Best Time Clock Software

Regardless of the organization's size and type, accurate employee attendance and time-tracking calculation are required to process payroll, measure productivity, and ensure compliance with labor laws. Historically, the timesheets were maintained manually using registers or spreadsheets. But, the companies soon realized that manually tracking employees' work time is time-consuming and monotonous. Moreover, this method lacked accuracy and increased the chances of time theft.

Currently, business organizations prefer using time clock software to register time-in and time-out of employees, track their working hours, process payroll, and generate attendance reports. Suppose you are searching for a time clock system to streamline employee attendance processes and ensure high productivity in your organization. In that case, this buyers' guide to time clock software can help you choose one that best suits your business.

The company requires tracking employees’ attendance and monitoring their time spent on different projects to ensure they pay them accurately. Overpaying employees can impact the organization’s profitability, and underpaying employees can create disputes between employees and management. To avoid both these situations, tracking the time and attendance of each employee becomes highly significant. 

Employees are the most valuable assets of an organization and, if not appropriately managed, can negatively impact the individual performance and profitability of any business. Tracking the employees’ time and attendance helps determine and reward the disciplined employees who perform well and contribute to the organization’s growth. 

Precisely, tracking the time and attendance of each employee can help accomplish the below-mentioned tasks that play an imperative role in the success of a business organization -

• Processing payroll accurately
• Monitoring the performance of the employees
• Planning the budget for each project
• Ensuring high productivity
• Staying compliant with the local labor laws

As a business owner or manager, you must know how monotonous, time-consuming, and prone to errors it is to manage all the above tasks manually. Especially if you are handling a large number of employees or billing your clients based on the hours spent on particular projects by your employees, tracking attendance accurately & quickly becomes critical. The best time clock software based on robust technologies like biometrics & RFID can solve these issues.

To gain more information, let’s go through the detailed information about the time clock tool below -

Time clock software is a tool that allows employees to electronically record their presence at a particular location or work time for a specific project. HR professionals and managers use a time clock app to calculate employee attendance, streamline payroll tasks, and measure productivity. The time clock solution stores the number of hours the employees work in a database, which can be retrieved as reports at any time.  

Employees' most common ways to record their attendance are logging into web/mobile applications, fingerprint, and ID cards. The time clock app captures this punching information from biometric or RFID systems and calculates the hours every employee has worked or has been present within particular premises. This information is then transferred to the payroll system to calculate the remuneration of the employees.

The types of time clock solutions may vary depending on their functionality, deployment, and cost. So, let’s have a look at each one of them.

A. Functionality

I) Task Allocation

Companies needing to track billable hours use time-tracking software with task allocation features. It allows supervisors to allocate tasks to their team members and calculate their time on their assigned tasks. This time clock software can even help calculate the billable hours of employees working from remote locations and work-from-home professionals.

ii) Scheduling Shifts

Depending on shift jobs, businesses like hotels, restaurants, salons, etc., use a time clock app that allows scheduling shifts. It will enable supervisors and managers to allocate and change shift timings of the team members. It also ensures that all the employees work within their shift timings.

III) Location Tracking

Time-tracking software with location-tracking features is helpful for businesses having employees working on field jobs like marketing executives, service members, etc. The time clock software, including GPS functionality, can track the employees’ physical location to ensure they are on duty. 

B. Deployment

i) On-Premise

On-premise time clock software is hosted internally on your company’s server. This software provides complete control over the data and freedom of working without an internet connection. The option can suit your organization only if you have the required infrastructure and an IT team to manage the implementation, upgrades, and training processes.

ii) Cloud-Based

The cloud-based time clock software is hosted on the software vendor’s server and can be accessed using a web/mobile device and internet connection. The software vendors manage the hosting, maintenance, and upgrades. If the internet connection fails, you may be unable to access the software.

C. Price

i) Paid

Based on your budget, internal resources, and requirements, you can choose one from the below options -

• Buy monthly/yearly subscription for readymade time clock software available.
• Hire in-house software developers or freelancers and pay them the decided remuneration or salary to build customized time clock software per your needs.
• Hand over the entire project to a professional software development company and pay them the quoted price for building a time clock software, including the features required.

ii) Freemium

Many paid time clock solutions are available with a free trial for a specific period. If you are unsure how a particular software would merge with your business requirements, you can try freemium options before making a purchase decision.

iii) Free

Many free-time clock solutions are available in the market that you can use for your business organization without any investment. These free time clock apps may come with many limitations in their features. So, if you want advanced time clock software with minimum investment, free online time clock software can be the appropriate option. The open-source time clock software can include developers’ fees, deployment, and training costs.

