Clocking systems for Running a Successful Business

Time Management Illustration
Running a Successful Business with Clocking's

Clocking in Systems for running a successful business. If you keep accurate records, you’ll quickly notice which departments need more or fewer hands. Such data shows you when and how hard your employees are working. You can also better ensure the safety of everyone within your premises with your clocking in system.

Previously, Excel spreadsheets and punching cards worked just fine. But many employers have realised that these old systems are too time-consuming. Also, dishonest employees can easily manipulate such manual tools.

Additionally, the workplace has evolved. Now you may need to keep track of employees on-site at multiple locations or of those working remotely.

This In-depth article will give you the facts about clocking-in systems while helping you choose the best one for your business.

Running a Successful Business

Why is Time Keeping Important in the Workplace?

Perhaps the most known benefit of clocking in systems is timekeeping. When workers know you are keeping track of their arrival, they’ll want to come to work on time. But why is timekeeping so crucial?

As a business owner, your most valuable resource is staffing. So if your employees are coming to work late, taking longer lunch breaks, or leaving early, the business won’t last long.

Employees also feel safe knowing their punctuality and diligence don’t go unnoticed.

You should pay for eight hours if someone works eight hours, not seven. An employee who’s often late therefore becomes a liability.

But an excellent clocking-in system does more than timekeeping when running a Successful Business

Employee Clock in Systems Benefits

  • Safety: If you have an accurate record of who’s in the building/office at all times, you can easily take roll calls when necessary. For example, rescue workers know how many lives are at risk in case of a fire alarm.
  • Keeping track of overtime and payroll: Keeping manual records of paid overtime can be tedious. Clock-in systems allow employees to enter how much time they have worked so you can automate the payroll. Additionally, you can supply data to the government to show that your workers don’t work unauthorized overtime if you need to.
  • Detecting issues before they explode: Modern clocking-in systems record completed tasks, specific locations, and employee workflow. So you can tell which job is taking too long and if a staff member is likely to meet their deadlines. You can therefore detect and rectify possible delays and errors before it’s too late.
  • Work remotely: You don’t have to be at the office to know how your business is fairing. Mobile clocking-in systems allow you to be in the loop even when you’re travelling or are attending to other important matters.

Digital

  • Human resource management: Clocking in systems can show you if your current staff is overworked. You can also better manage leave days and sick offs because you know how many days everyone has been present.
  • Seamless records: Digital clocking-in systems upload data to the cloud. The information is accessible to employees (on their personalized dashboards) and business owners. So records are hardly lost, which promotes a trusting relationship between you and your workers.
  • Saves you money: Employees stealing time from work can eventually cost you money. A clocking-in system ensures everyone does what you pay them to do. They also can’t ask for overtime wages they don’t deserve.
  • You can reward genuine hard work because you have accurate data. That way, you incentivize hard work and timekeeping.

Running a Successful Business for Clock in Systems

As a small business owner, you may not have a big budget for a clock-in system. It’s great to know that your won’t need much money to set up a clocking system for your business.

Look for a clocking-in system that with running a Successful Business you can:

  • Automatically records the time your employees start and stop working every day.
  • Can record and track geographic locations.
  • Allows you to export collected data and integrate it with other processes such as payroll or time offs.
  • Lets employees sign in and out using a mobile app.
  • Can record and track geographic locations.
  • It does not require you to break the bank.

Fortunately, you can find an easy-to-use mobile clocking system that suits your business’s needs at BioSyn. The App, which you can get in iStore, Play Store, and Huawei Store, lets you choose a radius within which employees can clock into the system. The app is so user-friendly that even new employees can use it within the first day.

It is best to track how many hours your employees spend working for your business to succeed. Tracking individual tasks and projects also improves the company’s efficiency and increases profits.

Clocking System for Employees: Attendance Solution

Clocking System for Employees

Optimizing Workforce Efficiency with Clocking Systems

The BCEA Register

The BCEA register is your first stop for Time and Attendance in South Africa. The flaws with a manual entry clock registry are countless and we would of course not recommend it.

Employees can write down clock times for each other, and you have no way to control this. It is a cheap solution though. But cheap buys cheap.

We will look at the more advanced rules a proper time and attendance system can provide below, including accurate overtime calculation features that ensure fair compensation and compliance with labor laws.

Time and Attendance in South Africa
Payroll South Africa Systems

Ultimate Guide to Shift Roster Format: How to Create Efficient Work Schedules

The sensitivity of time and attendance

A reliable shift roster format is crucial for any company’s time and attendance system. A clock system that does not accommodate all your shift requirements can cause significant problems.

