Question

How does the clock keep them from clocking in when they are not supposed to?

How does it know everyone's schedule?

How does the clock know if an employee was approved to have time off?   

In most cases, employees can clock in or have someone clock in for them whenever they want. How does the clock keep them from clocking in when they are not supposed to? How does it know everyone's schedule? How does the clock know if an employee was approved to have time off? When I prepared payroll, I would not process the pay for any employee unless their supervisor approved it. Otherwise, they could work when they wanted and not work when they didn't want to and leave the company short-handed.

Answer 1

Employee time clocks solve a lot of problems that you might not even be aware you have or aren’t aware are traced back to employee time tracking. We have five very good reasons you should invest in an employee time clock system.

1. Employee Time Clocks Help You Save Time And Money

Using an employee time clock can help you save time and money by reducing the work it takes to calculate employee hours.

2. Reduce fraud.

Employee fraud (yes, it happens) is eliminated, whether it stems from employees clocking in when they aren’t at work, or asking their friends to clock in for them if they’re running late. When I Work offers, for example, GPS limitations on where employees need to be in order to clock in. They can’t clock in from their apartment while still in bed, for example, but have to be at your business.

3. Human error in calculating employee hours is removed.

Calculating time, particularly when dealing with minutes and breaks, is tough. It’s easy to make a mistake, which then leads to future work to rectify the mistake in later employee paychecks (if the mistake is even caught).

4.Data collection and calculations are automated.

Let the computers do the work instead of you and a calculator and a spreadsheet. Even hand-entered data into a program can be eliminated by some employee time clock systems.

5. Shift the burden.

An employee time clock puts an end to chasing down employees to get their timesheets from them. In some ways, the burden of keeping track of time is placed on the individual employee who will be paid for the time. For that reason, the more automated and painless your employee time clock is, the better. You don’t want to increase the workload of employees and have them wasting time in line for a punch clock or tallying up their hours. Shift the burden, but reduce the burden while you do so.

Using an employee time clock gives you quick access to information and reports that show you attendance issues before they get away from you, things like repeated tardiness, systematic absences (e.g. always “sick” on Fridays), and so on.

Employee Time Clocks Show You Real-Time Labor Costs

Employee Time Clocks Keep Payroll Accurate

We’ve talked about how using an employee time clock can help save money by automating the whole time-collection process, but that plays into payroll accuracy. Absenteeism costs are often hidden in payroll, and an employee time clock can have a positive impact on that issue in a few ways.

• Take into account payroll policies. Depending on the employee time clock system you use, you can plug your policies into it and reduce human error. Things like paid time off, vacation, and other forms of absence that have a payroll policy associated with it are automatically calculated without human hands having to dig through past records and keep tabs.
• Integrate with a direct deposit system. An automated time clock segues well into an automated direct deposit payroll system. The cost reductions of consumable paper, processing, printing, and distributing add up over time.
• Reduce costly errors. The American Payroll Association estimates that errors in the manual calculation of time cost businesses up to 7% of their payroll costs.