About Sourdough
Based in Norfolk, The Sourdough Company is a well-respected and trusted wholesale Bakery Supplier of Artisan Handmade Bread and Pastry servicing customers throughout the UK.
No corners are cut and everything is made from scratch by their passionate bakers, you won’t find any packet mixes hiding in their stores! The Sourdoughs are made from a special fermented ‘starter’ which is fed daily flour and water in their special fermentation tanks. These tanks are temperature controlled to ensure the quality of the starter is perfect for every mix. The oldest starter has been living for over 20 years. Each Sourdough bread can take up to 48 hours to produce. Our buns and rolls don’t take quite as long but are still produced the traditional way, with Sponges and Bigas, giving them authenticity and great flavour.

The Problem
- Collecting Time records from an old Access Door
- Separate HR system for Holiday Accrual
- Manual entry for Xero Payroll Weekly
Like many growing businesses, Sourdough had put together a process using various technologies and products. While functional to some extent, it proved to be laborious, prone to errors, and in need of streamlining.
For Time and Attendance tracking, office administrators manually collected data from an outdated fob-based Access control system. They then spent considerable time each week generating reports to determine employees’ clock-in and clock-out times, constructing weekly timesheets from this data. Next, they manually cross-checked these timesheets against contracted hours and planned shifts to identify discrepancies such as lateness, overtime, or absence. Finally, they manually inputted this information into their payroll software, Xero.
Managing holiday, sick leave, and absence required a separate HR product, necessitating manual calculations in Excel to ascertain employees’ accrued holiday entitlement, especially for those on flexible hour contracts.
The cumbersome process of preparing a weekly pay run into Xero underscored the urgent need for simplification and acceleration. Sourdough aimed to free up the HR and office team’s time, allowing them to focus on more value-adding tasks for the overall benefit of the business.
The Solution
Chronicle Online – Workforce Management solution
- Chronicle Time and Attendance Module
- Chronicle Self-Servicing Module
- Chronicle Payroll Module
- Chronicle HR Module
- Chronicle Visitor Module
- Chronicle Employee App
- Chronicle Managers App
- 200 x Employees
- 8 x Chronicle Online Users
- 1 Site
- 2 x GT8 Facial Recognition Clocking Terminals with Wi-Fi Modules
Chronicle Online, an integrated cloud-based solution encompassing Time, HR, Access, Scheduling, and Payroll, provided seamless access for all 200 Sourdough employees and eight users to a unified platform for viewing diverse data.
Chronicle Time and Scheduling efficiently manages rosters and work hours, featuring embedded logic for applying rounding rules and detecting lateness.
With Chronicle HR and Chronicle Self Servicing, employees enjoy a user-friendly interface to access their roster, timesheets, and accrued holiday balance from any device, whether laptop, desktop, or smartphone app. This streamlined system enables employees to request annual leave conveniently, eliminating the need for paper processes.
The Chronicle GT8 terminals employ facial recognition technology to clock and record employees’ start and end times accurately. Infrastructure-wise, Chronicle Online’s cloud-based nature eliminates the need for servers or time-consuming software installations on clients’ devices. Additionally, the Chronicle GT8 clocking terminals are equipped with WIFI modules, eliminating the expense of installing network points throughout the site and simplifying the installation process significantly.

Moreover, the Chronicle Visitor Module facilitates the transition from paper-based sign-in/out books to a digital system for managing visitors, staff, and contractors effectively at Sourdough.
Infrastructure
Chronicle Online operates on a cloud-based platform, eliminating the need for on-premises servers and avoiding the time-consuming installation of software on client devices.
Additionally, our Chronicle GT8 clocking terminals are equipped with WIFI modules, eliminating the need for installing network points throughout the site. This simplifies the installation process significantly and reduces associated costs.
Chronicle Visitor Module
This helped Sourdough replace their paper-based signing-in and out book used by visitors, staff and contractors.

“One of the real strengths of the Chronicle Online platform is the amount of modules we provide. The Sourdough implementation is a great example of the breadth of our offering.” Alex Bain – Sales Executive
Chronicle Payroll
Initially, the plan was to use Chronicles Xero API to move hours into the existing Xero payroll solution, but during the course of the project, it was decided to just implement the Chronicle Online Payroll solution instead and move away from Xero. Sourdough liked the flexibility both options provided pre purchase.
Chronicle Cloud-Based HMRC Recognized Payroll solution that works stand alone or can have Employee Data, Pay periods and Worked Hours sent across in a click of a button.

Conclusion
The Sourdough company, by utilising the Chronicle Workforce Management solution, have successfully streamlined their Time and Attendance, HR, Payroll and Visitor management process.
“Chronicle have been great. From the initial sales process to implementation and training, the team on hand has been able to answer all my questions and help us in going live as quickly and simply as possible.” Freya Penn Finance Assistant
About Chronicle Computing
Chronicle Computing was established to provide small, medium, and large companies with the most functional, robust and affordable Cloud-Based Workforce Management System in the UK. Specialising in Time and Attendance, Access Control, HR and Scheduling Solutions. Chronicle Computing has extensive experience in managing, implementing, configuring, installing and training users on WFM systems.
Mission Statement – ‘To provide an affordable, simple and robust web-based workforce management system that users can prepare a payroll run with and extract management information, critical to a successful organisation.’
Contact Details
Chronicle Computing Ltd
Unit 52
Shrivenham 100 Business Park
Majors Road
Watchfield
SN6 8TY
Telephone: 07401578527
Freephone: 0800 1073284