WORKPLACE

Time Saver: The economy may have been in the tank last year, but a small Tustin software company says it came through relatively unscathed.

The company is called AdvanceWare Inc. and makes computer programs that keep track of employees’ comp time, sick days and all the other things that keep company personnel offices hopping.

What the program does, the company says, is save personnel people from having to write up reports by hand or having to plow through file cabinets to get the answer to a question.

The company says it has gone from no sales when it started in 1987 to just under $1 million last year.

Some of its customers in California are Qantas Airways Ltd., Mazda Motor of America, Bechtel Petroleum, Homestake Mining Co. and Acapulco Restaurants Inc.

The company says its software, called AdvanceWare HRDirector, has a new wrinkle: Line managers and supervisors can use the system to look up information on employees--but they can only access the information they are allowed to see under company personnel policy.

That can also reduce the workload for the company’s personnel department, AdvanceWare says.

The company, which also does consulting, says it expects the HRDirector software to help boost its sales this year by as much as half.