Abstract: A service control and management systems, and more specifically a system to manage hourly working services, that has service beneficiaries' and/or service providers' smart cards, smart card readers at service sites, and a central server capable of communicating with the readers. In the system each reader has means for initializing a service time count after initialization of the transaction until a service ending time. Also, there are means for recording, periodically on a non-volatile memory, information relating to the performance of the services, and means for transmitting the information from the reader to the central server.