Setting up attendance for a workforce that is not at a desk

01

Choose the capture method per location, not per company

The right method is a property of where the work happens and who is doing it. Standardising on one method across a mixed workforce forces most of it into a mechanism that does not fit.

All three of the following write to the same attendance ledger, so mixing them does not mean maintaining separate records, which is the objection people usually raise before deciding to standardise on the wrong one.

• A biometric reader where a controlled entry point already exists, the natural choice at a factory or office gate
• A shared kiosk for a shift changeover, which handles a hundred people faster than a hundred phones
• A geo-fenced mobile punch for field engineers, sales and site supervisors, which establishes that somebody was at the client site rather than merely logged in

02

Define shifts as rules, not as a roster you retype

In a continuous operation an individual's expected hours change from week to week, and the roster is the only thing that knows. Holding the rotation as a pattern that generates the roster means a rota change is a change to one rule rather than a spreadsheet retyped every Sunday.

It also means the weekly off moves with the rotation. That matters more than it sounds: a day worked on a rotated weekly off is not compensated at the same rate as an ordinary weekday.

03

Get the midnight crossing right before anything else

A night shift that begins at 22:00 and ends at 06:00 must be treated as one unit attributed to the day it began. A system that splits it at the date boundary produces two short days and an overtime figure that is simply wrong.

This is the single most common cause of an attendance report disagreeing with a payroll run. If you test one thing during an evaluation, test one week of a real night rotation.

Watch for itCheck what happens to a shift that begins before midnight on the last day of the month. The attribution decides which month's payroll pays it.

04

Separate hours worked from hours payable

Totalling the hours between a punch-in and a punch-out is arithmetic. Deciding which of those hours attract a premium is policy, and it is the part that has to be written down.

Time beyond the shift is not automatically overtime. It becomes overtime when it was authorised, or when it crosses a threshold you define, and the rate depends on the day type. Where you compensate with time off instead, the same hours become a comp-off entitlement with an expiry rather than a line on a payslip.

• The threshold beyond which extra time counts at all
• Whether prior authorisation is required, and from whom
• Different rates for an ordinary working day, a weekly off and a public holiday
• Whether the employee or the employer chooses between payment and comp-off

05

Set the exception rules, because that is what you are judged on

Every attendance system handles the person who arrives on time. What distinguishes them is the treatment of the exceptions, and those need thresholds rather than judgement, the same lateness should produce the same outcome in every department.

Decide the grace window, the point at which a late arrival becomes a half day, the treatment of a missed punch, and the consequence of repetition. Each of these is an employer decision, and each will be applied by the system exactly as written.

06

Never let a correction overwrite the original

A regularisation should sit alongside the original capture with its reason and its approver attached, not replace it. A ledger that can be edited to say whatever the current answer needs is not evidence of anything.

This is not an abstract principle. An inspection under the applicable establishment legislation tests a specific person on a specific date: why was this worker marked absent, what overtime was paid for this shift, who approved this correction. Answering that requires the original, the correction, the reason and the approver, all four, still retrievable.

07

Close the loop into payroll

Attendance exists, in the end, to decide paid days. Approved leave, loss-of-pay days and authorised overtime are the three outputs the payroll run reads, and each should arrive as a record rather than as a monthly file somebody prepares under time pressure.

Set a fixed cut-off. An application approved after the run has closed should be visible as an arrear against a specific date rather than absorbed into next month.