Managing attendance and employee time can be a hassle without time clock software. Many companies have already adopted the automated system for tracking and recording the employees' time because of some prominent reasons given below -

Ensures Accuracy

Recording the time and attendance of the employees manually on registers or Excel spreadsheets can lead to inaccurate time tracking. Using time clock software, the employees can maintain accuracy as the data collected by electronic biometrics is collected and recorded in real-time. Moreover, the employees, supervisors, and top management executives can access the attendance information at their fingertips.

Eliminates Time-Theft Issues

Humans can lie, but machines cannot. An employee can register wrong clock-in information in an Excel sheet, but the time clock software retrieving the punching information from a biometric device cannot be bad. The time clock software eliminates time-theft issues and enables business organizations to pay accurately to their employees.

Enhances Employee Satisfaction

As the time clock can calculate the accurate working hours of the employees, it becomes easier for HR departments to process payroll quickly. Moreover, the employees can have a real-time view of the data relating to their attendance and hours worked. In case of any issue, they can rectify it independently or get it done by their supervisor/manager. This obviously would empower the employees and enhance their satisfaction level.

Increases Productivity

Manually calculating payroll is more tedious and time-consuming than automated payroll processing. The task of payroll processing that can be completed within 20 minutes can take hours if you manually calculate the employees' attendance. Moreover, the time clock software can help the top management analyze the employees' performance based on the time they took to complete a project and the punctuality maintained. This encourages the level of accountability among the employees, motivates them to work with sincerity, and behave in a disciplinary manner resulting in maximum productivity.  

Allows Flexible Work Arrangements

In the current business environment, it is common for employees to work from home or for employers to hire freelancers from remote locations. In such cases, the employees don't punch in or out of a particular physical place. The time clock software, having various clocking options, helps calculate the number of hours worked by the employees working from home or a remote location.

It makes Shift and Task Allocation Easy.

Using time clock software, assigning tasks to the employees, and monitoring whether those tasks get completed within a time frame becomes easy. Companies that work based on shifts can also automate assigning and swapping shifts. Moreover, the time clock software also allows the determination of the workload on each employee, project budget, and resources required in each process running within a business organization.

Using integrated timekeeping and payroll systems, the companies have been reported to overachieve their revenue targets by 7%. Besides that, using a time clock software is highly essential for small businesses in different ways, as mentioned below -

Employees Get Paid For What They Owe

Small businesses work on a low budget and cannot afford to pay more to the employees than they owe to the company. As the time clock software eliminates time-theft and buddy punching issues, it helps companies pay their employees only for their work hours. 

Accurate Payroll Processing

Time clock software helps in automating the task of payroll processing. This helps small businesses program the attendance & leave policies in specific parameters, automatically handling required calculations and making the workflow seamless and accurate.

Ensuring Business Growth

A time clock software can record the time spent by each employee on different tasks and their performance. The top management monitors this data. It makes employees accountable for their projects and strives to deliver maximum productivity. Small businesses yielding high productivity levels are guaranteed to grow and generate more revenue than expected.

A series of business strategies used to improve employee performance and efficiency is known as Workforce optimization. Workforce optimization (WFO) benefits the employees and employers in achieving common goals resulting in the company's growth. Let us check out how employee time clock software can help effectively implement workforce optimization techniques within a business organization.

Recording Attendance 

As the employee time clock application automates recording employee attendance in the organization, it becomes easy to access insights about performance, effectiveness, and productivity individually. It helps in determining which processes are working and which ones require improvisation.

Assigning Tasks

Assigning tasks in a manner that helps achieve maximum productivity is the most effective technique of workforce optimization. The time clock software provides visibility over the employees working on different tasks. It enables the supervisors and managers to assign appropriate tasks depending on the availability and skills of the employees.

Managing Shifts

Many organizations work based on the shift system. The employees' shifts should be managed to maximize productivity and balance work and life at the same time. The time clock solution indicates a clear picture of the employees' shifts. It helps supervisors and managers to change and assign shifts in such a manner that benefits the company and employees.

Improved Communication

The time clock software centralizes the information about the attendance, shifts, and tasks assigned. This brings clear communication between the top management, supervisors, and employees, leaving no misunderstanding between them. Transparency in the entire system; ultimately enables you to implement better workforce optimization techniques resulting in increased productivity and growth of the business.

Not all time clock solutions are created equally. Below mentioned are some essential features you need to look for while selecting one for your organization -

Automated Clock In and Clock Out

This feature seems to be evident in any time clock system. But, many time clock solutions require employees to manually enter time in and out. The employee time clock app you select should sync with the biometric or RFID system being used in your organization. That way, you get the numbers right to avoid human errors and fraud against the employees.

