When it comes to processing payroll, human resource managers often put off other important tasks to concentrate on this one job alone. For those who manually prepare payroll, they have to work through a collection of available employee attendance data, and then manually calculate work hours and benefits. As with anything done manually, payroll managers are unable to ensure the accuracy of their calculations.

Due to the tedious task of manually collecting and calculating timecards, many businesses are switching to time and attendance tracking software. There are many ways in which time and attendance tracking software makes employee attendance data more accurate and reliable. For example, integrating attendance tracking software with a fingerprint time clock system can automatically record attendance and create payroll reports to streamline payroll processing, thus saving time and money.

Time Cards and Manual Calculations

Spreadsheets and time cards are not a foolproof attendance system. These systems are not as efficient or effective as biometric systems like finger print time clocks. Employees can easily dodge paper-based systems and they fail to discourage corrupt practices like proxy attendance and time theft. By switching to time tracking software, employers can easily resolve these issues ensuring all time is recorded accurately and to the minute.

Less Effort Accomplishes More

Time and attendance tracking software automatically makes important calculations for payroll. There is no need to sit down at the end of every pay period and calculate the amount due for salaries or wages. The implementation of an automated attendance solution reduces the amount of effort required to gather, prepare and process attendance data. In addition, the accuracy of the data collected is increased many times over.

Easy Performance Evaluation

Employee performance evaluations based on accurate attendance data is a key factor in maintaining a happier workforce. When employees know everyone is being evaluated fairly, it can improve employee morale and relations. In addition, it encourages employees to be more productive and punctual because they know they will be held 100% accountable for their work hours. Time tracking software helps organizations reward employees according to the value each one of them brings towards the betterment of the organization.

As you can see, there are many great reasons why HR professionals have begun to embrace human resource attendance software.

Have you ever wondered what features time tracking software should have to suit your everyday business needs? In this article, we take a quick look at the ‘must have’ features that all time tracking software should include.

The first, most important feature time tracking software must have is the ability to record your  employees’ in and out punches. The software should be able to accurately calculate the total amount of time an employee spends within the organization. If your software cannot record work hours, your options for integrating payroll and streamlining business processes is limited.

Secondly, since there are different wage and salary rates applied to various employees, your software should be able to process the information accordingly. An intelligent time attendance system must be able to accommodate various salary rates and pay scales.

Integration of an attendance system with a biometric fingerprint time clock is also very important. A biometric fingerprint time clock system, and other similar systems, help increase attendance data accuracy and employee accountability. Biometric fingerprint systems help decrease employee absenteeism and proxy attendance, as well as buddy punching.

Another feature of a good automated time attendance system is the ability to calculate overtime accurately. Overtime calculations ensure that all employees who are putting in extra time are compensated accordingly, and that your business is not losing any money to time theft.

Exporting employee work data into usable reports can be an intimidating task; yet, employers need to be able to access this attendance data in a timely manner without unnecessary hassle. An ideal time tracking system will support multiple export formats such as PDF, Excel,  and CSV, making this task less of a burden for employers.

Most businesses operate with multiple departments. A good time and attendance system can simultaneously handle data from all departments without inadvertent errors or data mix-ups that are common when manually handling employee information from different departments.

Yet another feature time attendance systems should have is the ability to plan shift schedules for labor-intensive organizations. Allocating workdays and distributing shifts can be very difficult for scheduling managers. By managing employees through a time attendance system, managers can easily decide which employees need a break, which ones need hours and which ones can work on a given assignment.

Last, but not least, scalability is an option that needs to be seriously considered when looking for an employee time tracking solution. Organizations grow and shrink depending on business circumstances. It is extremely important to make sure your organization invests in a system that can accommodate your company’s size, and scale up or down in accordance to your needs.

Fingerprint time clocks can be a great tool to ensure accurate, to-the-minute recording of employee work hours. Businesses small, medium and large are using these devices all over the world because the software technology found in these time tracking tools can be custom designed to meet any specific business requirement.

Although the basic functionality of finger print time clocks is to accurately track employee work hours, these tools have so much more to offer than simple in and out punch recording. Users can create multi-faceted reports with the help of the software used in these devices. These reports help streamline a number of key operational procedures like employee productivity assessments, payroll processing and project evaluation.

Fingerprint time clocks offer an unmatched ease of access and usability. These devices can be connected with any network that has a built in TCP/IP port. The recorded time and attendance data is kept secure at online servers which employ strong security measures to ensure data safety. Access to this data is totally restricted to anyone other than designated personnel.

These finger print time clocks identify employees through the use of unique physical traits, (fingerprints in this case), that cannot be forged. The devices also come with data collection terminals that offer more advanced security features. After the acquisition of such a system, each staff member that is employed at the organization gets his or her fingerprints scanned and stored in the online system database.

The system uses the stored fingerprint information to identify employees when they punch in or out. This biometric functionality ensures that the employee punches, and the time data tracked by these fingerprint time clocks are completely accurate. The fact that fingerprint data cannot be forged makes such time tracking devices one of the most reliable options in the market.

Whether you are a small or medium business, finger print time clocks can help you accurately track time and attendance data.

Is there any difference between Personnel and Human Resource Management? 1 answer on Quora

Is there any difference between Personnel and Human Resource Management?

By Paul Maulin

“If you are unable to quantify something, chances are that you will be unable to manage it.” This tried and true mantra of business management has never been more accurate than in the case of employee time tracking. Increasing competition and escalating labor costs are forcing businesses to employ the latest means of tracking employee work hours. One of the most popular and efficient means to attain this objective is using time and attendance software.

Although payroll is one of the obvious reasons for utilizing time clocks and cloud-based software, different businesses have different reasons for using them. Following are three major reasons businesses opt to benefit from time tracking devices equipped with attendance tracking software.

Payroll Purposes
The most common reason organizations use time and attendance software is for payroll purposes. Employee wages make up a big portion of the operating expenses of any organization, especially service-oriented businesses that do not manufacture or sell inventory.

Attendance software is proficient in creating detailed work hour reports that clearly define each aspect of employee time and attendance. Unlike traditional punch time clocks, these time recording devices track employee hours in an accurate, real-time fashion that can be accessed from anywhere at any time through online accounts.

In addition, time attendance software automatically takes unpaid time such as meal breaks, leaves of absence and paid sick days into account when preparing time and attendance data. It also calculates and incorporates employee payroll functions like benefits, payroll taxes, etc. These features are increasingly useful at the time of payroll processing and save Human Resource departments valuable time that can be spent on other tasks.

Billing Purposes
Another reason for using time clocks is for billing, specifically when the hours worked are a direct cost to the clients and need to be billed accordingly. One example might be a business that provides off-site services and needs to bill each client separately for their time. Some cloud-based time clocks allow employees to punch in and out from remote devices like smart phones allowing accurate, to-the-minute time recording making off-site work easy to track.

The software used in these devices exports employee data to accounting departments to be used for billing purposes. The software can also be customized to integrate with an organization’s current accounting software and create invoices to bill clients.

Costing Purposes
Product costing is also a major reason manufacturing companies use time and attendance software. The manufacturing industry needs to track employee work hours when employee time is a direct cost to the product. This data is helpful in determining the cost of new or existing products. The reliable information recorded by the software helps to determine product costs more accurately.

All businesses, big or small, should implement time and attendance software to gain from the incremental benefits it can offer. Modern time clocks not only just keep time, but also ensure that it is utilized in the best possible manner.

Article Source: Time and Attendance Software for Payroll, Costing and Billing