Why use employee attendance software?

Employee attendance tracking is a priority for many employers, because the benefits are numerous. Not only does it make it easier to schedule annual leave and identify any attendance issues, but it also improves staff morale when everyone is paid correctly for the hours they’ve worked.

There are many different ways to track employee attendance, including:

• Manually entering employee hours into a spreadsheet
• Card swiping
• High-tech fingerprint and retina scans
• Tracking employees through a GPS system
• A traditional attendance register

However, for small business owners, many of these options aren’t viable. They may prove too costly, such as the GPS tracking and fingerprint scans, or involve too much admin, like the manual spreadsheets and attendance register.

Employers need a system of attendance tracking that is reliable, free from errors and that won’t take up too much of their time. We believe that HR software ticks all of those boxes and more.

In this article we break down the key advantages of employee attendance software and how it can improve the way you run your business.

Holiday management

One of the most-used features of HR software is the ability to manage annual leave. The self-service element saves employers huge amounts of time: employees can view their remaining holiday entitlement and book time off in seconds.

You’ll then receive a notification of their request and can approve or refuse it immediately. You’ll also be able to view a complete company calendar to see which employees have time off, when it is and how long for. This way, you’ll be able to organise requests so that you always have enough staff on hand.

Absence management

When employees are off sick, you can easily log their absence against their employee file so it’s visible to the team. Staff can also book off absences in advance, for example if they need to go to a doctor or dentist appointment.

HR software will also let you calculate the Bradford Factor, which will help you to identify any suspicious sickness patterns that may have a negative impact on your business.

As well as sickness absences, your software will also show you when staff are working from home, on a training course or at a different site, meaning you can check at a glance where everybody is and when.

Time off calculator

Many HR software providers will automatically make some calculations for you, saving you time and guaranteeing a higher level of accuracy. For example, software can work out holiday entitlement for each staff member, even if they work part-time or are on flexible hours.

You’ll also be able to see how much time off in lieu an employee has earned, and what the pro-rata holiday entitlement is for part-time workers. This saves you messing about with a list of figures and a calculator, helping to take some of the stress out of HR.

Timesheets

If you have staff members who are paid hourly or who work flexible hours, you’ll likely be dealing with timesheets.

Let’s be honest: timesheets are not the most exciting part of employee management. They’re time-consuming, sometimes inaccurate and involve boring calculations. However, with HR software, keeping track of hours worked is easy.

Employees simply type in their hours and submit their timesheets. You’ll get a notification to view them and can then approve or reject depending on if you think they’re correct or not. The software will also calculate the correct wage owed according to hours worked, as well as any holiday entitlement.

This streamlines the whole process from start to finish, reducing admin time and allowing you to focus on what you really want to be doing.

HR reports

With HR software, keeping track of trends and statistics within your business has never been simpler. Sickness reports are useful for seeing how many hours’ work that sickness absence has lost your company, and for identifying if an employee tends to be sick on Fridays, or if they go to the doctors every other Monday.

Some HR software providers can generate a Holiday Accrual Report to comply with new Company Law that requires businesses to report any unused annual leave. This information can be provided in seconds, giving you one less thing to worry about.

Payroll integration

If your HR software only did the above, it would still be amazing. But when it goes one step further and links with payroll to help ensure wages and salaries are calculated correctly, it becomes indispensable.

The best software providers will pull information about an employee’s hours, sick pay and maternity/paternity pay and use it to work out the right figure for their payslip. The software can then communicate those changes to HMRC to ensure you stay on top of payroll.

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