Many businesses today need to keep accurate records of employee shifts, hours worked, overtime hours, time off, and much more. These records influence tax calculations and payroll, benefits eligibility, and legal compliance. So it’s very important to produce accurate data! Luckily, with time and attendance software, businesses no longer have to keep paper trails of this information or enter it manually. Time and attendance software benefits businesses of all types and sizes in multiple ways.
What is Time & Attendance Software?
A time and attendance system is a type of software that makes businesses’ lives easier – particularly business owners, employees, HR teams, and payroll managers. It is a cloud-based software that can be easily installed to track:
- Work hours (aka employee shifts)
- Break hours
- Holidays and time off
- Time spent on specific projects
For these reasons, time and attendance software benefits businesses in many ways. Conveniently, time and attendance software typically integrates with back-end necessities like payroll software and accounting software. This helps to streamline bookkeeping and keep the most accurate records with minimal effort. The result is noticeable improvements to operations and productivity, helping employees save tons of hours on manual paperwork. Not to mention, it helps reduce errors as much as possible when it comes to time tracking, payroll, and tax calculations.
8 Benefits of Time & Attendance Software
1. Go digital
Time and attendance software is cloud-based and completely digital. What does this mean?
Basically, you will be able to access the time and attendance system using a variety of mobile devices – including computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, and more. Additionally, you will no longer need to keep paper records or tedious spreadsheets of time and attendance data. Time and attendance systems integrate with your back-end systems and softwares. This way, your employees clock in using the device once, and the data is digitally stored in the cloud, as well as streamlined with all integrated software. You can pull time and attendance information at any time moving forward.
2. Reduce costs
There are many ways in which time and attendance systems help to reduce costs. Firstly, it holds employees accountable for clocking in and out of their shifts correctly. As a result, it will reduce labor costs due to inaccurate attendance reports and overpayment.
Manual bookkeeping can also cost businesses tons of unnecessary money. Because time and attendance software is automated, it will help businesses slash costs when it comes to paying accountants and bookkeepers, as well as reducing the amount of time HR spends on payroll and taxes.
Lastly, since time and attendance software is cloud-based, businesses with multiple locations can streamline all attendance data across all locations. Business owners and HR teams can cut operational costs by using one software across all their locations, as well as significantly cut labor costs on oversight.
3. Simplify payroll
Time and attendance software is completely automated and streamlined with your payroll process. This means that when an employee clocks in, the data is instantly streamlined with your payroll preparation. The result is accurate payroll processing, avoiding errors on paycheck calculations, overtime, and taxes.
You’ll never have to spend those long hours calculating payroll and taxes – everything is automatic and calculated with the touch of a button.
4. Minimize errors
Without automated software for time and attendance needs, it can be very easy to produce payroll and tax errors. For instance, when companies calculate payroll manually in-house, 33% of businesses produce taxes with errors – resulting in penalties and fees. Take a further look at common payroll and tax errors that could occur without time and attendance software.
With automated time and attendance software, you simply enter employee data once and that data is streamlined to all your back-end software. You won’t have to worry about errors when it comes to taxes, payroll, vacation hours and time off, benefits eligibility, overtime, and much more!
5. Ease of use
Time and attendance software is beneficial to employees as well as upper level management. Employees won’t have to worry about manually punching in and out of their shifts. The software makes it extremely easy for employees to clock in once they arrive and clock out when leaving. For instance, there are biometric time and attendance systems available, which simply require employees to scan their fingerprint (or similar method) to start or end their shifts.
Also, time and attendance systems are so easy to use that most organizations do not have to worry about training employees on how to use the system. It is a “plug and play” solution, meaning that after installation, the system is up and ready to go - with no training necessary.
6. Boost productivity
Time and attendance systems help to keep your entire business productive. For employees, they’ll be able to clock in instantly and start their workday immediately. For HR teams and payroll managers, the payroll and tax process will be completely automated, seriously cutting down the time needed for payroll processing.
Even businesses with salary-based employees can boost productivity, since the software can track time spent on certain projects and taskwork. This will allow managers and business owners to spend less time on tedious paperwork and more time on strategy and data analysis. Operations across your whole business will be more efficient.
7. Automate scheduling
There are tons of benefits time and attendance systems offer when it comes to scheduling. First of all, most software options have an automated scheduling tool for managers and business owners. This allows them to easily see who is available to work on which days and times. Additionally, it can help them to schedule employees with the right amount of hours weekly, avoid overtime, and plan ahead to give employees time off.
Additionally, time and attendance software helps to reduce absenteeism. Many systems require employees to provide a reason as to why they are absent, and this data gets reported to managers. Managers and business owners can also pull data about absenteeism instantly, such as the number of absences in a period of time, as to prevent this issue down the line.
8. Remain compliant
As you probably already know, businesses must stay compliant with legal rules and regulations as they pertain to time and attendance. Without automated software, it’s easy to inaccurately calculate time worked, overtime, and more. If you inaccurately calculate this data, you run the risk of incurring tax penalties and fees, lawsuits from unhappy employees, and much more.
Luckily, time and attendance software makes it so easy to avoid these complicated issues and scenarios. You’re much better off safe than sorry, rather than facing these potentially devastating, costly, and time-consuming situations.
More Information
There are additional ways businesses can benefit from time and attendance software. If you do not already use a time and attendance software, keep in mind that many payroll services have built-in time and attendance systems. Take a look at these 8 signs your business needs a payroll service. To get an idea of what a payroll service offers, you can start by exploring Paychex payroll services, one of the most popular payroll providers.
Also, if you use an access control system, time and attendance software can be integrated with this technology. Time and attendance data will be pulled when employees gain access to your building(s) and pushed to other back-end systems automatically, like payroll. You can do all of this with minimal oversight on your part! Explore door access control systems as well as access control providers further.
If you are ready to compare prices for time and attendance software, we can help you get started! Our time and attendance comparison tool helps business leaders compare up to 5 time and attendance system options. We’re completely free to use, and you save time and effort on research. It’s a win-win!