Our Workforce Time Clocks suit your solution.
Reselling the right time clocks can be lucrative, but only when the integration process is easy too. The workforce time clock is more than its features. How the time clock interacts with your solution is key to adding value for your customers.
What To Ask When Choosing a Workforce Time Clock
What data can the employee time clock and your software share? How quickly can your customers add new features to the time clock? This is important for gathering information to improve workforce management and payroll processing.
A time clock isn’t a stand-alone device. It’s the entry point to automating the collection of employee attendance tracking data. To fully benefit from an advanced time clock, you need a strong and dependable integration. This integration connects the time clocks to your system.
Our cloud-based time and attendance solution called AccuCloud, simplifies this integration. It keeps initial roll outs stress-free and on schedule.
The AccuCloud system helps you stay flexible during maintenance. This allows you and your customers to add new time clock features. It also enables you to run new reports.
Our Workforce Time Clock Integration Options
You need some mechanism to move data between all the workforce management time clocks deployed at your customers’ locations and your system.
There are two integration options:
1. Data loading: Data from one system is batched into a file and loaded into the system. For employee attendance management, there are two types of data loads:
· Punch data load contains employee attendance data collected at the time clock, which gets delivered to payroll and other software systems that need it.
· Employee data load contains information stored in your system that the time clocks need, such as department and location information.
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2. SOAP web services (API): An interactive integration that provides a near real-time data update experience.
You can set up a data loading-based integration faster than building a web services integration. Data loads are also the simplest way to get data from your customers’ workforce management time clocks into your system.
Companies with developers who have the necessary expertise can build web services to manage the integration. Regardless of which option you use with your customers, you set the data sharing cycle intervals. You can set data updates to run as often as multiple times every hour or as infrequent as once a day. It’s your decision.
You can get a more detailed overview of employee time clock integrations here .
Benefits of Middleware as Workforce Management Time Clock Manager
Middleware helps time clocks work together and share data with other systems like yours quickly and easily. This improves the value of each part and the system as a whole.
Easy Updates of Workforce Time Clock Software
Time clocks are valuable because they automate employee attendance data, leading to more accurate payroll processing. One of the challenges deploying a fleet of time clocks is providing support for them. Using middleware makes time clock support easy.
The middleware pushes out any operating system update, security, or time collection software updates directly to the time clocks. You don’t have to ask your customers to send their IT staff to each time clock for support when installing upgrades.
You can update all your time clocks with the latest security and software updates yourself. You don’t need to rely on your customers or customer support team.
Relying on them to do this can lead to time clocks running different versions. Some of these versions may not be fully secure. This can also result in a lot of other support nightmares.
Your support team avoids all that when there’s middleware to keep all your customers’ deployments uniformly updated. Upgrading through middleware is easy for your IT team and won’t disrupt time clock availability for customers. It requires minimal resources. Time clocks will still be available to customers during the upgrade process.
Improve Employee Information with Workforce Time Clock Software
A well-designed middleware does more than send attendance data back and forth. It raises the value of the integrated parts with extra functionality surrounding data and time clock management:
- Share employee data collected by your workforce management solution with employees at the time clock to maximize its benefits. If your AccuCloud integration includes scheduling data from your system, employees can view their schedules on the time clock.”
- Using middleware to automate the data flow ensures that your system and time clocks always have the latest information. This automation guarantees that all data is current and accurate. It eliminates the need for manual updates and reduces the risk of errors. Automating this process increases efficiency and ensures that all systems are synchronized.
The middleware provides an additional management layer that lets you easily administer changes to time clock functionality. You can group employees and time clocks together. This makes it easy to share new information and functionality. You only share it with those who need it.
For example, you can create a group for time clocks located at a customer’s factories. If the customer wants to push out a new safety message delivered to factory workers when they clock in, the middleware will ensure that the message gets delivered only to time clocks in the factory group.
Since the middleware doesn’t modify data collected at the time clock in any way, it provides an audit trail of employee attendance data that ensures its data integrity across the system.
Why You Need Middleware With a Workforce Time Clock
Companies are increasingly interested in using biometric time clocks. Being able to offer them a biometric-based time clock raises your profile as a technology forward platform. Middleware is the key to achieving easy biometric device management at scale that doesn’t tax your support resources.
The AccuCloud middleware’s management of biometric templates provides efficiency, security, and flexibility. It limits the availability of an employee’s biometric template, but ensures that the template is available at any time clock where it’s necessary.
Each employee enrolls in the biometric platform at a time clock. That time clock shares the template, through the encrypted integration, with the middleware. From there, the middleware controls which other time clocks will also get the template.
In an enterprise of 1000 employees, three locations and a fleet of time clocks, you don’t want that template on every time clock. The punch in and out process at the clock needs to remain fast. There’s no reason to install the biometric templates of employees who work in one location on the time clocks at other locations.
