Features of Time and Attendance Systems

A good time and attendance system can eliminate costly payroll mistakes by ensuring that employees clock in on time and work the hours they are supposed to. They can also help businesses comply with labor laws.

The best ones allow employees to clock in and out using PINs, magnetic card readers, or biometric scanners. They can also track vacation and personal time off requests, manage shifts and monitor overtime.

Multiple Methods of Recording Attendance

A vital feature of a good time and attendance system is multiple methods of recording an employee’s work time. It will ensure that employees are paid accurately for their work hours and help prevent mistakes in overtime payments or inaccurate payroll calculations.

One method of recording attendance is by using a time clock card. Each worker is allotted a card with their unique identification number and other pertinent details. The card is then inserted into a time clock when the worker arrives at the company establishment. The time clock will record the date and time that the worker was present at the company. Workers can also manually mark their own time.

Unlike the manual method of marking attendance, time and attendance tracking software can automatically track employees’ work hours. This software can save the organization a lot of monetary assets and enhance the firm’s overall productivity.

A top feature of a good time and attendance tool is its ability to integrate with other human resources tools, like talent management systems and enterprise resource planning software. It enables the consolidation of all HR data into a single spot, which makes it simpler for managers to make choices on workforce management. Moreover, business intelligence features in these tools allow companies to analyze their employee time data and identify patterns of attendance-related behavior.

Biometrics

Many businesses still rely on old-school punch cards, requiring employees to swipe or insert their card at a time clock to record their hours. These systems can be easy to hack, leading to inaccurate time tracking and over- or underpaying employees. By using a biometric system, you can eliminate these issues and save your business money.

With biometrics, you can use physical or behavioral characteristics to identify an employee or a guest. These characteristics are innate, meaning they cannot be guessed or stolen. A biometrics system can also verify a person in less time than other identifying systems.

Moreover, biometrics can be used for security purposes, reducing the need for passwords or extra access cards to enter secure spaces. Biometrics verification can be done with a fingerprint scan, facial recognition, or an iris scanner and is fast, accurate, and user-friendly. Biometrics can also reduce time theft by eliminating buddy punching, a common practice when coworkers punch in and out for one another.

Attendance monitoring may assist your company in staying in compliance with labor rules and federal legislation and saving money and time. Additionally, it helps facilitate data tracking for HR and payroll departments, reducing mistakes and expensive lawsuits. Cutting-edge time and attendance tracking solutions can also provide controls to restrict which users can view or edit specific data.

Geo-Tracking

Whether you are managing employees in your own company or working with a professional employer organization (PEO), accurate time tracking is essential to future forecasting for sales, ROI, employee benefits, expansion, and other decisions that need to be made. It is also critical to help ensure compliance with labor laws and reduce the chances of payroll errors.

Using mobile geo-tracking technology in combination with your existing performance management and payroll systems helps you gain more insight into employee productivity and time utilization. It enables you to identify areas where improvement can be made. For example, if employees spend excessive amounts of time in client offices or at home, you can make changes that may increase their productivity on the job.

Following a device’s position in real-time, even offline, is another advantage of this technology. It benefits field workers like police officers, security guards, ambulance drivers, and firefighters, who must always be on call to respond to emergencies. It allows these workers to respond more effectively to urgent calls by sharing their real-time locations with their crew members and dispatchers.

However, being transparent with employees about how you plan to use their data before implementing a geo-tracking solution is essential. It will ensure that employees feel comfortable with the technology and can consent to being tracked.

Employee Scheduling

Whether your business employs hourly or salaried employees, you can benefit from automating time tracking. Find a system that interacts with payroll, allows you to generate and automatically submit staff schedules, and keeps track of accrued overtime, sick time, and vacation time. It saves you time processing payroll and helps ensure accurate time-off deductions. Some systems provide an online employee dashboard that allows remote workers to clock in and out from anywhere using a computer, mobile device, or web browser.

Many time and attendance systems also have a feature that automatically makes shift changes based on an employee’s punching history or on-demand scheduling templates. It gives managers more freedom to focus on critical projects rather than fixing mistakes that can occur when manually creating and submitting schedules.

As workforces diversify, more employers will find themselves working with teams of onsite and remote employees as well as on-demand contractors and freelancers. You want to accurately track hours for these types of employees so that they are paid fairly and on time. In these circumstances, it is vital to consider your software’s capacity to record location and time-stamping data from distant workers. Some systems include GPS functionality in the employee dashboard so that managers can monitor their employees’ locations and make sure they are where they say they are.