Platform that smokes out ghost workers in your payroll

Paul Kimani first worked as an electrical engineer for a Nairobi-based company when he discovered that the number of casual workers had been inflated, making the project manager illegally paid more.

“Some casual workers would turn up for a one-day task but their names remained on the wage sheet forwarded to the project owners for release of payments,” Mr Kimani said.

“Overtime allowances were also exaggerated which made the project very costly.”

The University of Nairobi (UON) electrical and electronic engineering graduate decided to leave the job to concentrate on IT consultancy where he formed AfriSoft Company that to-date sets up office IT networks as well as customises IT programmes for individual companies.

Mr Kamau joined hands with his college mate, Jackson Kung’u , and political scientist Margaret Wangu to enhance formulation of management solutions for small and medium enterprises, handling salaries, human resource among other solutions.

However, the business was anything but a bed of roses. The competition, particularly from established global players, was fierce.

“Goggle, Salesforce, oracle,IBM among others are well established in accounting, HR and general office management solutions and this left us with little choice but to rethink a Kenyan solution for Kenya problems. This is how we decided to start automating weekly wage payments and worker tracking to drive productivity,” he recalls.

His breakthrough came when one of his customers was robbed of cash money meant for weekly wages at gunpoint.

The trio formulated a new web-based programme, Tozzaplus, an automated HR cum payments platform that linked the main office via a geo-fencing system available on a mobile biometric scanner.

“Workers log in, in the morning and log out in the evening by placing their thumb on a scanner. This record time of arrival with a short message sent to the worker’s mobile phone confirming the same as well as indicating the day’s pay,” said Mr Kimani.

The platform launched last year was piloted among their customers who remotely monitored goings-on at the respective project sites from their head offices.

The innovators spent Sh2.5 million to spruce up the platform with protective safeguards inbuilt to secure company data.

Though it was only rolled out last year, the platform is already receiving accolades. It was declared the 2018 most optimistic start-up at IT incubation centre, Nailab where it launched a crowdfunding round that locally raised Sh500,000 in just three weeks. The bright prospects of the tech start-up has seen it attract a Norwegian angel investor, to inject Sh5 million, promising to add his investment next year if the company achieves set targets of growth.

The workforce management platform earned Sh200,000 in its first month of commercial operation last year where it served three companies. The earnings have since risen to Sh2.4 million in the past six months, serving 22 companies.

Tozzaplus handles employee documents, leave management, processes loans, advances, petty cash, salaries as well as allowances and commissions which are directly sent to a worker’s M-Pesa money account.

“We have eliminated the need for huge withdrawals of cash that is transported to construction sites for payments. All one needs is to load their payment platform and instruct us to process payments for them,” he says.

The platform has eradicated ghost workers as every worker has to log on with project supervisors required to be on site at all times to oversee all processes leading to higher productivity.

Mr Kimani said the platform was being scaled up to enable it handle large number of employees where each employer had private log in rights to their portal. Supervisors and workers will also be granted separate rights.

“You only see what concerns you and not your colleague’s details,” he says.

Mr Kimani is of the opinion that Kenya can eradicate fraud in the county and national governments by ensuring that all workers are ‘time-tracked’ when they log in and out with data being processed real-time.

“Only verified payments will be paid to a verified recipient,” he says.

The platform has attracted big customers. It currently serves a Bungoma-based factory that makes briquettes from sugar wastes. The factory supplies primary schools with the smoke-free fuel.

The platform also serves a construction company’s project in Nairobi, Nanyuki, Thika and Nyeri as well as a fast moving consumer goods company for its sales agents. A microfinance company with offices in four counties is also a Tozzaplus customer

The start-up is currently carrying out feasibility studies in Uganda and Rwanda where it has plans to launch operations later in the year.