Employee Management System

A full-stack employee management platform with role-based access control (Admin, HR, Manager, Employee), attendance tracking with photo and geolocation, leave workflows, and salary processing.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18, React Router, Axios, React Leaflet
• Backend: Node.js, Express, Mongoose, JWT, bcryptjs
• Database: MongoDB
• Security/Middleware: helmet, cors, express-rate-limit
• Notifications: nodemailer

Core Features

• Authentication and authorization
  • Register and login with JWT
  • Role-based protected UI routes and API access
• Employee management
  • Create, list, update, delete employees
  • Salary payment tracking (lastPaid)
• HR operations
  • View users and managers
  • Assign manager to user
  • Approve/reject leave requests (except HR leave, which Admin must approve)
• Manager operations
  • Team summary and team member listing
  • Salary payments for team
• Attendance
  • Daily check-in/check-out
  • Optional photo + location capture (lat/lng, place name, device type)
  • Work duration calculation and short-hours salary-cut flag
  • Attendance history with map view
  • Clear my history (user) / clear all history (Admin/HR)
• Leave management
  • Submit, edit (pending only), delete (not approved)
  • Duplicate/overlap prevention
  • Yearly paid leave policy with paid/unpaid day split
  • Leave summary report by year

Role Access Summary

• Admin
  • Full access, including /admin, /hr, /manager
  • Can approve HR leave requests
• HR
  • Access to /hr and /manager
  • Can approve non-HR leave requests
• Manager
  • Access to /manager
  • Can process salary payments
• Employee
  • Access to dashboard, attendance, leave request

Project Structure

Employee-Management/
|-- client/                 # React frontend
|   |-- src/
|   |   |-- pages/          # Login, Register, Dashboard, Admin/HR/Manager, Leave
|   |   |-- components/     # ProtectedRoute, Navbar, Attendance components
|   |   |-- context/        # AuthContext
|   |   `-- utils/apiBase.js
|   `-- package.json
|-- server/                 # Express API
|   |-- server.js           # Main server and most route handlers
|   |-- Attendance.js       # Attendance schema
|   |-- LeaveRequest.js     # Leave schema
|   `-- package.json
|-- *.md                    # Existing project notes/fix docs
`-- .gitignore

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• MongoDB connection string
• npm

Setup and Run

1. Backend

cd server
npm install

Create server/.env:

MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
PORT=8000
FRONTEND_ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000

# Optional
JWT_EXPIRE=7d
MIN_DAILY_WORK_HOURS=8
EMAIL_SERVICE=gmail
EMAIL_USER=your_email
EMAIL_PASS=your_app_password

Start backend:

npm start

2. Frontend

cd client
npm install

Optional client/.env:

REACT_APP_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000
REACT_APP_UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY=optional_unsplash_key
REACT_APP_MIN_DAILY_WORK_HOURS=8

Start frontend:

npm start

Default Local URLs

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend: http://localhost:8000

Main API Endpoints

Auth

• POST /api/auth/register
• POST /api/auth/login
• GET /api/auth/profile

Employees

• GET /api/employees
• POST /api/employees (Admin/HR)
• PUT /api/employees/:id (Admin/HR)
• DELETE /api/employees/:id (Admin/HR)
• POST /api/employees/pay/:id (Manager/Admin)

Users and Org

• GET /api/users (Admin/HR)
• GET /api/managers (Admin/HR/Manager)
• POST /api/assign-manager (Admin/HR)
• GET /api/hr/stats (Admin/HR)
• GET /api/manager/team (Manager/Admin/HR)
• GET /api/manager-employees/:managerId (Manager/Admin/HR)

Attendance

• POST /api/attendance/check-in
• POST /api/attendance/check-out
• GET /api/attendance/today
• GET /api/attendance/my
• GET /api/attendance/all (Admin/HR)
• DELETE /api/attendance/my
• DELETE /api/attendance/all (Admin/HR)
• POST /api/attendance/my/clear
• POST /api/attendance/all/clear (Admin/HR)
• GET /api/admin/attendance (Admin)

Leave

• POST /api/leave/request
• PUT /api/leave/request/:id
• DELETE /api/leave/request/:id
• GET /api/leave/my-requests
• DELETE /api/leave/my-requests
• POST /api/leave/my-requests/clear
• GET /api/leave/pending (HR/Admin)
• PUT /api/leave/approve/:id (HR/Admin)
• GET /api/reports/leave-summary?year=YYYY (Admin/HR)
• GET /api/admin/leaves (Admin)

Notes from Current Codebase

• server/server.js is the active backend entrypoint and contains most business logic.
• client/src/components/ProtectedRoute.js enforces frontend route protection.
• API base URL resolution is centralized in client/src/utils/apiBase.js.
• Some folders under client/ (routes/, models/, controllers/, middleware/) appear to be legacy/unused in the current runtime flow.
• Root-level Attendance.js and LeaveRequest.js files are present but empty.
• No automated test suite is currently configured.

Recommended Next Steps

• Add .env.example files for client and server.
• Add API and UI tests (Jest/Vitest + Supertest/Cypress).
• Split server/server.js into modular routes/controllers/services for maintainability.