ACS: savings and accounting.

ACS: savings and accounting.

In most cases, any security systems, including ACS, are often considered by property owners as a kind of burden — something that requires additional (sometimes considerable) financial costs. I will not consider the advantages of using ACS in this article, I will only focus on those features of using systems that can provide a tangible economic effect.
For this purpose, we will consider the access control and management system exclusively as a system for accumulating data on the movement of people across the enterprise territory.
To obtain the required data set, it is necessary to create an access control system that will fully control the perimeter (there is no way to leave the territory without bypassing the access control system) and the premises required for accounting (buildings, workshops, areas). At the same time, the ACS must control the passage of a person in both directions (entrance and exit). In this case, we will get a system that will receive and store data on the movement of people through control lines.
We will use the specified data to organize disciplinary control systems and automate the accounting of the working hours of the enterprise's employees.
In order to build such a control system, it is necessary to fulfill several mandatory conditions. We have already discussed the first of the conditions: the presence of an ACS built according to certain rules.
The second condition: it is necessary to create a system for planning employees' working hours. The essence of such a system is the preliminary preparation of employees' working hours schedules. To ensure the operability of disciplinary control systems and automation of working hours accounting, it is necessary that information about planned working hours be entered into them or made available to the specified systems in the required form.
Thus, in the system we receive a set of data on how the employee should have moved through the ACS checkpoints and how he actually moved. Without the use of elements of work time planning, such systems turn into attendance accounting systems, which are of limited use for automating work time accounting.
Each enterprise has its own individual features of the organization of the production process. In the process of work, a situation often arises when the planned work schedules are not met. This refers to a situation in which employees are unplanned transferred from one work shift to another. The reasons may be various emergency situations, employee illness, unplanned changes in the volume of work, etc. As a result, the planned work schedules over time begin to diverge greatly from the real ones. In order for such desynchronization of planned and real work schedules not to affect the reliability of the work time accounting system, the third necessary condition is met: in such systems, it is necessary to create mechanisms that allow you to adjust the planned work schedules, bringing them into line with the real ones.
The third condition may cause objections — often information about changes in work schedules is received after the fact of the change has occurred. For example, an employee brings a sick leave certificate after the end of illness, or the transfer of an employee from the morning shift to the night shift is done immediately before the start of the night shift. Does the latter mean that the enterprise needs to keep an employee at the workplace around the clock, who will make the necessary changes in the accounting system? No, a well-designed system should allow such changes to be made retroactively, without violating the accounting algorithms.
Let's consider another feature of automated timekeeping systems based on ACS. The access control system as an element of the security system maintains its own database, which stores information about employees, passes issued to them, and access rights. Accounting for employee working hours involves linking the accounting algorithms to the company's staffing schedule. Timesheets, as a rule, group employees by structural divisions. At any enterprise, there is so-called staff turnover — employee movements associated not only with hiring and firing, but also with changes within the staffing schedule (transfers to other positions, to other divisions). The automated timekeeping system built on ACS is linked primarily to the structure described in the ACS database.
In order for the automated timekeeping system to generate reliable data, it is necessary that at any given time it «knows» in which division an employee occupies what position. Thus, the task of synchronously maintaining changes in both the existing personnel accounting system at the enterprise and the ACS arises.
In small enterprises, such a task can be performed manually — the number of transfers at them is usually small. In large enterprises, it is quite difficult to ensure manual synchronicity of data in both systems.
For reliable operation of the automated timekeeping system at medium and large enterprises, it is necessary to ensure automatic synchronization with the existing personnel accounting system. In other words, to ensure the integration of the automated timekeeping system into the enterprise's personnel accounting system.
What advantages can an automated timekeeping system give to an enterprise? The enterprise receives a system for monitoring and analyzing labor discipline. At the same time, operational control of labor discipline is possible and, thanks to the accumulation of data, an analysis of the state of labor discipline for a specified period.
The enterprise receives a system for automated accounting of working hours, in which violations related to the dishonest work of employees of the labor and wages service are impossible. Many enterprises face such phenomena as padding of working hours and «dead souls» in timesheets. The system for automated accounting of working hours makes such violations impossible, which allows optimizing the wage fund of the enterprise and, again, obtaining an economic effect. Practice shows that competent use of automated accounting systems for working hours allows to recoup the costs of access control and management systems and automation of accounting of working hours in 6-9 months of operation.

