12 important factors to consider while choosing a time attendance device

Time Attendance Devices are required to effectively monitor employee attendance. The need for a time attendance monitoring system grows with the number of employees you manage. But choosing the right devices may be a difficult task, unless you are an expert.

Listed below are some important factors to consider while choosing a time attendance device.

1. Biometric Device or Proximity Card reader(RFID) or both?

Biometrics relies on the use of unique physical traits such as a fingerprint, a palm/iris pattern, or facial characteristics to identify an employee.

A non-biometric device such as an RFID device uses a proximity card to identify an employee. Buddy punching is a main concern here as the employee can ask his colleague to clock in with the card even when he is absent. Also, the employee may forget to bring his card to work and then he won’t be able to clock in/out the whole day. These issues won’t occur with a biometric device.

But, RFID is faster in identification when compared to biometric readers. RFID is also cheaper compared to Biometric devices.

Card reader(RFID) and Biometrics in the same device

Some devices support multiple identification mechanisms, such as Face, Fingerprint, RFID and Password identification all in the same device. With such a device, employees can use Face recognition while visitors can use proximity cards(RFID).

Face Recognition or Fingerprint Identification?

Face recognition is faster compared to Fingerprint identification. Face recognition takes less than 1 second while fingerprint identification takes less than 2 seconds to identify an employee. If you have too many employees clocking in/out at the same time, face recognition is recommended.

2. How many devices?

This depends on how many employees are clocking in or out at the same time. For eg; all your employees may go out for lunch at the same time. In order to avoid long queues you should carefully choose the appropriate number of devices. The number of devices required varies according to the identification mechanism. You may need more fingerprint devices compared to RFID or face recognition as fingerprint identification takes longer.

3. What Device Capacity?

Face/Fingerprint/Card Capacity: It’s better to go for a device that has much more user capacity than your requirement as the device would be fast in identifying employees, and you will have room for new employees.

Transaction Capacity: Since the software automatically pulls data from devices in real-time, transaction capacity is not much of a concern. But it’s good to have a device that can hold data for a month.

4. PUSH or PULL?

PUSH: When using PUSH technology, the device sends punches to the server whenever it receives one. PUSH updates the server in almost real-time. The server should have a static IP if communication with the server is over the internet.

PULL: When using PULL technology, the server reads the device data in periodic intervals and updates itself. If the communication with the server is over the internet, it’s good if the device has a static IP, otherwise, you will need a software to read the dynamic IP and to update the server.

5. What kind of connectivity between device and server?

Internet: The devices can communicate with server over the internet in both PUSH and PULL mode. If you want the device to communicate over the internet, ensure the device has TCP/IP.

Mobile Network: If the device is in a remote location, it can communicate with the server over a mobile network. Ensure the device has a 4G module.

Wired LAN: If the device and server are in the same LAN, a wired connection is recommended. If you want the device to communicate over the LAN, ensure the device has TCP/IP.

Wifi: With Wifi more of reconfiguration and troubleshooting may be required as wifi routers change. If you want the device to communicate over Wifi, ensure the device has Wifi option.

USB: With USB, user will have to manually copy the data from device to software. This is not a recommended option as the data cannot come to server in real-time. If you want to use this option, ensure device has a USB port.

6. Do you need Access Control?

‘Access Control’ allows you to control a door or a turnstile as employees clock in or out.

You may need access control:

* If you run an office and you don’t usually have customers walking in and you want to allow access only to employees

* If you have a server room, you want to allow access only to authorized personnel

* If you want accurate attendance data and you don’t want your employees to forget to clock in or out.

You may not need access control:

* If you run a super market and you have employees and customers walking in through the same door

Access control is more expensive as it may require the following components:

1. Door Lock with brackets

2. Exit Reader

3. Exit Switch

4. Cabling

The components required for an access control installation vary according to the type of door or turnstile.

Wooden door with a Wooden frame

If you have a wooden door with a wooden door frame a normal Electro magnetic lock may be good enough for you.

Glass door with a Wooden frame

If you have a glass door with a wooden frame you need an Electro magnetic lock with U bracket.

Glass door with a Glass frame

If you have a glass door with a glass frame you may need an Electro magnetic lock with a U and Z brackets.

7. Do you need an Exit Reader?

When you use access control you may need one device for entry and another one for exit. Usually, the exit reader can be directly connected to the master device, and all configurations are done only on the master device. It’s also possible to have the same model of device for entry and exit.

8. Do you need an Exit Switch?

When using access control you can use a device for entry and a switch for exit. But this is not recommended as the device cannot identify the employee who uses the exit switch.