But what if an employee moves and begins working at a different location and needs access to a new set of time clocks? As with all WFM and HCM system updates shared with the middleware, the middleware uses that information to put the employee into a new geographic location group. That change then triggers an update of which time clocks get that employee’s biometric template.
Throughout the automated process, the biometric template remains encrypted, both at rest and during transmission.
The #1 Workforce Time Clock Solution – AccuCloud
We have talked a lot about the middleware layer in our AccuCloud system. Now, let’s give you an overview of the entire AccuCloud solution.
AccuCloud is a platform that uses cloud technology. It combines software for tracking employee attendance with other systems. These systems include workforce management, human capital management, and ERP. Its middleware is the critical component that connects the time clocks with these external systems.
The platform is cloud-based. It includes a management portal. This portal allows resellers to monitor time clock deployments and integration statuses for their customers. They can do this easily in one centralized location.
A Cloud-Based Architecture Simplifies and Speeds up Integration
ATS uses AccuCloud to help our resale partners focus on their solution without collecting attendance data. This makes it easier for them to manage their business. AccuCloud allows partners to streamline their processes and save time. By handling attendance data, ATS frees up partners to concentrate on their core business activities.
Your team needs minimal resource time to send time clock updates over the air. These updates can range from minor patches to full upgrades. We collaborate with your team to set the timing.
The ATS team handles the OTA updates for you. This is accomplished without causing any disruptions in operations.
Data Flow between Workforce Time Clock Software and Your System
Because the AccuCloud middleware handles the bi-directional data flows between the time clocks and your software, we’re able to provide you direct oversight into the integration status of each individual time clock.
We do that through the AccuCloud management portal. The AccuCloud portal is a secure website you use to monitor all your customers’ time clock deployments. Through the portal, you’ll see the online status of each time clock, and the status of each integration cycle, all in real time.
No more black holes as to whether data is free flowing from the time clocks into your system and back again. With the real time status clearly represented through a visual design, your team can easily get ahead of any potential data collection issues.
AccuCloud also includes a number of alerts that deliver real-time communication to support teams whenever there’s a time clock communication, integration failure, urgent issue or security alert.
Compare Time Clock Software Options
AccuCloud works with a number of the ATS time clocks, so you have flexibility in the time clock recommendations you make to your customers. And if you are looking for Linux or Android time clock software, ATS time clocks can deliver on that!
TimeCollect
TimeCollect is our attendance data collection software for Android-based time clocks, which includes our stride®80, PeoplePoint™ Turbo, and PeoplePoint™ Premium.
Accucollect
AccuCollect is the attendance data collection software for our Linux-based time clocks, which include PeoplePoint™ Plus, and PeoplePoint Premium.
Both TimeCollect and AccuCollect attendance data collection software are designed for resellers that want to get to market quickly with a robust time clock system offer to customers and prospects. Both time clock software systems are highly configurable. They each work with a wide range of reader options and are pre-built to accept the most commonly requested punch transaction types.
The ATS time clock software options are also ready to integrate with the AccuCloud middleware layer, to save time and simplify the implementation process for you and your customers.
A third alternative, but the most time consuming, to using the ATS time clock data collection software is to build your time clock software. We’ve built TimeCollect and AccuCollect so resellers can avoid the time and expense incurred by designing and testing a new application. However, any reseller that prefers to build their own can have it installed onto an OS-compatible ATS time clock.
Expand Value of Your Application to the Workforce Time Clocks
AccuCloud’s flexibility and ease of use let you deliver more of your solution to your customers, right at the time clock. You can share any information your solution collects and stores, through the AccuCloud middleware to employees at the time clock.
Does your system hold employee scheduling information? Personal time-off accruals? When your system is integrated with ATS time clocks through the AccuCloud solution, employees can see their personal schedules and available PTO information right there. They won’t have to make a visit to HR or bother their manager, saving everyone time and hassle.
The more information from your system you can share directly with employees at the time clock, the more customers will rely on your software.
“Easy-to-Integrate” Requires Sophisticated Middleware
You can resell time clocks, but without also providing a seamlessly integrated and centralized system, you’re only reselling hardware products, not a solution. When you offer customers time clocks that that integrate directly with your software – now you’re presenting prospects and customers with a complete employee management platform.
One option is to divert time and money from enhancing and supporting your core software and build the middleware yourself. Effective middleware has a complex responsibility to control all the data and communication flows between time clocks and your solution. If it’s not working right, none of the other parts can play their role in your customer’s workforce management efforts.
The more lucrative and reliable option is get a proven, hosted and maintained middleware layer to connect time clocks to your solution. When you leave the middleware duties to an experienced time clock designer and manufacturer like ATS, you gain the benefits of reselling a complete, comprehensive solution with little additional cost or effort