are various types of attendance systems that have been developed. For example: attendance systems by using pen and paper, using database, and also biometrics. These implementations still can cause lots of problems such as providing incorrect information to the users.

The purpose of this integrated attendance system is to computerized the traditional way of record attendance. Besides that it is used to create a combination of various types of attendance where users can either choose to use smart card or fingerprint technologies. For example, by using combination of both smart card and fingerprint technologies to record workers attendance, the attendance system can be strongly protected and the inappropriate manner of behaviors can be eliminated. If one of the devices is malfunction, the others can acts as backup.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
For companies that use pen and paper to record their attendance, with the large amount of staff in the company, this will be a problem to the manager to keep track on staffs' attendance because by using pen and paper, one worker can help other workers to sign his/her attendance even though they do not go to work or either the workers are late to work. 
For small companies which have only 10 staffs, it is not worth for them to purchase a fingerprint attendance system. This is because the cost of one fingerprint device is quite expensive and they need an expert which has knowledge to help configure and maintain the system. 
With the existing approach, there is only a single input device use to record the staff attendance either using smart card or fingerprint. If one company would like to have 2 different input of attendance system to provide interchangeable function, they will need to purchase both systems which will be costly. In addition, if one day the single input device suddenly breakdown, the attendance cannot be recorded. 
Therefore, there is a need to develop an integrated attendance system with various type of input to fulfill customer needs and requirements because it is flexible and it can bring convenient to the manager to summarize and manipulate staff information. Lack of effectiveness in their methods of record keeping, further compounds the problem. 

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this project are:

i. To develop an Integrated Staff Attendance System (ISAS) by using fingerprint technologies.

ii. To provide the potential users with the customize option of using both input device.

iii. To develop an algorithm for the staff working hours processing towards attendance system

SCREEN SHOTS OF THE APPLICATION

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
          The use of staff attendance system is very important because of human being proneness to error, leaving the staff to write down their names might not be accurate as staff can even write attendance for their fellow staff and their handwriting legibility can be a case when compiling the attendance record at the end of the month. 
            The official in charge of attendance collation is highly favored by this system because use of pen and paper as a means of collating staff attendancewill leave the official in charge with numerous sheet of paper, which will be hectic as he/she has to start comparing several sheets to record the average attendance for just a staff. The official is going to waste a lot of time compiling the attendance percentage at the end of the month, mistake can creep in due to the large volumes of papers.
            Successful implementation of this project mean the staff attendance credibility can be queried or put to test anytime,  and result are produce fast and accuracy, without stress.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

1.9 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
i. This system is used to records staffs' attendance.

ii. The implementation is implementing in the Company of SPRINGLIGHT TECHNOLOGY.

iii. The users of this system are the manager and workers of SPLIGHT.

iv. The technology that will be used to conduct this project is the fingerprint device.

v. The input device will be installed at various locations in the organization.

1.8SSUMPTION OF THE STUDY
It is assumed that all the data collected are correct and contains no false information.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Seaport:A large town on or near a coast with a harbor that big ships can be used. 
Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an 
Organization through the process of planning,   
Organization, directing and controlling
System: Physical component of a computer that is used to perform certain task.
Data: Numbers, Text or image which is in the form suitable for Storage in or processing by a computer, or incomplete Information. 
Information: A meaning full material derived from computer data by organizing it and interpreting it in a specified way.
Input: Data entered into a computer for storage or processing. 
Output: Information produced from a computer after processing. 
Information System: A set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization. 
Seaport Management System: A seaport management system, also known as an automated seaport system is software that has been developed to handle functions of a seaport. 

1.5 Thesis Organization 
This thesis consists of four (4) chapters. Chapter 1 discusses on the introduction of the system. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly explain about the overview system that is developed. This chapter also supply with the problem statements, objectives and the scope of the study. 
Chapter 2 is literature review. As the name given the purpose of this chapter is to reviews the previous research works which was conducted by other researches. All the relevant journal, thesis and books taken from those researches will be discussed in detail. 
Chapter 3 is research methodology. This chapter reveals the techniques, algorithms and related software that will be used for the project development. Besides that, it will also discuss about the process flow in detail of this research. 
Chapter 4 is implementation and testing. This chapter documenting all the process that involved in developing this system and the testing made to the system. 
Lastly, chapter 5, the conclusion concludes and come out with a summary about the developed project.