Ability to Edit Attendance Inputs

The employees sometimes forget to clock in or clock out of the system. In that case, the system marks the employee absent that day. The time clock software should allow the employee to enter the missing attendance details after the approval of the respective supervisor/manager. It should also enable HR managers to edit the attendance information as it would save the employees and managers time to fix the errors. This would also make employees more accountable for the information they record in the time clock system.

Real-Time Attendance Monitoring

The time clock tool you select should allow the users to monitor the employees' attendance in real-time. This would help you to check the performance and punctuality of each employee in the organization. Also, it allows you to view the details about the staff members easily present within a premise or working on a particular project entry.

Location-Based Punching

It allows employees to clock in using a Wi-Fi connection only from a specific IP address. That means the employees can clock in or out from office premises only. This feature is essential for many organizations as it avoids early clocking-in issues and maintains compliance.

GPS Tracking

Allowing employees to clock in using their mobile devices with GPS tracking is one of the essential features required by organizations that delegate repairs and service jobs to their employees. The employees doing field jobs clock in using their mobile devices as soon as they start a career and clock out while ending a career. This helps companies track their employees' locations, ensure they complete the jobs within a specific time and provide efficient services to their clients.

Payroll Processing

Many time clock solutions include payroll features that allow you to quickly calculate the employees' remuneration, salary, or wages accurately based on their attendance details. Processing the payroll of the employees is a highly-time consuming and monotonous job. Moreover, If the organization's payroll process is automated, it helps ensure that employees are paid accurately within a required time frame.

Reporting

The time clock app you select should help you generate comprehensive reports that provide complete information about the attendance of your employees, including their leave balances, late coming instances, overtime, lunch, and tea breaks, etc. These reports should be customizable to suit your business requirements and offer multiple exporting options.

Using the latest technology in time and attendance software is important as that may impact productivity and overall processes within the business organization. Therefore, it becomes necessary to consider the current trends in time clock applications.

Wi-Fi Enabled Time Clocks

The Wi-Fi-enabled time clocks include new hardware technology that can support the time and attendance recordkeeping of more than 500 employees. It uses biometric technology to ensure accuracy in time-punch and facilitates image capture for enhanced efficiency.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been quite popular for a long time now. The cloud-based time clock tool allows employees to punch in and punch out from any device or platform. It also allows supervisors and managers to access real-time figures relating to the employees' attendance and performance. With work from home being highly in trend, the use of a cloud-based time clock tool has become apparent.

Facial Recognition

Time clock software facilitating facial recognition is an emerging trend these days. In a situation like the spreading of a pandemic like COVID-19,  facial recognition has become important for touchless attendance recording and management. This would help the business organization ensure the workforce's safety as it doesn't require touching fingers to the biometric, which can be the primary reason for spreading the virus.    

Artificial Intelligence

According to a study, innovations like AI technology are predicted to increase employee productivity by 40% in 2035. AI-enabled time clock solutions can fully automate the time tracking and performance measurement activities within a business organization. It allows location-based tracking of the employees and gaining advanced insights into the performance of the employees. It also helps HR professionals to solve the queries of the employees using a chatbot, saving both time and effort.

Fever Detection

For the health and safety concern of the employees, businesses prefer to adopt the time clock system with fever detection capabilities.It delivers the notification to the administrators and HR managers as soon as an employee having elevated temperature enters the premises. In a situation like the spread of COVID-19, implementing a time clock system with fever detection capabilities can be quite beneficial for business organizations.

For every business organization, tracking and monitoring employee attendance is essential to maintain consistent productivity to ensure maximum revenue generation. Below are some factors you must consider while selecting an online time clock software.

User-Friendly

The time clock tool you select should have a user-friendly interface allowing you and your employees to learn it easily and quickly. It should help you in organizing and managing your employees without much effort. Moreover, it should be easy to install and access, encouraging employees to use their top features effectively.

Payroll Integration

You may have selected an employee time clock app that doesn't include in-built payroll processing features. And you are using a separate system for calculating payroll for your employees. In that case, the time clock solution you select should easily integrate with your payroll software, ensuring your employees are being paid flawlessly.

Scalability

The growth of your business is inevitable. With the development of your business, the number of employees working would also increase. The time-clock software you are considering for your business should have the ability to grow. If it is restricted to managing the employees currently working with your company, then it is no benefit to you.

Efficiency

If the online time clock software crashes when multiple users work simultaneously or provides a slow performance, it may reduce productivity and create chaos within your organization. Before purchasing software, you need to ensure that it is efficient enough to improve the speed and accuracy of your organization's attendance and payroll processes. Sometimes you may get attracted to a mean time clock application, but if it turns out to be inefficient, you need to pay a heavy price in terms of loss of productivity.

