It honestly makes you wonder how they manage it. I don’t doubt that payroll/timecard/time clock systems are brutally stuffed with business logic, codifications of assorted regulations, and other things that would make duplicating the stuff painful; but that doesn’t explain why the frontend program has to be so atrocious and brittle.
Sort of the same thing that baffles me about tax software: having someone munge a chunk of the tax code into formulas and decision trees, and even offer to stick up for the correctness of their conversion, is deeply nontrivial. The program that walks you through the decision trees and does some fairly basic math, though, is neither as challenging nor in need of constant updates; so it is always a bit surprising when it is so poor. Never a good sign when “Y’know, this would be better as one of those organically developed spreadsheet-o-dooms that always crop up in offices…” to suggest that software has gone a bit off the rails.
In any case, perhaps this would be better moved to the euthenasia pod thread…
