Attendance Tracking software: purchase guide
What is Attendance Tracking Software?
Definition
The attendance tracking software is a professional solution that facilitates the control and monitoring of the presence and working time of your employees (by individual, site, department, etc.).
At any time, you can view your employees' time sheets on site and at home:
- Employees present, absent, late
- Employees available or in appointments
How does it work?
Synchronized with your pointing tool, this HR Software recovers data related to the arrivals, departures and breaks of your teams:
- RFID clocking with a badge on a time clock
- Biometric clocking
- Computer timekeeping: IP or manual
- Smartphone or tablet tracking via a mobile application
- Etc.
Each employee is identified by a job sheet that centralizes the information of his employment contract (working hours, etc.) and is enhanced with the data of your time clock.
You have an administrator account to view the presence of your employees and manage anomalies:
- Odd score
- Timekeeping outside of scheduled hours
- No scoring
- Maximum number of working hours exceeded
- Break time not respected
- Etc.
Some tools have an employee portal on which your employees can record their working times on a daily basis.
These tools automatically process your employees' time sheets and transfer them to your payroll tool or accountant.
What are the Main Features of the Attendance Tracking Tools?
We can discuss the functionalities of these tools chronologically: from the creation of employee profiles to human resources management.
Manage the different employee profiles
In the tool, each member has a form with information related to each member's "typical" week:
- Theoretical start and end times
- Daily break time
You can define rules for calculating employee or category working hours:
- A start and end time and an automatic countdown of a meal or break time
- Systematic monitoring for each work interruption
- Etc.
These tools integrate complex work cycles (2*8, 3*8) and public holidays.
Monitoring employee attendance
If you have a clocking tool, the attendance tool synchronizes with your time clock (badge reader, or other control device), and you have a dashboard on which you can view in real time the individuals present, absent or late.
Time sheets are automatically edited and sent to your payroll management tool. The tool takes into account the different types of hours: paid, overtime, absences, RTT, modulation, night hours, Sunday, etc.
Some tools allow you to locate your employees on the move.
If your attendance tracking tool has an employee portal, your employees can record their weekly attendance time online, assign it to different projects and add comments. A dashboard specific to each employee summarizes the hours worked and those remaining and notifies them when they are late in entering their time sheets.
If your tool does not have an HR Portal, timesheets are generated by default, you can modify them manually.
An HRM tool
As an administrator, you have a graphical calendar to view the attendance of your employees in real time or later on.
An interactive dashboard centralizes all performance indicators related to the attendace of individuals:
- Presence, absence, delay by individuals or teams
- Requirements of some teams
- Timekeeping errors: delay, absence, forgetfulness, etc.
- Availability of employees
With a single click, you can generate customized analytical reports, export and share them:
- Job scheduling reports to measure the performance per task of an individual
- Reports by project (expected time vs. actual time) to justify the invoice sent to your customers
Reports by project
These tools comply with the labor code. You are notified in the event of a violation of legal obligations by an employee or an HR manager (unless otherwise specified in the tool):
- Daily working time of more than 10 hours
- Break not respected
- Working hours greater than 13 hours
Simplify HR administrative tasks
Personnel management tools are often included in human resources management software packages. However, some vendors provide open, independent solutions that are interoperable with your HRIS:
- With your leave and absence management tool to avoid discrepancies or record absences as leave
- With the time management tool to synchronize the tool with the employee planning
- With the payroll tool to automate the accounting of time sheets and the production of pay slips
Who uses Attendance Tracking Software?
These HR monitoring software packages are cross-functional:
- Employees record or track their weekly working hours
- HR managers and team leaders check the attendance of their employees
- Human Resources Managers (HRDs) visualize performance indicators and manage staff
These tools are mainly used within important structures that need to set up formal control and monitoring procedures. Large retail companies, hospitals or call centres are good examples.
Very small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) can also use these management solutions to obtain traceability of the time spent on each project.
Why use Company Attendance Tracking Software?
These tools improve your HR management: you know in real time who is present, who is absent and who is late. However, they have some disadvantages.
Advantages
- Real-time attendance, absence and delay tracking
- Monitoring of progress by project, difference between planned and actual time
- Synergies with other HRIS elements: administrative simplification of time-consuming human resources management
- Traceability of working time in the event of control by the labour inspection authorities
- Reduce costs related to lost time, data recording in the payroll tool, input errors, etc.
- Increased productivity of employees who know they are being controlled
- Compliance with legislation
Disadvantages
- The use of a time clock in addition to the attendance tracking tool is essential if accurate and automatic tracking is to be achieved
- Attendance rules that are too strict can be misunderstood by employees and cause tension
- An HR manager can be overwhelmed by unwanted errors if he or she receives a notification every time a badge employee is slightly early or late.
