Attendance management

The point of attendance data is that it reaches payroll as recorded. Every transcription between the two is where the errors and the disputes come from.

What attendance is actually for

Three things: paying people correctly, meeting statutory record-keeping obligations, and knowing whether cover was adequate.

Only the first is usually designed for, which is why attendance systems produce a monthly total and cannot answer a question about a specific Tuesday six months ago.

Attendance management, in three chapters

Capture where the work is

For desk workers, a clock is largely ceremonial and an exception-based approach — record absence, assume presence — is less friction for the same result.

For shift, field and shop-floor work, capture has to happen where the work is, from a phone or a terminal. Attendance transcribed from paper in an office is the single largest source of payroll error in shift operations.

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Attendance management, answered.

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