> Time and attendance: Farmhouse Biscuits, a family owned and operated business now in its fourth generation, began 50 years ago in a modest farmhouse kitchen in Lancashire. Since those early days, the company has grown to become one of the country’s largest premier biscuit manufacturers, specialising in
high quality traditional biscuits which are sold around the world.
Its current 200,000 square foot production site at Brook Street, Nelson, Lancashire employs up to 300 people producing its own branded product ranges, plus products under private label.
The Requirement:
Farmhouse Biscuits has been a long standing Stanley Security customer, using its Astrow Time & Attendance solution and STANLEY NT500 access control system. As its site in Nelson, Lancashire has continued to expand, Farmhouse Biscuits required additional readers to cope with larger premises and growing workforce. This provided the company with an opportunity to upgrade to the latest Astrow software.
On the market for over 20 years, Astrow is a modular system for full management of staff attendance including overtime, flexi-time, holiday and absence tracking. Whenever an employee enters or leaves the site, Astrow’s terminals communicate this information via the company’s network and can also provide additional information to the employee. Astrow has an integrated Team Manager to allow HR personnel to manage clocking, absences, day programs, flexi-time balances and much more as well as being able to enter data such as missing clocking or absences.
Astrow works with a range of different terminals and reader, including card readers, proximity based fob readers and, with the latest version, biometric terminals. Five iT300 Proximity Terminals are now fitted across the Farmhouse Biscuit site.
The Solution
Upgrading to the latest version of Astrow has allowed Farmhouse Biscuits to take advantage of a wide range of additional features including the ability to export the Payroll, plus the company now has the benefit of using a web browser based solution. This makes installation quicker and easier with less disruption whilst requiring less resources on Farmhouse Biscuits’ computers. Upgrades are near seamless because only the server needs to be upgraded and all the end-users will automatically receive the latest version.
Philip Acheson-Gray, IT Manager at Farmhouse Biscuits, is pleased with the new version of Astrow:
“The system was installed quickly and on time, it is user friendly and though we are still learning I am sure we will keep finding additional things we can utilise to our benefit. The additional functions in the system give us more information/flexibility".
