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How AionHRMS behaves, and what to set up first
The same guide our support team answers from. It is explicit about the defaults that quietly switch a feature off, because those are what cost companies a payroll run.
Written from the operations guide and reviewed by Pravin Kumar Bansal. Last updated 7 October 2026.
Setting the company up, in order
Do these in this order. Several of them silently disable a feature if skipped, and the caution under each step says which.
1. Register the terminal
Admin → Devices → Add device. Enter the serial number and pick the protocol: iClock / ADMS for eSSL and ZKTeco, Realtime for Realtime terminals. Then set the server address on the terminal itself to the one your installer or our team gives you.
Watch out: Register the device first. A scan arriving from an unregistered serial number is rejected and is not held for later.
2. Add employees and connect them to the terminal
Admin → Employees → Add employee. For a new terminal, leave 'Employee code on the device' blank: a code is assigned and the enrolment is pushed to the device. For a terminal already in use with another vendor, type the PIN the person already has on it; nothing is written to the terminal.
Watch out: A scan with a PIN nobody owns is not lost. It appears under Admin → Device users; map it to an employee and every held scan replays into their attendance.
3. Switch on the portal login
On the employee form, 'Allow system login' is off by default. Leave can only be filed by the employee, so a person without a login cannot take leave, claim comp-off, ask for a correction or see a payslip. Add an email address at the same time so approval and rejection notices reach them.
Watch out: Without a login, a day off is recorded as an absence and paid as one; a manual correction can only say present or absent, never leave.
4. Set a reporting manager
Also on the employee form. Attendance correction requests go to the reporting manager; leave can also be decided by HR.
Watch out: With no manager set, correction requests wait in nobody's queue. The dashboard counts them and says 'waiting on a reporting manager'.
5. Set duty time, per employee
Admin → Employees → open the person → Duty time. One shift, for example 09:00 to 18:00, or two. There is no bulk action; it is one person at a time.
Watch out: Until duty time is saved, that person can never be marked late and never incurs a late penalty. The Payroll page flags them in amber.
6. Publish the weekly off and holidays
Admin → Leave → Holidays & week off. Tick the company's weekly off days and add holidays. A department can follow the company or keep its own days; a holiday can apply to the company, one department or one employee, and the scopes add up. An employee's own weekly off is set under their Duty time.
Watch out: This changes how salary is counted (see Payroll). Decide before the first payroll run. The holiday list shows the current year only; next year's holidays work but stay hidden until the year begins.
7. Create the leave types
Admin → Leave → Leave types. Each type has a kind (casual, privilege, sick, loss of pay, comp-off, maternity, paternity, other) that decides the letter on the register and whether the late policy may deduct from it. Use the Departments button to switch a type off for a team or give it a different quota, and set per-employee rules from Employees → (person) → Leave.
Watch out: Set the kind on every type. A register full of 'L' usually means the kinds were never set.
8. Set each person's salary
Admin → Employees → open the person → Salary config. Monthly base salary in whole rupees, the paid-leave allowance (default 4), the effective date, and optionally a separate salary per shift for two-shift employees. Each save adds a new record; the one in force is the latest whose date is on or before the month.
9. Optional: late rules, comp-off
Both are off by default and do nothing until switched on. The pay rule lives under Payroll → Late rules; comp-off under Leave → Comp-off, where you choose a comp-off leave type for the credit to land in and whether a manager must agree.
Every day: what a scan becomes
The employee scans. The system works out the rest from the raw punches, every time a screen is opened.
| Rule | |
|---|---|
| Which day | The IST calendar day of the scan; a punch at 00:10 belongs to the new day |
| In time | The first scan of that shift |
| Out time | The last scan of that shift |
| Duration | Last scan minus first scan, breaks included |
| Late by | First scan minus shift start plus grace; grace is company-wide, 10 minutes by default |
| Early by | Shift end minus last scan; there is no early-out grace |
| Overtime | Time worked beyond the length of the shift, so arriving early earns it too |
- Check-out is not required. One scan makes the day present; out time, duration and overtime stay at zero and the report says 'No out punch'.
- A punch beats everything: someone who scans on a weekly off or holiday is present that day. It does not add pay; comp-off is how a worked closed day is rewarded.
- The employee's own calendar shows the in time; HR sees in, out, late-by and overtime on the reports.
Fixing a wrong day
Punches are never edited or deleted. A correction is a separate mark laid over the day, and removing it restores whatever the machine recorded.
- HR or a manager: Employees → (person) → Payroll tab → Attendance calendar → tap the shift. A reason is required. A day with a mark: tap clears it. A day with no mark: tap adds one, absent if the day already computes as present, otherwise present.
- Any mark forgives that shift's lateness and removes it from the late-penalty count. Marking a punched day absent cancels the late flag; it does not remove the day's pay, because a real punch outranks the mark everywhere payroll looks.
- The employee: My attendance → tap the day → reason. This asks for 'mark me present' on a day that is completely empty. The reporting manager decides it; approving writes the same mark HR's tap would have.
- A forgotten out-punch cannot be raised by the employee; only a fully missing day can.
Leave, short leave, optional holidays, comp-off
Every kind of leave follows the same path: the employee applies in the portal, the balance is held, the reporting manager or HR decides, and on approval the day becomes leave. Whoever decides first closes the request, and a closed request cannot be reopened.
- Ordinary leave is measured in days. Every date in the range that is not the person's weekly off and not a holiday costs a day; a Friday-to-Monday request over a Saturday and Sunday weekly off costs two days. The count is frozen when they apply. Half day costs 0.5 and prints as HP. At most 90 days in one request.
