Some plants keep attendance on the clocks at the door and capture job labor at the workstation. This piece looks at that two-clock model on UKG Ready: scan-only capture for gloved operators, work orders validated against the ERP, and how CloudApper adds that layer using the PCs and scanners already on the line.
Table of Contents
On an engineered-to-order production line, two different questions get asked about every operator’s day. Payroll asks when the person arrived, took a break and left. Finance and manufacturing engineering ask which work order and which operation sequence each hour belonged to. Many plants answer both with one clock. Some deliberately split them: attendance stays on the clocks at the plant door, and job labor is captured at the workstation. Barcode labor tracking on UKG Ready fits the second model well, and it is where CloudApper adds a station-level capture layer on top of UKG.
The example here is the industrial automation division of a Quebec manufacturing group, with roughly 90 production stations, each already equipped with a PC or laptop and a USB barcode scanner. The group chose UKG Ready WFM for labor by work order, timesheet approval and production cost reporting. Its payroll system and entrance clocks already handle attendance, and the division’s digital team set that boundary in writing: “Pas de clock pour le début du quart de travail ni pour la fin du quart de travail. Même chose pour les pauses et les repas. Ces options ne seront disponibles que sur les horodateurs […] qui seront à l’entrée des usines” (no clock-in at the stations for the start or end of the shift, breaks or meals; those stay on the time clocks at the plant entrances).
Why Two Clocks Is a Design Choice, Not a Compromise
Splitting attendance from job labor keeps payroll punches exactly where they already are and lets the workforce management layer focus on one thing: which job every hour went to. The trade-off is that the station capture has to be fast enough that operators actually use it. Operators on this kind of floor wear gloves, move between stations and already scan a badge and a job barcode in their production system. Typing badge numbers or clicking through screens will not happen.
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“L’Interface doit avoir le moins de clique possible”
Digital Product Owner, Quebec industrial automation manufacturer (translation: the interface must have as few clicks as possible)
Dedicated clocks at 90 stations would meet the need on paper but are hard to justify on cost, a familiar calculation for anyone weighing time capture without buying terminals.
The Hierarchy Has to Come From the ERP
The second requirement is about data integrity. Every unit of work is tracked against an ERP work order and its operation sequence, and labor should only ever be charged to combinations that exist. The team asked for a parent-child structure for exactly that reason.
hrPad
Employee Self-Service Kiosk
Modernize UKG with an AI tablet built for frontline employees.
“Valider si nous pouvons utiliser les listes afin de nous permettre de représenter une hiérarchie dont le work order est un parent et l’opsq (séquence d’opération du wo) son enfant. Ceci est pour éviter de saisir de la donnée qui n’existe pas dans notre ERP”
Digital Product Owner (translation: represent a hierarchy with the work order as parent and the operation sequence as its child, to avoid entering data that does not exist in our ERP)
That means work orders and operations must exist in UKG Ready as cost centers before anyone scans them. For the controller, it also means the labor record that feeds production cost reports can be reconciled against ERP actuals line by line. Plants that already push production events from an MES into UKG will recognize the same principle: the system that owns the work defines what labor can be charged to.
How CloudApper Approaches Scan-Only Capture on UKG Ready
CloudApper’s approach runs CloudApper hrPad for UKG as station software on the PCs and laptops already on the line. An operator scans a badge and sees the task in progress with its start time, then scans a work order and operation sequence, or an indirect task code such as cleanup, which needs no sequence. Each scan becomes a time-stamped transfer posted to UKG Ready through its API against a parent-child cost center that is validated before it is accepted. There are no shift, break or meal punches at the station.
hrPad
Employee Self-Service Kiosk
Extend UKG with AI-powered HR on iPad, Android, and Windows.
CloudApper iPaaS for UKG syncs ERP work orders and operations into UKG Ready on a schedule, so the cost centers exist before the floor needs them. Supervisors approve timesheets in UKG Ready individually or in batches, finance runs production cost reports by work order, and the interface works in French and English. It is the same idea as job costing and cost center capture with hrPad, narrowed to the fewest possible actions.
“Être en mesure de voir un exemple concret du flux de transactions qui sera effectué par nos équipiers de plancher à partir des écrans des différentes stations”
Digital Product Owner, Quebec industrial automation manufacturer (translation: to see a concrete example of the transaction flow our floor team members will perform from the screens at the different stations)
The Takeaway for Manufacturers on UKG Ready
For plants that keep attendance at the door, the station capture layer has one job: put every hour on a real work order with almost no effort from the operator. CloudApper builds that layer on top of UKG Ready, using hardware already on the line and a hierarchy that comes from the ERP, so production cost reporting starts from labor data the controller can trust.
hrPad
Employee Self-Service Kiosk
Transform shared tablets into intelligent UKG HR kiosks.
If your production labor still reaches cost reports through manual entry or end-of-shift paperwork, talk to CloudApper about scan-only work-order tracking on UKG Ready.
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