Attendance methods compared: What each check-in method
really proves.

What does an attendance punch have to prove?

An attendance record is a claim: this person started work, at this place, at this time. A method is only as good as its evidence for the first two parts. A fingerprint terminal is strong on who and where, because the finger and the wall it is bolted to are both hard to fake.

A web check-in is weak on both, because anyone with the password can press the button from anywhere.

Strong proof and light proof each have their place. An office of salaried staff does not need the proof a construction site needs, and paying for it buys nothing. The useful question is how much a false punch would cost you, and that is mostly a question of whether attendance drives pay.

How do the attendance methods compare?

When is a biometric terminal the right choice?

A terminal at the door is the strongest evidence there is and the least flexible. It suits a workplace with one entrance and a workforce that passes through it: a factory, a warehouse, a hotel, a clinic. It does nothing for a driver, a site supervisor moving between projects or anyone working from home.

• Ask how the device reaches the software. A terminal that pushes punches out over the internet is simple; an older one that has to be polled needs something on your network to collect from it
• Ask what happens to a punch from a user the system does not recognise. It should be held for review, not dropped and not applied to a guess
• Ask where the fingerprint and face templates are stored. Biometric data is sensitive personal data, and the safest answer is that it never leaves the device
• Ask what happens during an outage. Punches should queue and arrive late, not vanish

In DenwaysHR, terminals from ZKTeco, eSSL and Hikvision connect directly, and a small connector on an office PC collects from older devices that cannot reach the internet. Punches from an unknown user or a former employee are quarantined until someone resolves them. The templates stay on the device: the system stores who punched and when.

How reliable is phone check-in with GPS?

A phone check-in records the time and attaches a location. It is the only method that works for people with no fixed place of work, which is why field teams, sales staff and drivers end up on it whatever else the company uses.

The weakness of phone check-in is identity. The phone proves where the phone was. Adding a selfie at check-in closes part of that gap, on one condition: someone has to be able to look. A selfie nobody reviews deters nothing, so a method like this needs a view where a manager can scan the photos against the places they were taken. DenwaysHR asks for one selfie a day before the phone's timer will start, and shows managers a map with a marker for every check-in that opens the photo.

How does geofenced attendance work?

A geofence is a circle on a map around a place people are allowed to start work from. Inside it the punch goes through; outside it the punch is refused. It turns a recorded location, which somebody has to check afterwards, into a rule that is enforced at the moment of check-in.

• Draw the zone around the real building, with room for the car park and for GPS drift indoors. A radius that is too tight produces refused punches from people who are standing at their desks
• Decide what happens to people who work from more than one site: a zone per branch, or one that covers several
• Decide what happens on a work-from-home day. The rule has to know about it, or every remote day becomes an exception request
• Decide what happens when someone leaves the zone part way through the day

In DenwaysHR a zone is a centre on a map and a radius, set for a branch or for the whole company. Starting work from a phone needs a location inside one of the person's zones, the phone's timer stops when they walk out of it, and an approved work-from-home day switches the fence off for that person for that day. Geofencing starts on the Advance Tracking plan, one up from Basic Tracking.

Is web or desktop check-in enough?

A button on a web page or in a desktop app is the cheapest method and the weakest evidence. For salaried office staff whose pay does not move with their hours, that is usually enough: the record exists to show presence and to feed leave and reporting, not to calculate wages.

Where overtime or hourly pay depends on it, pair it with something stronger.

How should attendance corrections be handled?

Whatever you choose, people will forget to punch out, terminals will lose power and phones will run flat. The quality of an attendance system shows in what happens next. A correction should be a request with a reason, approved by someone other than the person asking, and the original punch should survive alongside the corrected one.

• A missed punch-out should close itself at a sensible time and be marked as such, not sit open overnight
• Corrections should be limited to a recent window, so last quarter cannot be rewritten
• Once a month has been through payroll, its attendance should lock
• Every correction should name who asked, who approved, and what the record said before

How do you choose an attendance method?

• Does attendance decide pay? If overtime or hourly wages come from it, you need strong proof of who: a terminal, or a phone with a selfie that somebody reviews
• Do people start work in one place? If yes, a terminal or a geofence. If no, a phone check-in with a location, and a geofence per site where the sites are fixed
• Do you have more than one kind of worker? Most companies do, and the answer is two methods writing to the same attendance day, not one method forced on everyone