Biometric Time Clocks – Best Choice for Time and Attendance Tracking

It was during the 1990s that more and more small businesses started to incorporate computers and internet into their practices. This allowed them to freely transfer information and to get access to the information whenever they needed it. Many labour intensive tasks such as general ledger, employee payroll and banking were transferred to computer time clock software in order to replace the punching cards that many drawbacks. These time clocks greatly reduced the time that was required in order to prepare employee time cards for processing of payrolls as they automatically showed the total employee hours and the overtime.

The older form of time clock systems relied on card punching where the employee had to enter a code and clock the hours of work. The new system uses a more biological form of identification where the handprint, a vein in the finer or palm or face recognition or iris scan is used as identification parameters. These traits are unique to every person and can reduce fraudulent practices by a great extent.

While many businesses may consider it to be a costly affair, it is quite beneficial for companies that can override its initial cost in the coming years. Some of the top benefits of using biometric time clock systems are discussed below –

•    Compared to the mechanical punch clocks, digital time clock systems can be bought and installed at almost half its price. In addition, there is no need of buying accessories like ribbon and time cards. With just a small initial investment, one can easily install and run these systems in their offices to record every employee punch in and punch out time. These can easily manage about hundreds of employee attendance at multiple locations.

•    Biometric time clocks can easily eliminate the problem of buddy punching. Buddy punching occurs when a friend or a fellow employee punches in and out work on behalf of another employee. This device allows the company to pay the employee for the work that they are doing and cuts down on buddy punching fraud.

•    The employee hours are accurately recorded that ensures that the payroll calculations are also accurate and the business does not lose money paying for any absent workers on the job. The biometric time clocks are mostly fully automated and report the data to a central system where the payroll officer can easily get access to the clocked hours in just a few seconds. This allows them to speed the payment process and the employee get the paychecks much faster.

Many businesses are now eliminating problems that are associated with the older generating and upkeep of paper punch card systems. This type of a system can also save the amount of paper that is used with the paper card system allowing businesses to save on their expenses that they have to incur otherwise. With so many different types of time clock systems available in the market, you need to be careful when looking for the best time clock system that works for your business.