How a plant's workforce actually runs
A typical plant runs two or three shifts, mixes permanent employees with contract labour from more than one vendor, and records attendance at a biometric terminal at the gate. Payroll depends on all three being right, and the gaps between them are where money goes missing.
- Permanent staff, trainees, contract labour and daily wage workers, each on different policies
- Rotating shifts, including night shifts that end the next morning
- Overtime driven by the production schedule rather than a plan
- Gate attendance at one or more terminals, sometimes from different brands
- A canteen whose bill depends on how many people actually worked
Where the money leaks, and what changes
| Leak | What Ankastra does about it |
|---|---|
| Proxy punching with a lent card or shared PIN | Face recognition, with the captured frame stored on every punch |
| Overtime copied from a register | Overtime measured from punches, with alerts when it breaches your limit |
| Contractor bills paid on declared headcount | Billing reconciled against verified gate attendance |
| Canteen billed on an estimate | Meal counts tied to actual attendance (Growth) |
| Missed punches fixed over WhatsApp | Regularisation that requires a reason and keeps an audit trail |
| Payroll re-keyed from attendance | Statutory payroll from signed-off attendance (Pro) |
Compliance during the Labour Codes transition
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 consolidates the Factories Act, 1948 and the Contract Labour Act, 1970, among other laws, and the four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025. States are notifying their own rules on different dates, so the registers and returns you file can depend on where the plant is.
What does not change is where an inspection starts: your attendance and wage records. Ankastra keeps the muster roll as attendance is recorded, with a user, a timestamp and a reason on every edit.
Worked scenarios
These are modelled scenarios rather than named customer stories, and each one publishes its assumptions and arithmetic so you can rerun it with your own numbers:
What it costs
Face recognition attendance, shifts and leave are in every plan, from ₹2,999 a month for 50 employees. Device integration, multi-location roll-ups and canteen and visitor modules are in Growth, from ₹5,999. Statutory payroll is in Pro, from ₹9,999. Annual billing takes 15% off, and GST is charged on top. The pricing calculator works out your headcount.
Questions people ask
Can Ankastra handle three-shift and 12 hour shift patterns?
Yes. Day, night, rotating and split shifts are supported, including shifts that cross midnight, and shift rules are set by department.
We have different terminal brands at different gates. Is that a problem?
No. ESSL, ZKTeco, Matrix COSEC, Hikvision and Suprema devices can run together and feed one attendance record.
Can we run several plants from one account?
Yes. Each plant is a unit with its own reporting, and multi-location roll-ups across plants are included from Growth.