9. Do you need a USB Port?

You should choose a device with USB port if you would need the following:

* Option to copy data from the device manually if other modes of communication fail

* Option to copy face/fingerprint/rfid templates from one device to another

10. 5V or 12V?

If you want to connect the device to a door lock and you want to supply power to the lock from the device, you will have to choose a device that works in the same voltage as your

11. Do you need a printer?

If you want to use the device in a canteen, you may need to print a slip as employee punches; make sure the device is compatible with the printer.

12. What device size and color?

Ensure that the size and color of the device matches with your interior design.

For a wide range of biometric devices feel free to get in touch with our experts. ENQUIRE NOW! and Time Attendance Software feel free to get in touch with our experts. ENQUIRE NOW!, visit our online store.

15 Features every Attendance Software should have!

Attendance software communicates with Time attendance devices to bring data from different geographical locations in to a centralized office. The software also allows users to process the attendance data according to their requirements. The summarized attendance data is usually used for reporting and also for payroll processing.

Every Attendance Software should have at least the following features:

1. Fully Automated Communication: An Attendance Software should be able to communicate regularly with Time Attendance or Access Control Devices with absolutely no manual intervention. The devices could be located at different geographical locations; even then the communication should be fully automated.

2. All data in one interface: Attendance, leave, overtime data and shift plans should be displayed in one single interface to better understand the data for each employee. Employees may be allocated to different shifts and hence it's important to calculate work duration from clock in/out data with reference to shift plans.

3. Shift Planner: Shift Planner enables you to allocate employees to different shifts each day. Work duration of an employee is calculated based on Clock in/out times and shift assigned to the employee for the day. Employees can also be allocated to different day offs.

4. Attendance Rules Definition: Every company has their own attendance rules. The clock in/out data should be processed based on these rules. It should be possible to define the attendance rules in the attendance software so that the software can process attendance data without any manual intervention.

5. Interpreted Attendance Data: An employee may clock in/out many times during the day. But, the software should interpret and organize the data in such a way to make it meaningful to users. For eg: An employee clocking in after 30 minutes of the shift start time should be marked as 'Late-In' for 30 minutes.

6. Real-time Attendance: Time Attendance Devices accumulate data as employees clock in and out. The attendance software should communicate in real-time with the devices to collect the attendance data from the devices.

7. Data from difference sources: Attendance data may come from Time Attendance or Access Control devices, HR users may import attendance from text or excel files, Employees may clock in using the Employee Self Service, or data could be imported from another database.

8. User-defined Attendance Types: It should be possible for users to categorize attendance according to their own requirements. For eg: User may define attendance types like 'Training', 'Work from Home', 'Client Visit', and so on.

9. Close integration with Payroll: The attendance summary should be closely integrated with payroll so that no manual intervention is required to process payroll with attendance.

10. Employee request to correct attendance: It should be possible for employees to apply for attendance corrections. Once the correction is approved by the manager, it gets integrated to the attendance system.

11. Notifications: Employees and managers should be notified of important events in the system. For eg: Notify the user when a time attendance device stops communicating for over 4 hours. Notify the employee and manager when an employee reports late to work.

12. Enables Decision Making: Enables top management to make quick decisions based on KPIs. Provides the Top management with an overview of the attendance and also allows drill down to details to understand better.

13. Employee Approvals: Employees should be able to request changes to attendance, and it should also be possible for managers to approve or reject it. For eg: Employee can request for a Work from Home or Client Visit. On approval from the manager, this becomes part of the attendance.

14. Multi-Company: More than one company may operate from the same premises. In such a scenario, it should be possible to organize employees in to multiple companies and the companies may share the same time attendance devices for employees to clock.

15. Multi-Location: Multi-location attendance software brings data from different geographical locations in to one centralized office to process it at one location. Users may access the software from the centralized location or the remote locations.

AttendHRM is an attendance software with all of the features listed above. AttendHRM is designed to work with small to large companies with a few to several thousand employees. 

10 Features every Employee Self Service Portal should have!

Employee Self Service(ESS) is a web portal for employees to record Time and Attendance, check work plans, request leaves & holidays, view payslips and so on. The employee self service also allows managers to make attendance, leave, and holiday approvals for their employees.

Every employee self service module should have at least the following features:

1. Payslips Online: The Employee Self Service allows employees to access or print payslips any time. The ESS portal displays payslips for all time, so the employees can access payslips in the past. This saves time compared to printing and handing over hard copies of payslips to employees.

2. Leave Application and Approval: Employee Self Service allows employees to apply for leaves from Mobile Phones, Desktops or Kiosks. Also lets the managers to approve or reject requests from Mobile Phones. Employees and Managers can access the ESS from any where, even when they are at home. This saves time and resources compared to submitting a leave application in a paper based approval system.