When the system fails to capture accurate data, the export file sent to your payroll system may contain incorrect values, leading to payroll errors. For example, if the system calculates faulty overtime, it can result in employee dissatisfaction or even strikes.

Moreover, an inflexible clock system often forces HR personnel to manually modify attendance records, which introduces further errors and consumes valuable time. By implementing the correct shift roster format within your clock system, you can save countless hours of HR work and ensure accurate payroll data.

This not only improves operational efficiency but also helps maintain employee trust and compliance with labor regulations.

Advanced Time and Attendance in South Africa

Let’s have a look at a few of the important and more difficult time and attendance rules to use in a system:

  • Shift Splits

    The ability of the system to split normal time into overtime. The split applies on Saturdays, Sundays and Paid Public Holidays at 00h.

  • Shift Weights or Automatic Shift Selection

    The purpose of the time and attendance system is to reduce manual labor for your personnel. This disappears when you have to assign shifts by hand.

  • 24+ Hour Shifts

    Accommodating drivers who often work 24+ hour shifts in the transport industry.

  • Night Bonus

    Bonus time or units that assigned for working nights out.

  • Paid Public Holidays

    The capability of the system to automate paid public holidays.

  • Time and Attendance in South Africa: Employee Scheduling or Rostering

    The ease and automation of rostering or employee scheduling.

Understanding Shift Splits for Night Workers

Any company who has employees working night shifts over weekends need this rule. Lets look at an employee who starts to work on a Friday at 18h and works till Saturday 06h. The initial 6 hours from Friday 18h to Saturday 00h must link to normal time. The second half worked from Saturday 00h to 06h must link to overtime 1.5.

The same applies when working from Saturday 18h to Sunday 06h. The initial 6 hours from Saturday 18h to Saturday 00h must link to overtime 1.5. If it is the case, the second half worked from Sunday 00h to 06h must link to overtime 2.0.

You will sit with a lot of headaches if your time and attendance system can not perform this calculation. So your HR personnel would need to spend a lot of hours correcting values. This can cause a lot of mistakes in your payroll hours. If automated, there will be zero possibilities of making mistakes on these calculations.

Streamlining Shift Selection: Exploring Automatic Options in BioSyn

Many clock systems need a reasonable amount of manual intervention to identify shifts. Automatic shift selection can reduce the strain on your payroll personnel. Lets look at a few automatic shift selection options in BioSyn:

Option 1: Shift Clash Weight

The system measures the total “clash” period between clock entries and shifts. The system will use the shift with the biggest weight.

Option 2: Distance to Start/End Times

The system will move on to option 2 if there are many shifts with an equal weight. The system will now calculate the distance between the clock entry and the shift start and end times.

Option 3: Nearest shift selected

The third option selects shifts based on previous selections. BioSyn implements this rule if many shifts with an equal start/end distance is identified. BioSyn identify a shift based on shift selections around the clock entries.

Using these options ensures close to 99% accuracy on automatic shift selection. In result, BioSyn reduces manual shift selection to virtually zero.

Extended Shift Options for Enhanced Flexibility

BioSyn eases your burden with 24, 48, 72+ hour shifts. Lunch hours and night bonuses is a headache if it is not implemented properly. BioSyn has no limit on the maximum required hours of a shift.

Evening Night Bonus Program

BioSyn implements a wide range of night bonus options. Options include the ability to give unit-based allocations for nights out. Optionally give night out bonus based on hours worked in full or partial.

Implementing Paid Public Holidays at BioSyn

Paid public holidays can be such a nightmare! BioSyn provides a proper range of options to implement paid public holidays. BioSyn spreads options across the company, departments or employees. This gives you a strong foundation for paid public holiday implementations.

Employee Scheduling or Rostering

Employee scheduling can be exceptionally time consuming. BioSyn eases the burden with an easy to scheduling page. BioSyn also includes automated rostering based on sales data. Many of our clients contribute to our development process when it comes to rostering.

Payroll Integration Systems

A powerful consideration, exporting to payroll

Integrating Time and Attendance in South Africa with Payroll

 

A critical consideration is the integration capability of the time and attendance system.  There are numerous payroll systems that integrate with time and attendance in South Africa. Read our blog about Understanding Payroll Integration. Direct integration must be your preference. Stronger integration with regards to employees, leave and hours will reduce administration hours. Read more on Export to Payroll.


While it can be challenging to assess the support strength of a company beforehand, reviewing their current client base is a strong indicator of their reliability and expertise. Choosing a provider with proven support capabilities will help you maintain accurate employee attendance reports, streamline payroll processing, and safeguard your workforce data.

