Facial Recognition vs Time Cards to Track Employee Time

A Face Recognition Time Clock Offers a Better Employee Experience

Both employers and employees appreciate speed at the time clock. Nobody wants workers having to gather around a slow time clock, waiting for their turn. Long lines at shift change means it takes longer for employees clocking in to reach peak productivity. Those long lines also mean extra time added to the hours worked for the employees clocking out and eager to get home.

A facial recognition time clock provides a faster experience than other options since employees don’t have to mess with physical time cards that are easily lost or damaged. With a biometric reader, the employee always has everything they need to clock in or out.

The facial recognition reader can also create a safer experience due to how much it reduces the need for an employee to touch the time clock. In contrast, card readers and other biometric options, like fingerprint time clocks, always require some hands on moment at the time clock.

Not having to touch the time clock does also speed up the transaction time, but its more impactful advantage comes from reducing the risk of the time clock as a transmission source of illness among employees.

Companies Run More Accurate Payroll with Face Recognition Time Attendance Collection

Labor costs are always a major line item in any company’s operating budget. The ability of an automated time tracking system to capture actual work time more accurately – without requiring manual intervention – is the driver that saves companies considerable money on their payroll.

Mechanical time cards are a step up from manual time tracking as written time reports are messy, fragile, easily fudged or lost, and time-consuming to enter into a payroll worksheet. However, the relevant comparison today isn’t between manual reporting and mechanical time cards, but between time clocks that use time cards and Cloud-based time clocks.

In truth, time cards only minimally reduce the amount of manual effort hours needed to produce a complete, accurate report of hours worked over handwritten time tracking. The time card punches have to be manually entered into an electronic timesheet and then reviewed for anomalies by the manager or payroll staff. They then have to spend time resolving any anomalies found. Both processes are subject to human error.

By comparison, a Cloud-based time clock requires no manual data entry. The best time clock and time tracking software can avoid or handle most exceptions without requiring human intervention.

Using swipe and proximity cards are an improvement over time cards since data collected is automatically delivered to the payroll system. Yet as physical cards, they are also vulnerable to getting lost, damaged, or forgotten. Every time this happens, even for a single punch, it requires someone to expend manual effort to clean it up. Within the world of Cloud-enabled time clocks, biometric reader technology reduces the amount of manual effort required to review and reconcile tracked time for an accurate payroll compared to any other time clock card reader options.

Facial Recognition Time Clock Terminals Also Lower Administrative Costs

Improving payroll accuracy, including reducing the risk of overpaying for labor, is one way that facial recognition terminals stand out as a quantifiable cost-saver for companies. There are two other ways they provide significant savings:

Fully automated system requiring minimal manual effort: From reducing how often employees need to enter information into the time clock to delivering complete and accurate attendance data to your payroll system, face recognition time clocks are the first stop of a fully automated payroll solution.

• No manual data entry from time cards.
• Far less manual review and reconciliation effort needed to ensure data accuracy before uploading it to the payroll system.

Payroll administrative time and costs go down in proportion to how little manual effort is needed to run the payroll. No time clock reader option reduces the need for manual effort in the attendance data collection process more than facial recognition software at the time clock.

No card management program: Physical cards all come with additional overhead costs to purchase and manage them. Time cards are single use, which means they’re a considerable on-going cost. Swipe and proximity cards are sturdier, but they also get lost and damaged, and need to be replaced. Companies using time cards also incur these additional costs:

• Use of HR personnel time to distribute and retrieve cards from new and offboarding employees.
• Need an inventory management system to track the individual credentials given to each employee and how many remain available, plus someone from HR or payroll to manage the time card inventory system.

We recommend that companies always have a secondary punch method when using any biometric time tracking system, as more jurisdictions prohibit forcing employees to use a biometric system. Regardless of whether a specific location has this legal requirement, we recommend it as a best practice for positive employee relations. Our stride80 time clocks can  include digital or physical keypads as an alternative, although your customer could always add a card reader to the facial recognition time clock as well.

You can learn more about how facial recognition technology works and other best practices here.

Face Recognition Terminals are Clear Winners over Time Card Machines

In the hierarchy from paper or electronic time cards to swipe cards to biometric readers, facial recognition time clocks are superior in every way. Helping customers and prospects transition away from time cards to facial recognition technology is easier than you think; this includes transitioning companies still using time card machines and looking at automating employee time tracking for the first time.

Offering prospects and customers a facial recognition terminal can also be highly profitable for your business , especially when you join with ATS as your resale partner. Schedule a call with one of our consultants today and we can take you through all the details of what our stride^®80 time clock with Only|You™, ATS’ Facial Recognition System can do for you and your customers.