3. Online Punching: Online Punching enables employees to mark attendance even when they are travelling. Employees can Clock In & Clock Out with GPS location. This allows managers to track employee travel path.

4. Employee Attendance: Employees can view their own attendance on the ESS Portal. This helps employees to approve that the attendance is ready for payroll processing. If there is any discrepancy, employees can raise a request to correct the attendance.

5. Attendance Regularization: Attendance Regularization enables employees to correct their own attendance. Employees can view their own attendance and if any changes are required, they can raise a request on ESS to correct the attendance. Once managers approve the request, the attendance updates by itself.

6. Shift Details on Phone: Employees can view their shift details from their Mobile Phones. This allows managers to easily notify employees about frequent shift changes. Shift calendar allows employees to have an overview of their shifts for the month.

7. HR Documents online: The Employee Self Service portal allows the company to publish Policy documents which can be accessed by the employees. This makes it easy to publish company policy updates for employees.

8. Employee Documents: Employees can upload their documents on the ESS Portal which can be accessed by HR users. This makes it easy for HR Users to organize documents against each employee.

9. Notifications and Alerts: Employee Self Service generates notifications and alerts for the HR, Managers and the employees such as Passport expiry, Driving License expiry, Shift Change, Birthday, Anniversary, Upcoming Holiday, and so on.

10. Income Tax Declarations: In some countries, income tax is calculated based on income from salary and also from other income and investments as declared by the employee. The ESS Portal makes it easy for employees to make declarations online, which helps the HR users to calculate income tax without manual intervention.

The Employee Self Service Portal also generates the following benefits:

1. Reduces Costs: Employee Self Service has direct impact on the administrative costs. No more printing payslips and reports.

2. Improves efficiency: Employees can view attendance before it gets processed for payroll, they can also raise requests to make corrections on attendance; this eliminates the need for correction in payslips.

3. Enhances Communication: Employees can make requests for documents like Experience Certificates, Attendance Corrections, Leave, Holiday, Vacation, and so on. This results in easier communication among employee, manager and HR team. The organization can communicate policies by sharing them on the Employee Self Service Portal.

4. Provides Transparency: Employees can view their daily attendance on a graphical interface; this helps them to ensure that the company has captured the right data to process payroll.

5. Eliminates Paper: Employee Self Service enables employees, managers and HR to communicate over electronic media rather than on paper. Save paper, go green!

6. Saves time: Employee Self Service enables employees to make requests from mobile phones and also allows managers to approve requests from mobile phones; this saves a lot of time compared to paper based approval system.

7. Enables Instant Decision Making: Employee Self Service provides detailed data to managers and HR to make instant decisions. For eg: when a manager is about to approve a leave request, the ESS provides details about the employee’s leave balance, snapshot of attendance for the requested period, list of subordinates on leave in the same period, and so on.

AttedHRM is an HR Software with Employee Self Service which includes all of the features and provides all the benefits listed above.

Overtime Management

Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. Overtime, or time worked beyond a specified number of hours in a week by hourly, non-exempt employees, can wreak havoc on the operating budget of a small business. Pay for any hours worked as overtime are paid at a higher rate than regular hours. While there may be times when overtime is necessary and cost-effective, overtime pay can begin to drain your bottom line if not managed correctly. Advance planning and scheduling can help reduce the need for employees to work in excess of their scheduled hours. Proactively managing your employees’ overtime, avoiding surprises and preparing for the future can reduce your expense, protect your company from financial crisis, and improve morale companywide.

Overtime Management Software play critical role in helping management to track overtime of hourly employees. Knowing exactly how many hours everyone contributes is critical to making smart choices and handling potential overtime regulation changes. Overtime Management Software fulfills this by connecting to biometric machines and updating attendance of each employee in real-time, also thereby ensuring 100% precision when compared to manual supervision of overtime hours. Biometric time tracking also avoids timesheet rounding, which typically happens innocently enough but usually falls in the employee’s favour. There is also facility in Overtime Management Software to specify the grace period post the work hours. Usually it takes a few minutes past the standard work hours for employees to clock out of the factory. It maybe probably to remove their work dresses and other gears. This extra minutes may falsely be considered as overtime and would accrue into a huge sum altogether to be paid to the employees as overtime pay at higher rates than their regular hours’ pay. With Overtime Management Software, user can easily specify the grace period after work time. Overtime will be considered only if an employee spends time more than what is specified as the grace time.

Realtime information of overtime expenses is critical to the management. Overtime Management Software provides Top Management with enough information to make quick decision on overtime.

