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.

Stop Late Comings - Motivate Employees

As an HR person, you always had this difficult problem of managing latecomers. And many times you tried convincing yourself that some employees are too hard to change, no matter how you motivate them.

Here are some points to stop late comings forever, with guaranteed results.

1. Track your employees with an accuracy of minutes

The first and foremost thing to do is to record employee in/out times accurately. As a human, it’s impossible for you to track an employee every time he comes in or goes out. You can automate this by using a time attendance device. If you don’t have one, buy a new one; it doesn’t cost much.

2. Attendance tracking, with an option for manual editing

Time Attendance devices are very accurate in tracking your employees. But as a manager it should be possible for you to add, delete or edit data coming in from time attendance devices. Sometimes, one of your employees is late because he was on a client visit. Your time attendance device will indicate it as a late coming, but as a manager you want to change the data to include the fact.

3. Consolidate and analyze your findings

So you had been tracking employees for some time; now, consolidate your findings. Create employee wise monthly or weekly reports on latecomers. Also create department wise reports on latecomers. Analyze how many hours were lost because of latecomers.

4. Present your findings to your employees and management

Send monthly attendance summary reports to each employee, at the end of every month. Let the employees know that they are being traced. Send department wise attendance reports to department managers.

5. Implement new company policies

If your company doesn’t have good policies on late comings, create new policies. For eg. If an employee is late for more than three times a month, he loses salary for a day.

6. Motivate your employees. Find employee of the month.

As you have accurate attendance data, find the employee with the best attendance record for the month. Display the information in your notice board, publish it in your internal website, and motivate other employees.

Just imagine doing all these manually; it’s nearly impossible. You really need a software that can automate all these. A good HR software can do the following for you:

1. Interprets data coming in from a time attendance devices
2. Allows manual editing of interpreted time attendance data
3. Generates consolidated employee, department wise reports
4. Sends consolidated reports to employees and management each month end.
5. Processes salary considering your attendance rules and company policies.
6. Generates attendance summary to find the employee of the month.

Try a free software

Lenvica offers free attendance software AttendHRM which can be downloaded from  https://www.lenvica.com/download-attendhrm/ and be used in small firms with up to 30 staff members. The software packages are available separately for Attendance HRMS and Payroll and also as a standalone system with these modules integrated. Desktop, Web and Cloud versions are also offered depending on the size and requirements of organizations.