Features to Look for In an Official Employee Time Clock App

Introduction

It's a business truism. The biggest operating cost for any business is labor, and it is not just the hourly wage that is expensive these days. The process of hiring, employing, and retaining great employees along with the managerial and administrative costs of keeping those employees happy and productive is a large part of your operating budget and can even dictate business objectives.

One of the most taxing areas of administrative cost aside from the headache is employee scheduling and time and attendance management. To deal with the many issues related to time and attendance, businesses have started to shift from the old-fashioned time punch clocks to online-based employee time clock solutions.

But not all time clock solutions are created equal. Some are free. Some charge a fee. Some are effective, while others are not. And the price, whether free or not, never guarantees quality.

So, to help business owners navigate the maze of online employee time clock offerings, we have created a base list of the things that are absolutely essential to any decent official time clock for your business.

Let's take a look.

Ability to Clock In and Out

This seems obvious, but for those of you who have familiarity with various kinds of time and attendance systems, some products actually use a manual entry system, where an employee is responsible for manually entering their hours at the end of a shift.

You can probably guess what the problem is. There is no way of ensuring that employees are not rounding up or otherwise stealing hours from you. As much as we would like to believe that the honor system cannot be corrupted, this is not always the case.

Trust, but verify, as someone once said. A time clock app with a clock-in/cock-out feature reduces the opportunity for tampering with the numbers.

Editing Ability

Another feature to look for in an official time clock for your business is the ability to edit inputs. As you know, employees sometimes forget to clock in or out and need an edit to their hours. An official time clock should have the ability to edit these errors and even allow the employee to edit them, subject to managerial approval.

This saves valuable time and does not require an email to management to get the error fixed. This also keeps employees more accountable for the hours that they record.

Time Theft Prevention

A good employee time clock app should have features and a design that inhibits the ability of less than honest employees from stealing hours. These features are sometimes subtle.

A good example is a time clock app feature that tracks clocked time with scheduled time. A more explicit example is the use of biometric technology that only allows the employee to log themselves in.

This functionality reducing the common buddy punching problem, where a coworker punches their friend in before they even arrive at work.

Mobile Funtionality

More and more areas of business are moving toward mobile functionality. This includes time clock apps.

The benefits of mobile technology for time clock apps is that it gives you the ability to manage and monitor employee shifts from the palm of your hand and keep track of exactly who is currently clocked-in, in real-time. Mobile functionality is a must have for any official time clock app.

An issue that is always at the forefront of any manager's mind is ensuring that overtime and labor laws are not violated unintentionally.

An official employee time clock app should have the notifications and reminders that alert you before labor laws are about to be violated or unapproved overtime is about to be logged. This feature greatly reduces labor costs and helps you avoid costly fines and potential lawsuits.

Time Clock Software

Free time clock apps are ok, but they often lack the functionality mentioned above. They are not as secure, open to revisions, and lack the full-service support that fee-based time clocks provide.

If you are looking to integrate an official time clock app into your business, Zip Clock might be for you. If you need full-functionality and scalability, your best bet is to invest in a full-featured online time clock.

Zip Clock helps you keep track of time punches, changing shifts, and eliminate waste and time theft all from one app.

This time and attendance software also work on mobile devices, biometric time clock app that allows you to reduce costs, increase productivity and avoid costly labor fines. If you want the full features and biometric functionality of an employee time clock app, Zip Clock is your best choice.

The biometric time clock app allows you to keep track of who is on the schedule and prevents time theft and labor law violations. Zip Clock also fully integrates with Zip Schedule to fully automate your scheduling, shift management, and payroll processing needs.