Employees can also track the overtime hours they have clocked on a day to day basis by referring the Employee Self Service portal of Overtime Management Software.

Tips for Overtime Management           

Not only does overtime rank as one of the biggest ongoing expenses for most companies, but the correct, or incorrect, management of overtime can mean the difference between huge payouts, low morale, and vulnerability to changes in overtime regulations. Overtime pay law stipulates that not paying overtime is illegal if your employees are non-exempt. Here are a few tips you can take note to manage overtime.

Work Load Assessment

Examine each employee’s workload during a given shift. If most employees are able to complete their assigned tasks within their normally scheduled hours, chances are good that you are allotting an appropriate number of hours for the job to be completed. If a large proportion of employees regularly fail to complete their work in a given shift and move from regular time into overtime, re-examine your assigned workloads. You may be asking for too much in terms of daily production or task assignment. Look for ways to scale back quotas or responsibilities so employees can complete their work in their assigned hours. If necessary, hire additional staffers.

Scheduling Management

Schedule enough staff members during each shift to ensure all necessary job functions are met with no need for overtime work. Having an appropriate number of people per shift will ensure no employees are overburdened and unable to complete their job responsibilities during regular hours. Always have back-up or temporary help available if an employee calls in sick or is on vacation.

Time Management

Sometimes employees need coaching on time management to fulfill their job duties during a given period of time. Give employees tips on how to prioritize tasks, work efficiently and manage their time appropriately. Conduct time management seminars if necessary, and make sure employees are appropriately trained on how to do their jobs, which will help them work more efficiently.

Advanced Planning

Occasionally, you may have a job or project that has the potential to run longer than expected, resulting in overtime pay for employees. When possible, plan for this busy time by working ahead of schedule and allowing employees to leave early or take time off during their normally-schedule work week. This will help you manage a 40-hour week work schedule.

Employee Monitoring

Keep tabs on how employees spend their time, and create a policy where overtime work must be authorized by a supervisor. If you feel an employee is purposely working slowly to generate additional income through overtime pay, confront the employee and reiterate the company’s overtime policy.

You may not be able to eliminate overtime completely even though you practice the points discussed above. So, you need an Overtime Management Software to calculate overtime according to your company policy. An overtime management software can automate the processing of overtime without any manual intervention.

AttendHRM is an HR Software with excellent Overtime Management features. AttendHRM allows you to define your overtime and payroll rules so that the overtime calculations can be fully automated.

Payslip Software and Payslip Formats

Every company is unique, and so are their payslips. And the rules are quite flexible, so you can create your payslip as you want. If you are about to choose a format for your payslip, or about to purchase a payroll software that generates payslips, continue reading and it should help.

Here are some points to consider before you finalize on your payslip software.

1. Contents of a payslip

A payslip usually contains the company name, details about earnings, deductions and net pay. Do you need something more? Probably you also require a company logo, a short address, space for a company seal, and space for employee to sign. You may also require an attendance, leave and income tax summary within your payslip.

2. Customizable Payslips

Is it possible to customize your payslips as you want? Can you decide what appears in your payslip and what not? You should be able to decide and control what appears on your payslips. The payroll software should allow you to design your payslip.

3. Payslip with leave balances

It would be good for you and for your employees, if you were displaying leave balances in payslips. In this case, the payslip has clear information about how many leaves he is entitled to, enabling him to plan his leaves in the upcoming month.

4. Payslip with YTD

YTD stands for ‘year to date’, and is widely used nowadays. Basically, YTD is the total of transactions from the start of the financial year up to now. For eg. If you are on the last month of the financial year, the YTD for ‘Basic Pay’ shows how much you received as ‘Basic Pay’ for the whole year.

5. Payslip with carry forwarded values

It is handy to pay out employee wages rounded to the nearest multiple of 10 or to the nearest integer. But in that case, there should be an option to automatically carry forward the residue to the next month.

6. Payslips with different currencies

Sometimes, you want to pay your employees with different currencies. An employee working overseas gets paid in USD, but the payslip is generated at your place. So, in that case, you want to pay some of your employees in USD, and the others in local currency.

7. Calculation History for each payslip

Every payslip is a result of some calculations, but how to verify if the values are correct? You just cannot blindly trust a payroll software, you need to verify and convince yourself. A good payroll software should have a calculation history for each item in the payslip, thereby providing clarity on calculations.

8. Bulk email of payslips to employees

You may have several employees, and you are ready with your payslips, but how to send it to all your employees? If you have just a few employees, it doesn’t matter. Otherwise, it does matter, and it should be possible to email payslips to your employees in a few clicks, if you have a good payroll software.