Time and Attendance in South Africa: Choosing a Reliable Provider

When selecting a time and attendance provider, there are several key considerations to keep in mind, including the optimizing for system’s efficiency. It’s essential to evaluate all aspects thoroughly before making your final decision. Conducting a trial period is an excellent way to test a time and attendance provider before committing fully. Additionally, reviewing the provider’s client base and examining examples of reports and statistics can provide valuable insights into the system’s capabilities.

 Implementing a robust Clocking System for Employees can significantly improve accuracy and streamline payroll processes.If you’re unsure or need guidance on your next steps, feel free to contact BioSyn for advice.

Strong Support for Clocking System for Employee Devices

Our final focus point is strong support for Clocking System for Employees devices, which is essential for generating accurate employee attendance reports. Since time and attendance systems are a sensitive part of your business operations, having reliable support is crucial.

When selecting a time and attendance provider, it is important to identify a strong support team that can handle your needs efficiently.

BioSyn believes that back-end data administration must remain with the clock system provider. This allows your Payroll personnel to focus on their primary tasks only, such as payroll management. It is difficult to identify the support strength of a company beforehand. But looking at their current client base should be a strong indicator.

Clocking System for Employees

Clocking System for Employees: Enhancing Time Management and Productivity

Employee attendance tracking software is essential for businesses aiming to improve workforce management, ensure compliance with labor laws, and boost productivity. Such software automates the process of recording employee attendance, reducing errors and administrative workload.

Key Benefits of Employee Clocking Systems

  • Accurate Time Tracking: Reduces errors in recording work hours and ensures precise payroll processing.
  • Improved Productivity: Provides insights into employee activity trends, enabling better management of tasks and schedules.
  • Compliance and Transparency: Ensures adherence to labor laws while fostering trust through impartial tracking methods.
  • Flexible Clocking Options: Includes biometric systems, mobile apps, or software solutions for both on-site and remote employees.

Conclusion

By implementing robust Clocking System for Employees Devices, organizations can save time, reduce administrative burdens, and boost overall employee morale.

Streamline Business Operations – Payroll Systems Services

Understanding TIme & Attendance and Payroll Integration

Clocking in during the attendance consultation session is crucial. Whether your company is implementing a new system or looking to upgrade an existing one, your integration with a payroll system plays a pivotal role in your decision of selecting both a time and attendance and a payroll system. There are, however, various responsibilities to consider when analyzing integration between time and attendance and payroll systems.

Time and Attendance and Payroll

Time and Attendance vs Payroll System Responsibilities

Many clients believe that the same company should provide both time and attendance and payroll functionality. Although a few systems offer both modules, it’s important to understand why many separate companies focus on time and attendance or payroll. Before we delve deeper into integration, let’s first explore why these two services are often offered by different companies.

  • Most countries, especially in Africa, enforce complex tax and labor laws. Both systems must adhere to these laws and any amendments over time.
  • Time and attendance rules and calculations often become convoluted. Factors such as splits into Saturdays, Sundays, 24–96-hour shifts, shift weights, and paid public holidays can complicate matters. Developing such a system proves costly and time-consuming.
  • The effectiveness of your time and attendance system directly influences the time and workload needed to complete payroll successfully. Therefore, a robust time and attendance system must excel in performance and accuracy.
  • It is crucial to implement a time and attendance system that aligns with the intricacies of your labor laws and payroll rules. Your company must legally enforce and maintain specific regulations.
  • Choosing the wrong system will lead to numerous manual data modifications, resulting in wasted time that could be better spent elsewhere.

 It is therefore important that when you identified the time and attendance system that caters for your rule requirements, you also must identify whether it fulfils your payroll integration needs.
Don’t miss out on all the features BioSyn has to offer, find out more here.

What is payroll integration?

Before we start to discuss payroll integration, it is crucial to understand what integration truly means. We often have a potential client enquiring as to whether we can integrate with a payroll system, such as Sage, PSIber, PaySpace, SimplePay, and many more. When we ask a client, what do you mean (or understand) by “integration”, 90% of the time the answer is: “Can you export to a specific payroll system?”.

BioSyn also owns the web application development company that develops our time and attendance system. So for our developers “integration” can be interpreted in multiple ways. There can be either (and/or) indirect or direct integration.

Indirect Payroll Integration refers to the process of exporting an XLS, CSV or TXT file from your time and attendance solution and importing it into your payroll solution. Generally, the format of exports has been standardized by time and attendance and payroll solutions. In certain cases, a more unique or customized export file must be provided by the time and attendance provider.

