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ZipNet |
  
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ZipNet |
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Staff clock in and clock out at the ZipNet terminal, as seen above, using a card labelled with a bar code. These bar codes can be printed in the form of labels via the 'Employee Barcode' report in e-PayDay®. The terminal is the size of a power point and takes only two screws to mount. Locate it near a power point for power. From the terminal runs a cable with serial port connections (both ends) which interfaces with a device known as the Intelligent RS485 Adaptor (37mm x 128mm x 126mm). A further cable runs from the parallel port on the back of the RS485 to the serial port on a computer designated to be used to perform the processing of the data from the ZipNet terminal. The cable running from the terminal to the RS485 can be up to 255 metres long. The RS485 is usually situated very near to the computer.
Staff swipe their cards throughout the day and this "data" is kept in memory in the terminal until downloaded using e-PayDay® (hence the necessity of the terminal being connected to a computer). The data downloaded from the terminal is kept in a text file called 'Virtural.txt'.
Downloading Data from ZipNet
Once the last employee has clocked out on the day that the current pay period ends, and before the first employee clocks in at the start of the next pay period, the times from the terminal need to be downloaded for processing.
Click the 'Download ZipNet Terminal' button, located in the e-PayDay® screen.
This will bring up the screen below
"Polling" refers to the process of a regular download of data from the terminal. By clicking on the down arrow you will see that the options include
'Every 10 minutes'
'Every 20 minutes'
'Every 30 minutes'
'Hourly'
'4 Hourly'
'Daily'
or alternatively you could elect for 'No polling' at all.
"Select COM port" refers to multiple ZipNet terminals connected to the one computer, a feature coming soon for e-PayDay®.
To start the download of information from the terminal, click on the 'Download Now / Start Polling' button. The LED display on the terminal will cease and it will be not available for swiping cards for a few seconds during this process. The download is complete when the terminal produces a "beep" and the message screen states the date and time download was finished.
Every time data is downloaded from the terminal a text file is created in the parent folder of the directory of where e-PayDay® is installed. The name of the file is "Virtural.txt". Once downloading is completed, click the 'Merge Data' button, located in the e-PayDay® screen.
This will have the net effect of deleting the Virtural.txt file and preparing the times for the employees' timecards, which is the next step in the e-PayDay® process.
Note: In the situation where there are multiple zipnet terminals spread across different locations / departments of the business and each location has their terminal connected to a computer with e-PayDay® installed, with the pays being done at a central location (head office), they would download the data from the terminal, thereby producing the Virtural.txt file. This could be then e-mailed to head office where, one by one, each Virtural.txt file would have to be saved into the parent folder of the e-PayDay® directory and the 'Merge Data' button clicked.
The next step in the e-PayDay® process is the respective employees' time cards. See e-Time™