AttendHRM is an HR Payroll Software with excellent features including all features listed above. Download a trial and get started Now!

Payroll processing in minutes – Completely automated

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.

Being intelligent humans, we should utilize the best qualities of computers, especially, the speed, accuracy and automation capabilities. If you are stuck with the traditional, time consuming, error prone, manual payroll processing, it’s time to automate.

Should I upgrade to automated payroll software?

A few compelling reasons to upgrade to an automated payroll software:

1. Saves you lots of time and money: Manual payroll processing is tedious and time consuming. Consider keying in attendance, leave data for all your employees into an excel sheet for processing every month end. It’s quite some work. This can be completely automated.

2. No manual intervention, hence highly accurate: Humans are intelligent but they are slow and inaccurate, hence it’s wise not to rely on humans for lots of calculations. Let a computer do all calculations and processing quickly and with high accuracy.

3. Allows you to process payroll at the last minute, and very quickly: Payroll is to be processed with attendance and leave data. And you will have to wait for the last day of the month to get these data. If you want to pay your employees on the next day, you have hardly any time to do the payroll processing. So, the processing should be really fast, no matter how many employees you have.

4. Automated payroll processing even if geographically distributed: Imagine processing data from one centralized location, even though your organization has branches across the globe, and still completely automated with attendance and leave data.

Payroll processing in minutes?

Payroll processing in minutes? It’s not a fiction; the best payroll software can really do the following tasks in a few minutes.

1. Process your payroll with attendance and leave data: You should be able to pay your employee for every minute of overtime he does. Also, may be you want to cut pay for every minute he is late. Payroll processing should also take leave balance and entitlements into account.

2. Send pay slips to employees: Right after processing, email pay slips to all your employees. Also, employees should be able to view their pay slips whenever they want, wherever they are!

3. Email salary transfer information to banks: Statements should be forwarded to banks to perform a salary transfer to the employees.

4. Process your income tax, generate statutory reports: Income tax should also be processed with other payroll components. The automated system should also generate statutory reports required by your government.

AttendHRM is an HR Payroll Software with excellent features including all features listed above. Download a trial and get started Now!

Top 8 features every HR software should have

Create Appointment letters for 100 employees in less than a minute

With Document builder, AttendHRM helps you create a variety of documents such as Appointment Letter, Experience Certificate, Offer Letter, Confirmation Letter, Transfer Letter, Promotion Letter, Relieving Letter, Letter of Increment, Termination Letter, Resignation Letter, Appreciation Letter, Warning Letter, and so on in almost no time. Just pick the type of document, and the employees for whom you want to create the document, AttendHRM will do the rest in seconds!

eMail or SMS all employees with O-ve blood group in less than a minute

As an HR Officer your requirements are different every minute. An accident in the factory, you need O-ve blood ASAP. You have employees with O-ve blood group; but how long does it take for you to inform them? With AttendHRM you can do this in less than a minute. AttendHRM lets you send SMS or email to employees who meet a specific criteria.

Edit attendance of each employee over a graphical interface

AttendHRM displays work plans and attendance data in a graphical interface and lets you make changes; work plans, attendance, leave, holiday, overtime; all in one place.

Send an alert to your employee before his passport or visa expires

AttendHRM can send alerts and notifications in different occasions; a passport or visa is about to expire, a leave or holiday is upcoming, an employee has punched in late, and so on. AttendHRM can also send alerts for managers; a list of employees who haven’t clocked enough hours for a day or a week, an approaching retirement and so on.

e-Mail a Late comers report every working day at 3PM

With Report Builder AttendHRM lets you create your own reports and with Task Scheduler you can schedule reports to be emailed to you at specific intervals; a late comers report every day, a weekly work summary every Monday, a payroll summary on the first day of the month, and so on.

Automatically detect the shift an employee is in

AttendHRM can handle rotating, overlapping, and complicated shift schedules. If the shift plan changes very often, AttendHRM can even detect the shift an employee is in; this helps to calculate late-in, early-out, overtime and so on; fully automated.

Collect data from Biometric devices across the globe

AttendHRM can communicate with devices across the globe even over internet or mobile network. Just configure the devices and software and forget it, AttendHRM will notify you if any device goes down.

Generate a report with multiple languages

AttendHRM supports Unicode and hence many languages. You can store data in multiple languages and also generate reports out of it. Unicode covers all of the languages that can be written in the following scripts: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Thaana, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, Tibetan, Myanmar, Georgian, Hangul, Ethiopic, Cherokee, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Khmer, Mongolian, Han (Japanese, Chinese, Korean ideographs), Hiragana, Katakana, and Yi.

AttendHRM is an HR Software with all these features and much more.