Time and Attendance Integration: Advantages and Disadvantages

Direct Payroll Integration refers to the process of building direct one- or two-way communication between the time and attendance and payroll systems. This is usually done by utilizing APIs (what is an API?). This means that if you perform an action in one system, the data is automatically “pushed” or “pulled” from one system to the other without requiring any manual intervention by the user. This eliminates numerous pitfalls not covered by manual integration.

Advantages and disadvantages of Time and Attendance and Payroll Integration

Indirect Integration

Direct Integration

Advantages

1. A manual export and import action must be performed by a user to complete the export. This creates a strong expectation on the user surrounding accountability and therefore to verify their data before importing.

2. Most export/import formats have been standardised across time and attendance and payroll solutions.

3. Eliminates the need for paper.

4. Reduces the time it takes to complete your payroll versus traditional paper-based options.

1. Only enter data (e.g., employees, leave or
employment histories) once, and the integration will
synchronize the data between the two systems.

2. It eliminates any possibilities for manual data
manipulation mistakes. Greatly improving reliability
of payroll data.

3. Drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to
administrate and export payroll data, often an
improvement by as much as a 1000%.

Disadvantages

1. Leaves room for manipulation of data in-between
exporting and importing.
2. Often requires data to be entered in duplicate, e.g.,
adding employees, leave or employment histories in
both your time and attendance system as well as
your payroll system.
3. Often requires payroll administrators to perform
additional actions by hand.
4. Manual actions can leave room for mistakes and
incorrect salary payments.
5. Can be time consuming with a large number of
payroll batches that require exporting.

1. Integration is greatly dependent on the integration
capabilities of both the time and attendance and
payroll solution.
2. Implementing integration between two systems can
be costly if it is not already done.
3. Integration could possibly be one-way only, forcing
you to utilize one system as your base, and the
other as a secondary source. This could require you
to switch primary data systems when implementing
a new system.

Choosing between direct and indirect integration

In comparison, it is clear that considering indirect vs direct integration should not even be on the table with the aforementioned advantages of direct integration. While indirect integration has a few advantages above a paper-based solution, it cannot compare to the powerful benefits of direct payroll integration. Direct integration eliminates human error as well as a tremendous reduction in the possibility of fraud.
The duplicate entry of data into two separate systems can also increase the number of hours required for payroll personnel to insert and maintain data.

The more employees a company has, the higher their requirement for standard data administration becomes, direct integration therefore also aims to reduce the hours spent on standard data administration. We’ve seen a reduction in payroll administration hours of 8+ hours down to a single hour or two for a small company, and a tremendous 900+ hour reduction in payroll administration for 7000+ employee clients. Not only does direct integration make your payroll run go more smoothly and accurately, but it also frees up the hands of your HR and payroll administrators.

Custom Payroll Integration

One step beyond direct integration is custom integration between your time and attendance and payroll solutions. While custom integration is generally not required, there might be instances where your needs differ from that of most companies. This could include customizations such as unique shift or labour rules specific to your company, custom escalation procedures or advanced modules such as job costing, bonus, or night out hours.

Payroll Integration Systems

In Summary - Time and Attendance Integration and Payroll

When considering custom integration solutions, it is important to identify the current resource load the requirement has on your company and its employees, and what your potential return on investment would be on the integration and whether the cost would be worth it.
Generally speaking, a well-priced, well integrated system, would save you a tremendous amount of time making the initial payment worth it.

Integration, whether direct or indirect, is the ultimate goal of any time and attendance system. Your measurement on whether it is worth the price, should be based on the ability of the system to reduce manual modifications, and increase the accuracy of your payroll data.

The future of time and attendance systems lie in their capability to integrate directly with payroll solutions, and you should keep this in mind as one of your deciding factors when selecting an appropriate time and attendance solution. The depth of the integration (e.g., employees vs leave and payslip data) should also bear weight in your decision.

Time and Attendance and Payroll Integration Considerations

  • Request a demonstration: Ask for a demo of the system’s integration capabilities to ensure it meets your needs.
  • Inquire about integration options: If direct integration is lacking, ask the supplier about integration with your payroll solution, including costs and timelines.
  • Understand the extent of integration: Clarify the scope of payroll integration and necessary changes to staff workflows on both time and attendance and payroll systems.
  • Prepare for implementation: Be aware of and prepared for the changes required when implementing an integrated solution.

Feel free to contact us if you need some advice on how to select the right time and attendance solution and integration partner