- Short leave is measured in hours: one date plus a time window. It is not an absence and pay does not change; the approved window stops counting as lateness. Arriving after the window is still late by the difference. Rationed by occasions, not hours: two a month means two requests.
- Optional holidays are a leave type with a quota and a published list of dates. The employee picks from the list; dates already applied for or falling on their weekly off are greyed out.
- Comp-off, when switched on, lists the closed days the person actually worked in the last year with a Claim button. HR approves under Leave → Comp-off; the credit lands in the comp-off leave type and is spent like any other leave. A declined claim is permanent.
- Loss of pay is a leave type with pay switched off. It prints as LOP.
- Approving: a manager sees their team's requests in the manager console or the portal's Approvals page; HR sees the whole company under Leave → Requests. The employee is emailed the decision with the note. Nothing chases a pending request: no reminders, no expiry.
Payroll: how the month is counted
Everything turns on working days, and they are counted one of two ways depending on whether the company has published a weekly off or a holiday.
| Mode | Working days | Leave credit |
|---|---|---|
| Allowance mode: no weekly off and no holiday published | Days in the month minus the paid-leave allowance (30 − 4 = 26) | The flat allowance; approved leave changes nothing |
| Calendar mode: a weekly off or a holiday exists | Days in the month minus weekly offs minus holidays (30 − 4 Sundays − 1 = 25) | The employee's actual approved paid leave |
- Units earned = shifts present + leave credit, capped at working days. Rate = monthly salary ÷ (working days × number of shifts). Gross = rate × units. Payable = gross − late deduction, never below zero.
- An absence is not a deduction; it simply fails to earn a unit. Full attendance always pays exactly the configured salary. A mid-month joiner is not pro-rated; the days before joining earn nothing.
- The mode is decided per month. Setting the first weekly off cancels the paid-leave allowance, so decide which model you want before the first payroll run.
- Advances are recorded against the employee with the expense booked at the same time, and netted off the next salary payment recorded, oldest first.
- Running the month: Admin → Payroll, pick the month, check the amber flags (duty time or salary not set), download the CSV, then Pay salary per person. Paying writes the payment, settles the advances and books the expense in one step; a month is paid once per person and the payment is a snapshot that later corrections do not change.
- PF and TDS deductions are optional per company and off by default. When on, the deductions appear on the payroll row and the payslip. Returns are not filed by AionHRMS.
Late rules: two systems, both off by default
Decide which one you want and use only that one. Both need duty time saved for the person and no manual correction on the day; late marks count per shift, and leftovers do not carry forward.
- The pay rule (Payroll → Late rules) is automatic: late marks ÷ threshold, rounded down, becomes penalty units; each unit is a fixed fine or a fraction of one shift's pay, deducted in payroll.
- The late policy (Admin → Late policy) is run by a person: pick a month, Preview what each person's lateness would cost, then Record. Its strength is deducting leave instead of money: after N lates, half a day of casual or privilege leave. Sick leave can never be chosen.
Reports, registers and the status letters
Admin → Reports holds seven reports, each on screen and as CSV or Excel; Admin → Registers produces Form 26 and Form 21 as PDF.
| Report | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Daily attendance register | One row per employee for one date: in, out, late by, early by, duration, overtime |
| Monthly and weekly detailed attendance | Day by day, one employee or the whole company |
| Monthly summary | One row per employee: P, A, WO, HO, CL, PL, SL, LOP, late, overtime, pay days |
| Late arrivals and early departures | One row per offending shift |
| Absentees and continuous absence | Absent spells; three or more days flagged as continuous |
| Device punch log | The raw scans exactly as the terminal sent them |
- Scheduled reports: create one on the Scheduled tab, add up to ten email addresses, and switch it on. Daily sends yesterday, weekly the last seven days, monthly the previous month. Schedules are created switched off.
- Status letters: P present, A absent, WO weekly off, HO holiday, HP half day, CL casual, PL privilege, SL sick, LOP loss of pay, L other paid leave. The letter comes from the leave type's kind, never its name.
- Registers: Form 26 (muster roll) and Form 21 (annual return) under the Delhi Factories Rules. Establishment details are filled once; figures no attendance system can know, such as accidents or strike days, are typed per return.
What it does not do
Real, current behaviours. Knowing them before rollout is cheaper than finding them at month end.
- Leave cannot be entered by HR on an employee's behalf. Only the employee files it, from the portal.
- Opening leave balances cannot be set, and quotas are not pro-rated by joining date.
- An approved leave cannot be reversed by anyone; a declined comp-off claim cannot be re-decided.
- There is no self check-in outside geofenced mobile punching at enabled locations; the terminal is the source of attendance.
- Statutory returns (PF, ESI, TDS) are not filed. Overtime minutes are recorded; there is no overtime multiplier in the salary calculation.
- Registers exist for one jurisdiction, the Delhi Factories Rules.
A month, start to finish
Who does what, and when.
| When | Who | What |
|---|---|---|
| Once | Admin | Device, employees, logins on, managers, duty time, weekly off, holidays, leave types, salaries |
| Daily | Employee | Scan in, scan out |
| As needed | Employee | Apply for leave, short leave or an optional holiday; claim comp-off; ask for a correction |
| As needed | Manager | Approve leave and corrections for their team |
| As needed | Admin | Approve leave and comp-off; correct attendance |
| Month end | Admin | Check the daily register and absentees; fix wrong days; run the late policy if used |
| Month end | Admin | Payroll: review, CSV, Pay salary per person |
| Month end | Employee | My payslip |
| As required | Admin | Registers: Form 26, Form 21 |
Something not covered?
Write to info@aiondata.io or WhatsApp +91 87439 10689 with your company name and the screen you are on. See also the product tour, the offline-terminal guide and what shipped recently.