Must-Have Features of an Attendance Management Software

Managing your employee attendance is one of the most crucial tasks for the organisation and every organisation however big or small has an attendance management process deployed to regularly track employee attendance and leaves. Most of the company either manually update their employee data while others use an automated system. Talking about the manual recording of your employee attendance, this method takes up a lot of time of the HR department and employees since you maintain an excel sheet or register for tracking outgoing and ingoing employee which is very frustrative since it repetitive nature of maintaining it every single working day, which is the why most of the company invest in time and attendance management software, that allows you to automate the employee attendance process like biometric attendance, leave, approval flow etc.

Investing in attendance management software will not reduce the labour cost but also reduce the workload on the HR department. But how to choose the right software that fits your organization when there are a number of options available in the market. In this article, we guide you on how to select the best time and attendance software that will fit your organisation needs and policies:

Easy to Use

Before investing in any software you must check the user-friendliness of the software. If the app is complicated it will waste your employees time and effort in learning and adapting to the software. Not only that it will also increase the cost of implementation and adoption rate will be higher as well. 

Mobile App

Every efficient software has its own mobile app today and so should be your time and attendance management software as well. Being able to clock in and out from your mobile phones, apply for leaves or time offs, you can also use geotagging and IP restriction features to limit your employee movement which can be really helpful for your employees during COVID. It will also be easier for the manager to keep track of employee leaves and attendance and also approving leaves and attendance updates on the app itself. 

This is why it is important that your attendance management software offers you mobile apps as well.

Overtime

Most of the organisations have overtime policy in their HR policy for compensating and rewarding an employee for working more than their usual hour which is also one of the most important features to look for in your time and attendance software. The software should be able to record and calculate overtime hours of your employees. Your attendance management software should be able to calculate the weekly, daily and mixed over time.

Audit

With an audit feature, you will be able to prepare accurate tracking of the employee hours and any changes done to the original data in the software by other users. This feature will help maintain the effectiveness and easy to track employee details in the software.

Time off and Leaves Tracking

You never know when your employee might get sick or any emergency arises, which forces them to take an urgent leave. If you are manually updating leaves it becomes difficult for you to record this kind of unexpected leaves. That is why you should look for a time and attendance management software that offers the ability to apply for same-day leaves and approval and also track leaves of your employees for the day, so you can streamline any personal dependency.

Employee Self-service Portal

One of the best features in a time and attendance software which offers employees a self-service portal that allows them to easily mark their work hours and time off by themselves, raise leave requests, update attendance and maintain attendance records. This eliminates the need for long email replies or going to  HR or the manager for approval.

Notification

Time and attendance software have a notification feature that sends an alert to employees or managers whenever they forgot to punch in or punch out and also send a notification for attendance updates and when their leaves are approved by their manager. Timely notification can help remind employees of their leave and attendance.

Integration Capabilities

A must-have feature for every business, this feature gives you the ability to integrate with other tools and software in the organisation, this feature also helps to integrate with your payroll software. Integrating it with your payroll software will allow you to automate the payroll and compensation process, you can calculate overtime pay and dock pay too. This will also eliminate the possibility of human errors which occurred while manually calculating payroll.so whenever you plan to invest in a time and attendance software ask your vendor about the ability to integrate with other HR tools in the organisation.

Reports

Creating and maintaining records of your employee attendance is a key responsibility of the HR. Look for a time and attendance management software that gives you the ability to generate reports on the no of hours worked, overtime, leave etc which can be downloaded in pdf or excel format. However, you will need software that can provide detailed insights into your employee’s work patterns.

Analytics

Time and attendance management comes with analytics features that offer insights to employee attendance patterns, highlight over time and also the employee leaves behaviour. This kind of feature gives you proper insights in developing your attendance policy and help you rectify employee behaviour and increase employee productivity.

Closing

Managing time and attendance of your employees is a difficult task if done manually and you shouldn’t put an unnecessary burden on your HR department. Invest in efficient attendance management software, so not only your HR has the time to work on improving organisation policy but also help your organisation in reducing time loss and increasing productivity. This also gives the manager a clear picture of what their employees are doing, who are on leaves, who is working on the field and who is with clients. So you must check the above points before investing in a time and attendance management software.