HR software for manufacturing plants

The plant's people-problem, stated honestly

Manufacturing HR is where India's labour framework is at its most physical. A services firm reconciles timesheets; a plant reconciles a gate — hundreds of workers across three shifts, biometric punches that must become a lawful muster, overtime that accrues in real hours at statutory rates, weekly offs that rotate with the roster, and a second workforce of contractor labour working the same lines under different paperwork. Above all of it sits the inspection reality: the Factories Act's registers, PF and ESI reconciliations, and CLRA obligations for the contract workforce are not annual abstractions but documents an inspector can demand on a Tuesday.

In most mid-sized plants this runs on a time-office clerk's Excel heroics: punches exported and cleaned by hand, OT computed cell by cell, the muster maintained in parallel with reality, and wage registers assembled the night before an inspection. It works until it doesn't — a payroll dispute at the union meeting, an OT limit breached invisibly, an ESI reconciliation that won't tie out. None of this is a discipline problem. It is what happens when the gate, the roster and the payroll live in three systems reconciled by tired people.

Shifts and the gate: attendance that becomes a muster

PeopleDeck's attendance layer is built for rostered reality: rotation patterns — weekly A/B/C, fortnightly, custom per section — generate the roster; biometric punches from the gate resolve against it; and late marks, half-days, reliever substitutions and shift swaps are recorded as events against the roster rather than annotations in a margin. The output that matters legally falls out automatically: a muster that reflects who actually worked, per day, per shift, per section — producible for any date range, which is the difference between an inspection morning and an inspection week.

Weekly offs and holiday calendars follow the roster too, so compensatory offs for worked holidays accrue as records with dates instead of promises with feelings — the small ledger that prevents the large argument at the year's end.

Overtime: computed, capped, defensible

OT is where plant payroll wins or loses trust. PeopleDeck computes it from the gate against the rostered shift, at the rates your policy and the Factories Act framework prescribe — typically double the ordinary rate for qualifying overtime — and tracks cumulative hours against statutory limits, flagging approaching breaches while supervisors can still rebalance the roster instead of discovering them in a notice. On the payslip, OT appears as computed lines a worker can verify against their own memory of the month: hours × rate, per period. Workers audit payslips with their feet; plants where OT arithmetic is visible and consistent simply have fewer disputes, and the wage register behind it reconciles because it was never a separate document — it is the payroll, formatted.

Two workforces, one gate: contract labour records

Most plants run a contractor workforce beside the rolls — housekeeping, loading, seasonal lines — and the principal employer's exposure is precisely the records: who was on site, under which contractor, with what gate history, and whether the contractor's PF/ESI compliance actually covers those people. PeopleDeck holds contractor workers as a distinct workforce with contractor mapping and full attendance, giving you the CLRA-register data and the verification trail — while the statutory boundary stays honest: contractors file for their own people; your records verify it. When the audit asks how many contract workers exceeded 240 days, the answer is a filter, not an archaeology project.

Payroll: from muster to payslip without a spreadsheet between

The payroll run consumes the attendance, OT and leave records directly: wage structures for operators (basic+DA patterns, attendance-linked components) and staff salaries compute in one run, with PF on qualifying wages, ESI where gross qualifies, professional tax by state, and TDS applied per payslip. The boundary as always: PeopleDeck applies the statutes and generates upload-ready ECR and return files that reconcile with payslips to the rupee — filing stays with you or your consultant. Wage registers, payslips in workers' hands via self-service or print, and payslips workers can actually read come from the same run. Exits settle the same way: gratuity, leave encashment and dues computed from the records that ran every month — full-and-final as arithmetic, not negotiation.

Per-employee pricing that respects plant economics

PeopleDeck is priced per employee per month, in rupees — a plant of 300 pays for 300, across however many units, with no per-site fees and no module bundles. Seasonal workforce swings move the bill with the headcount, which is how plant costs are supposed to behave. See pricing, compare honestly against the alternatives, or start with the free calculators your HR team can use today — overtime, PF, ESI and the rest.