Cypher HR
Payroll, attendance, and a biometric terminal that does as it is told.
Cypher Store is the only true source for this app. Every official build of Cypher HR comes from here. A copy from anywhere else — another site, a mirror, an APK forum — was not published by Kencypher, and nothing about what is inside it is guaranteed.
On Linux, extract the archive and run the binary inside it. No installation and no root needed.
What Cypher HR is
Cypher HR runs a real payroll: an employee register, attendance pulled straight from a ZKTeco biometric terminal, leave tracking, a payroll engine and printable reports. It ships its own Python runtime and creates its PostgreSQL database during setup, so there is nothing to assemble afterwards. It comes as two separate installers, and they are not interchangeable: the server that HR runs, and a small client that staff install on their own machines.
Cypher HR features
What it actually does.
Employee register
The full staff record, with bulk import from a CSV template so you are not typing a hundred people in by hand.
ZKTeco attendance
Reads punch records straight off the biometric terminal on your network.
Leave tracking
Leave records that feed into the payroll run instead of living in a separate spreadsheet.
Payroll engine
Turns attendance and leave into a payroll run you can check before you commit it.
Reports
Printable attendance and payroll reports for the people who keep asking for them.
Guided setup
The installer creates the database, writes the configuration, and can restore a previous backup as part of setup.
How to use Cypher HR
From a fresh install to the thing working.
1 Which of the two do I need?
- Cypher HR (the .zip) is the server. One install, on the machine HR actually works from. It holds the database, the payroll engine and the link to the attendance terminal.
- Employee client (the .exe) is for everyone else. Staff install it on their own machine to clock in and out and to see their own attendance and leave.
- These are two separate programs. The client is not a smaller version of the server, and installing it will not give you the HR application.
- Setting up for the first time? Start with the server: the client has nothing to connect to until it exists.
2 Before you start: PostgreSQL
- Only the server needs this. The employee client does not touch a database.
- Cypher HR needs a PostgreSQL server it can reach. It does not have to be on the same machine.
- The bundle includes a DB instructions PDF covering how to get one running.
- Have the host, port, database name, username and password ready before you run setup.
3 Install the server
- Extract the whole .zip into one folder. setup.exe, data1.bin and data2.bin must stay together, because the installer reads its payload from the two .bin files sitting beside it.
- Allow about 151 MB of free disk space. The download is 61 MB; it unpacks to roughly two and a half times that.
- Run setup.exe from that folder. It asks for administrator rights because it installs into Program Files.
- Choose a fresh start, or restore from an earlier backup.
- Enter the PostgreSQL connection details. There is a test button on that page, and it is worth using before you continue.
- Setup unpacks the app, writes its configuration and creates the database. If you chose a backup it loads that too, so the app opens with your data already in place.
4 Install the employee client
- Run the Employee installer on each staff machine. Nothing to extract, no database to configure.
- Point it at the address of the server install.
- Staff sign in there to clock in and out, and to check their own attendance and leave.
5 Connect the attendance terminal
- This is done on the server only.
- Put the ZKTeco terminal on the same network as the machine running Cypher HR.
- Enter its address in the attendance settings inside the app.
- Enrol people on the terminal itself, then copy each machine code into the matching employee profile. That code is what joins a punch to a person.
- The link is read-only: Cypher HR pulls punches and the enrolled-user list, and never writes to the device.
6 Add your staff
- Use the bundled CSV template for bulk import rather than adding people one at a time.
- Fill it in, then import it from the employee screen.
- A machine code is optional. Leave it empty for remote staff and anyone who clocks in through the portal instead.
- Check the register looks right, then run attendance and payroll from the same data.
Built with
Licence
Made by Kencypher. Not open source.
Cypher HR was written by Kencypher. The source is not published and is not licensed for reuse. You have permission to run it — that is the whole of it.
You may
- Run it on as many of your own machines as you like
- Use it for anything, including commercial work
- Pass an unmodified copy to a friend, free
You may not, without asking
- Sell it or charge for access
- Re-upload or mirror it anywhere
- Rebrand it or publish it as your own
- Decompile it or lift its assets
This is enforced. Re-uploading it, repackaging it, stripping the author's name off it or passing it off as your own is copyright infringement — protected without registration under the Berne Convention — and is pursued with DMCA takedowns to the host, CDN, app store and search engine, platform reports for impersonation, and legal proceedings where the infringement is commercial, repeated, or involves falsely claiming authorship.
Asking first is free, and the answer is usually yes — kencypher56@gmail.com. The only official source is this store; a copy from anywhere else is not one Kencypher published.
Good to know
- Two separate installers. The Cypher HR bundle is the server, installed once on the machine HR works from. The Employee client is a different program that staff install on their own machines and point at that server.
- The server arrives as a .zip because the installer travels with its payload: setup.exe reads data1.bin and data2.bin from beside it. Extract the whole archive into one folder and run setup.exe from there.
- The Employee client carries no application, no runtime and no password: it installs a launcher that opens the console HR is already running. That is the point of it — every screen is behind a role check on the server, so the one thing that must never leave the HR machine is the database password, and this does not contain it.
- Both halves ship for Windows and Linux, and they are four separate downloads: server and client, each in two flavours. Install the server once; install the client on every desk.
- The server updates itself from Company Policy › Updates once an administrator says so, and keeps the settings, staff, attendance and payroll. The client never needs updating: its screens come from the server.
- There is no Android build of Cypher HR, because the point of it is the desktop workflow and the database behind it.
- The Linux package carries its own Node runtime and all of its dependencies, so nothing needs installing first and nothing is downloaded: extract it, run install.sh to enter your database details, and start it. PostgreSQL is the only thing it asks you to have.
- One part of Linux cannot be prebuilt: the reader for the biometric terminal is a Python service whose dependencies are compiled per distribution. install.sh builds it in a virtualenv beside the app when python3 is available, and simply tells you it is skipping it when it is not — HR, payroll, leave and the reports do not go through it.
- The ZKTeco connection is read-only by design: people are enrolled on the terminal by hand, and the app only ever reads from it.
- A machine code is optional on an employee record, so remote staff and anyone the company does not fingerprint can still be paid.