Employee Time Tracking Software

There are many instances that adding a personal touch will go a long way in getting the results you desire but there are also times that a personal touch isn’t enough or wouldn’t do at all. With time attendance tracking, this is certainly true. Personal or manual time attendance tracking is no longer enough nowadays. If you want to maximize benefits from time attendance tracking, you should seriously consider replacing your old system with an automated one.

Why a Plain Old Time Clock Just Won’t Do Anymore

Many small to medium-sized companies still rely on a mechanical time clock or clock card machine for their time attendance tracking needs. An employee would have to insert a time card into the time clock and the machine would then print the time and date of contact on the surface. The time card will then serve as documentary basis for determining the employee’s pay at the end of the month.

Unfortunately for management, results for time clocks may be falsified. If no one is assigned to monitor its usage, employees can easily have the timecards of their colleagues punched even without the latter’s presence and with no one the wiser. If done in a large scale, this could be a huge problem for companies.

Improvements on Time Attendance Tracking Systems

A number of companies had sought to address the various employee time tracking software problems besetting human resource management with product innovations. For one, many time clocks are now operated electronically and may even be computer based. Sophisticated biometrics or the use of measurable physiological characteristics to authenticate or validate identity may also be used.

Electronic Systems – Electronic and computer based time attendance tracking systems allow management to collect more accurate and highly detailed information regarding employee time and attendance. If an employee punches in or out, the employee may be requested to indicate if the employee is leaving for lunch break, explain why he’s leaving early or arrived late, and provide any other data determined necessary by the management.

Timesheets – If you are worried how much a highly sophisticated time attendance tracking system would cost you then you should consider using timesheets instead. Timesheets are a more affordable alternative and they’re a mite more advantageous to use than ordinary time clocks. Time cards used with time clocks are also sometimes referred to as timesheets.

Timesheets may be used together with Internet-based timesheet software to let management keep track of virtual employees as well as those who are assigned on the field.

Using timesheets will help management complete payroll processing more quickly since time-based wages may be automatically computed by the system. Billing and invoicing will benefit from the same advantage as well. Timesheets however suffer from being prone to human and rounding errors as well as being repetitive.

Biometrics – Finally, a number of biometric devices may be used together with time clocks or time attendance tracking systems. Fingerprint clocks, for instance, identify users based on their fingerprints. These clocks do not however store images of fingerprints but rather binary data based on a fingerprint’s swirls and ridges. A fingerprint reader may simply be connected to a computer with a USB cable.

ID Badges – Some companies provide employees with ID badges. These will serve as a timecard of sorts. Instead of punching in and out, the employee will just have to swipe his badge through an electronic badge reader.