Best Employee Attendance Tracking Software Compared

For small business owners who work with hourly employees, every minute logged on their timesheets counts.

This is because it is essential for employers to understand what staff members are working on and how much time employees need to complete all their tasks. Many business owners also want to know that their team members are spending and accounting for their time responsibly. It may seem like overkill, but wasted time adds up quickly and ends up costing you.

This is where employee attendance tracking tools come in handy. Once small business owners have these realizations, they often start looking to move from pen and paper systems to punch clocks or biometric time clocks. But then they realise:

They aren't the most reliable because they don't prevent friend punches and other forms of time theft. They won't help you stay compliant because they can't help you track overtime or breaks to stay ahead of state and local labor laws. They don't make payroll easy because you still have to export your time tracking data and create timesheets yourself.

So what's the solution? Attendance tracking software, which isn't as intimidating as it sounds. Time and attendance tracking software is a valuable — and often affordable — investment that can help you avoid a host of costly payroll errors and inaccuracies. That's why we've developed this guide with everything you need to know about employee attendance tracking tools for your small business.

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4 Ways to Track Employee Attendance

Time tracking can be as simple or as sophisticated as you want. But these are four common ways employers track employee attendance.

1. Pen and paper timesheets

The pen and paper method is inexpensive, flexible, and easy to implement and use, especially for small businesses. It can be a printed spreadsheet or a piece of paper on a clipboard. You can use it to track employee hours, breaks, and even calculate overtime.

Pen and paper timesheets are a good alternative when you're getting started, but they have limitations. They require employees to work under an honor system, and some team members may be more specific about recording their working hours than others. And, if employers don't track and verify employee hours carefully, people can easily make mistakes or intentionally record wrong start and end times.

2. Digital Timesheets

With digital timesheets, employees track their hours on a spreadsheet or Excel timesheet. They are similar to paper timesheets but offer more location flexibility: employees can log their hours anywhere as long as they have access to the timesheet link and the internet.

Like paper timesheets, digital timesheets are inexpensive and easy to use, but they can also make payroll processing easier for managers, especially with accounting features on Excel or Google Sheets. However, employers who use them also need to be confident that their employees will be honest about tracking hours worked. This downside may not be durable or scalable enough for small, rapidly growing businesses.

3. Punch clocks

Many employers in industries such as construction or manufacturing use time clocks and time cards to track employee hours, as they work well when you have limited access to computers or the internet on a job site.

Time clocks have been around for decades, and you can find both analog and digital versions. To use a time clock, employees typically insert their time cards into a slot and clock in or out. The time stamp then writes the shift start and end times on the card.

Some employers prefer time stamps because they allow for accurate time tracking and can prevent some forms of time theft. However, you may not feel comfortable using parking meters if you are concerned about the "bush between friends", i.e. when an employee clocks in or out to one or more absent colleagues.

4. Biometric clocks

Biometric clocks may seem futuristic to the spreadsheet users among you, but they can be an effective way to prevent time theft...