Easy Installation

If you selected a cloud-based time clock software, the installation is not an issue. But, in the case of on-premise software, you must check that it is easy to install. Also, you must ensure that the infrastructure requirements are minimum and match your organization's budget and capabilities.

Price

Every business owner considers this most crucial factor before investing in any software. Regarding the time clock system, the price may increase as you add features. But paying for the parts you are never going to use would not be a wise decision. Thus, you need to select an efficient time clock tool that ensures high productivity and is within your budget.

Business Size & Type

The time clock software that works for a local salon cannot work for a professional and multinational company. The selection of online time clock software depends on the size and type of your business organization. The requirement of the features in a time clock software may vary for a business working with 5 employees on an hourly basis than a business including more than 1000 salaried employees. 

Mobility

Many companies work with employees located in remote locations. In such cases, mobility in time clock application becomes an essential requirement. The time clock service should be accessible from anywhere, allowing remote workers to clock in and out using any device and platform. Moreover, it also helps the supervisors and managers to access the attendance information on the go or track the location of the employees.

Switching from manual to automated time clock apps may initially seem confusing and overwhelming. You will reap the benefits once your time clock system streamlines and automates the process of attendance tracking and recording within your business organization. Here are some steps that would help you in making this transition smooth.

Preparing for the Change

You need to put your decision-making team together and notify them about the areas requiring improvement in your time and attendance tracking system. Discussing how a time clock app can help improve the productivity and accountability of each employee can help convince the decision-makers to adopt the new automated time clock system.

Research & Planning

While transitioning to a new time clock solution, knowing whether your infrastructure capabilities match the system requirements you are adopting becomes important. All the time clock systems vary regarding deployment, integrations, hardware options, and abilities. You need to research and plan comprehensively to help eliminate potential issues you may face due to adopting a system that doesn't fit your business requirements and objectives.

Return on Investment Analysis

A time clock software would require a considerable amount of investment. How would you justify this investment in front of higher authorities and decision-makers? You need to show them the records about the company's loss due to time theft, low productivity, and mismanagement within the organization. Proving that deploying time clock services would help generate higher ROI can easily convince the decision-makers to shift from manual to automated time clock systems.

Selecting Vendor

Investing in a time clock system is just not enough. You need to ensure that the time clock solution vendor provides the required training to your staff and makes them aware of the features in-depth. Moreover, there should be no uncertainty when accessing support from the vendor's side. The transition to the automated system can become complex and time-consuming for you and your staff members if the quality of support and training is insufficient.

The cost of employee time clock software can vary depending on its features and functionality. Many online time clock software solutions are available in the market at monthly, yearly, and one-time charges. For example, EasyTimeClock costs only $0.25/month, and Punch:io costs $1000/month. If you prefer paying yearly, then you can go for PurelyTracking, costing $3/year, or TimeClockWindow costing $59.95/year. Also, there are time clock solutions available like CKZ Time Clock at $49.95 and Power Clock at $200 one-time charges.

You can also go for time clock software systems like Mitrefinch or Virtual TimeClock, offering customized prices depending on the features you require.

If your budget doesn’t permit investing in a time clock system right now, you can choose a free and open-source time clock software that you can even customize as per your business requirements. 

For detailed information, you can go through the complete list of time clock software here.

At GoodFirms, we believe that a well-featured time clock tool helps all organizations to improvise their standards and take their business to the next level. Based on that philosophy, we ensure that the companies have access to in-depth information about the software they are looking for and end up selecting the best one to enable them to achieve their goals. Besides that, the below reasons can justify your decision to refer to GoodFirms' list of time clock software -

• Reputed companies and software vendors trust GoodFirms for deploying 100% safe and secure processes.
• GoodFirms follow a customer-centric approach towards curating only the best software applying the latest technologies and trends.
• The list of time clock apps by GoodFirms contains not only in-depth details about the features, functionality, price, and deployment but also includes authentic reviews to help you to make the right choice.

Achieving an enhanced level of productivity is a never-ending goal for an organization, whether big or small. A time clock tool can help in enhancing the experience for employees, leading to more efficiency. As there have been many workplace changes and policies over the period, the employees now demand more flexibility and control over managing their attendance.  

To build a healthy working environment in an organization, it has become necessary to implement a system that helps employees in following schedules that can help maintain their work-life balance and eliminate issues like time theft, and buddy punching at the same time. 

We hope that this buyers' guide to time clock software has helped you select the right system suited to your business requirements. Please share your valuable feedback with us.