Let's consider a number of features of the organization of work of such systems.
One of the most serious mistakes in creating automated timekeeping systems is the desire of the enterprise owner to link the functions of the access control and management system and the automated timekeeping system in such a way that the ACS allows the employee to pass through the enterprise checkpoint only during certain time intervals associated with the beginning and end of his work schedule.
The desire is completely reasonable — there is no reason for the employee to come and leave the enterprise outside the time allowed for passage. From the owner's point of view, such a solution increases the security of the enterprise, tightening the security rules and reducing the possibility of untimely entry. Is this true?
Let's consider this solution from the point of view of production processes.
In the vast majority of cases, the existing administrative chain fails to notify the automation system in advance about changes in the employee's work schedule. If the ACS blocks the employee's movement outside the time intervals tied to the work schedule, the employee who received the order to change and arrived on time will not be able to enter the enterprise's territory.
Obtaining permission for such an employee to pass is associated with the need to change his work schedule or forcefully change the employee's status in the ACS. These are functions available only to the system administrator or persons accompanying the process of planning the employee's work time. That is, the presence of these persons at the workplaces is necessary. In the case of mass changes, and at medium and large enterprises such situations occur quite often, the introduction of appropriate changes to the systems is delayed.
In this case, the administrative component of the system is triggered: a command is given to the security guard at the checkpoint to let the specified employee through. The security guard lets the employee through, either by unlocking the turnstile for passage, or by allowing him to pass with his card. Everything seems fine: the employee got to his workplace, and maybe even on time. But such an employee got to the enterprise, bypassing the accounting system, since the ACS did not receive information about his passage.
The issue can be resolved by issuing such an employee a temporary pass with the appropriate rights. But this process is quite labor-intensive — it takes the time of the employee and the pass office operator. I repeat: at medium and large enterprises (conditionally at enterprises with more than 4,000 employees), the number of described transfers can be more than 100 per day.
Such a link creates a situation in which the employee's movement leaves no traces in the ACS or creates additional time costs.
A conscientious employee will most likely put up with the inconvenience. And what about a dishonest one? A person who needs (for any purpose) to enter the enterprise territory after hours, but knows about the ban on access control, will try to find an alternative way to enter the territory. And he will most likely find it. Again, bypassing the existing registration and movement control systems. As a result, the enterprise management receives questionable data: on the one hand, the control systems do not allow the employee to be on the territory outside of his work schedule, on the other — even if such an employee entered the territory, we do not know about it.
In this case, the most correct solution to this issue would be to refuse to tie the permitted time of passage to the employee's work schedule.
The problem is solved quite simply. Let's allow the employees of the enterprise to visit it at any time (we are talking exclusively about the employees of the enterprise and the external perimeter). Then the employee, knowing that he will always be able to get into his enterprise, will not look for alternative ways to enter. And the data on all his movements will be registered by the access control and management system. This means that we will know by name all the employees visiting the enterprise after hours, with the exact time of crossing the checkpoint. Such statistics significantly help the enterprise security service to identify violators of the regime and uncover complex schemes of violations in the production process aimed at the personal enrichment of individuals at the expense of the enterprise. In my practice, there are many such examples.
Will such a decision harm the security rules of the enterprise? Let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of this solution:
(-) any employee of the enterprise can enter the territory at any time;
(+) we will know all such employees by name;
(-) the efficiency of blocking unauthorized, or rather untimely, entry of an employee is lost. The solution allows identifying the intruder after the fact of entry has already occurred, while it is quite difficult to detect the intruder on the territory. For such detection, it is necessary to divert the forces and means of the enterprise's security service;
(+) the solution allows you to accumulate statistics on the employee's passages when they are under the surveillance of the security service, and to identify and analyze patterns. A simple employee's entry may hide a complex scheme to deceive the owner and the security service. The solution allows for covert surveillance and collection of statistical data that allows you to identify patterns;
(-) the security service cannot prevent point (non-systemic) entry that may pose a threat to the enterprise's operability. For example, sabotage by an employee;
(+) the specified employee can perform similar actions during his/her work shift. Spot intrusions by employees pose a much smaller threat than similar actions by outsiders. In our case, the security guards at the checkpoint do not have the opportunity to decide to let someone past the accounting system, which means that traces of the intruder will remain. In addition, reducing the standard algorithms of actions during the work of the security guards improves the quality of compliance with the specified algorithms and thereby increases the efficiency of work;
(+) a situation is not created when, in case of unplanned changes in work schedules, an accumulation of employees at the checkpoints with a ban on passage is possible. Such situations greatly distract the security personnel from performing the standard algorithm and can provoke unauthorized entry into the territory by outsiders;
(+) a situation does not arise when the movements of the enterprise employees are not recorded and therefore cannot be processed by the automated system for accounting of working hours.
I will not draw conclusions based on the stated advantages and disadvantages of the solution. Let everyone do it independently, taking into account the real situation at a specific facility.