Time and Attendance: The Benefits of Web-Based Time Clocks

A customizable, user-friendly timeclock is one of the essential features of time and attendance software. Analog timekeeping systems can create extra work and opportunities for errors. Web-based time clocks improve efficiency and reduce frustration. Track your employee’s work hours accurately with a more streamlined and integrated web-based solution. 

What is a web-based time clock?

Conventional punch clocks require employees to share a single card puncher, keypad, or badge scanner mounted on the wall. A web-based time clock allows employees to punch in from their laptop, desktop, or smartphone.

Compatible HR software allows web-based clocks to streamline recordkeeping for everything from payroll to reporting. Upgrading to a web-based time clock has numerous benefits for your HR team and company overall.

The benefits of web-based time clocks

Do you like efficiency and accuracy? Time clock data should be highly reliable and easily accessible, two areas where web-based solutions excel. Key data from any time period and any of your business locations can be instantly accessible online.

Save time and effort

Conventional time clocks leave employees lined up at the beginning and end of the day, each waiting for their turn to clock in and out. Employees appreciate being able to go home immediately at the end of their workday.

Web-based solutions are faster and easier, so employees are paid for the hours they actually work, not the time spent socializing around the clock. 

Combat time theft

Outdated hardware allows employees to cheat the clock with buddy punching, but web-based programs can leverage biometrics, geo-fencing, and location data. 

Unauthorized overtime, extended breaks, and early clock-ins go unnoticed in older systems, but web-based software provides automatic alerts to management. Access timekeeping records instantly, and easily verify whether all employees are following break policies. 

READ: 10 Ways HR Technology Helps Manage Labor Cost More Effectively

Improve recordkeeping and reporting accuracy

More than just fast and user-friendly, web-based time clocks also improve accuracy. Track the hours employees are actually working, not their daily breakroom routines.

Automatically collect the right data for employee reviews, including tardiness and time management. Reward the employees who spend their time more efficiently, comparing precise work hours to productivity. 

Streamline payroll processing for efficiency

Routine (and potentially time-consuming) tasks like payroll should be as efficient as possible. Your timekeeping software should send records directly to payroll without the need for manually transferring numbers. Because of emerging technology and integration, right now is a great time to invest in payroll technology.

LEARN MORE: HR Technology Integration–Why It Matters and Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore It

Easily create and modify schedules

Web-based time clocks allow you to better manage your workforce through changing schedules and shifts. Get alerts when conflicts like approaching overtime arise. Make sure your scheduling software has these important features like compatibility with timekeeping and payroll integration. Allow employees to swap shifts to avoid understaffing.

READ : 8 Reasons Why Your Company Needs to Use Employee Scheduling Software

Manage work hours and attendance

A web-based clock encourages employees to get right to work, since they’re already sitting at their workstation. Track break time and lunches with the same software to automatically enforce company policies. 

Web-based clocks also help you address tardiness and absenteeism with the impartiality of policies implemented automatically. If company policies around breaks and tardiness aren’t enforced, then motivated employees can feel like their hard work is unappreciated.

Grant employees mobile access

It seems counterintuitive to allow staff to clock in from their smartphone, but geofencing makes sure that employees are actually at work. The mobile access granted by web-based time clocks is essential for employees working outside of the office, even when they aren’t primarily telecommuters.

Web-based software allows flexibility for times when your office needs to adapt to a global health crisis or changes in the industry. You can switch to a remote or hybrid workforce while keeping the same mobile-friendly timekeeping system.

Increase employee empowerment

Employees appreciate the transparency of accessible timekeeping systems. In traditional payment systems, an employee may not see their total hours for a pay period until the check arrives.

Give employees access to resolve simple problems, check their accrued PTO, and request time off. Employee self-service relieves supervisors and HR staff of some of their more tedious tasks.

Maximize productivity

Compare the hours of individual employees and teams to productivity over the same period. Identify efficiency problems with apples-to-apples comparisons within each department. Improve performance management by showing your company’s commitment to efficiency. 

READ: Four Keys to Kickstarting a Performance-Based Work Culture

Boost return on investment

On their own, web-based time clocks are a modest investment, but they work best in tandem with compatible payroll solutions and other cutting-edge HR software. Get the most out of your company’s software by integrating systems together, saving the time and labor that normally goes into manual recordkeeping and reporting. 

Web-based time clocks can be adapted to the needs of your business. If conventional timekeeping hardware works better for certain departments and positions, then web-based clocks can be implemented only where needed.

Learn more about Netchex’s options for hardware clocks that can still integrate directly with payroll.

Learn more about Netchex’s Time and Attendance solution:

Learn more about our Time and Attendance software (including web-based time clocks). Our Time and Attendance solution is fully integrated with our entire HR technology suite.

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