Data Entry Keyers

Job purpose

To read source documents such as cancelled cheques, sales reports and bills and key their contents into the specified data fields or storage media, verifying and correcting the data as it is entered, so that the organisation's records hold a complete and accurate transcription of the documents received.

Skills

• Knowledge of written English — spelling, grammar and the conventions of the documents transcribed — and of office and records procedures, together with practised operation of keyboards, scanners and other data entry devices and of the data fields and coding rules each job uses, with some familiarity with the regulatory requirements attaching to the records. Secondary-level education is the norm, with a large minority having completed some further study, plus up to a year of on-the-job training.
• Deals mainly with colleagues and supervisors — clarifying instructions, querying a source document that cannot be read, and reporting errors that cannot be put right at source. Explains what the data means and how it is held, and may instruct newer keyers. Telephone, e-mail and face-to-face contact are frequent, some of it with people who are discourteous.
• Detects and corrects discrepancies between what has been keyed and what the source document says, by comparing the two or re-entering in verification format, and decides whether an error can be put right directly or must be referred to a supervisor. Resolves garbled or indecipherable material, using cryptographic procedures and equipment where these apply. Problems are well defined and rule-governed.
• Compiles and sorts batches of source documents, selects the materials an assignment needs, and works through them against throughput deadlines under time pressure, with latitude over the sequence of the day's work.
• Seated keying with repetitive hand and finger motion for extended periods, calling for speed together with accuracy, and loading machines with the required input or output media — paper, cards, disks, tape or Braille media.

Responsibilities

• No supervisory responsibility, and errors that cannot be resolved are reported to a supervisor. Works as part of a keying group and may show newer colleagues the established routines.
• Keys data from cancelled cheques, sales reports, bills and similar financial documents, so the figures entered feed the organisation's accounting and transaction records. Holds no budget and exercises no discretion over any amount.
• Ordinary care of a keying workstation, scanners and data entry machines and the media loaded into them, and storage of completed documents. No responsibility for stock or plant.
• Accountable for the accuracy of everything keyed and for the verification checks that confirm it, and maintains logs of activity and completed work. Exactness is the central requirement and an uncorrected error carries forward into the records that depend on it; the content, coding and structure of the data are set by others.

Effort required

• Close attention to detail on work that repeats through the day, holding exactness across long runs of keying and verification while sustaining throughput. The judgement required on any one item is small; the demand is accuracy over volume and to a deadline.
• Repetitive work of limited variety, carried out in proximity to colleagues, with occasional contact with people who are impatient or discourteous. Personal accountability is bounded, decisions of consequence resting with the supervisor.
• Seated at a keying station for most of the working day, with repetitive motion of the hands and wrists and little scope to vary posture. No lifting beyond loading media into machines.

Working conditions

• An indoor, environmentally controlled office, in close proximity to others, where surrounding noise can be distracting. No physical hazards; the demands are the repetitiveness of the task and occasional dealings with discourteous people.
• Most incumbents are on a regular established schedule, though a minority work seasonal or irregular patterns following production demand, and around a quarter work less than a full week. Time pressure is a steady feature, and there is real freedom over the order of work within procedures, formats and quality checks defined by others.