The 9 Best Attendance Management Systems for Employees

ByEric Czerwonka Last Updated
Best Attendance Management Systems for Employees

Attendance management systems do much more than just help you track employee attendance. Not only will they help you identify chronically absent and late employees, but many also come with features like time tracking, employee scheduling, and payroll processing/integrations.

Even better, a lot of these tools have features to keep your employees accountable, such as GPS tracking, facial recognition, and geofencing. These features prevent time-theft acts like off-site punching and buddy punching (when employees clock in/out for each other).

But which of the many options on the market are right for your business? We’re here to help you decide with this list of the nine best attendance management systems for employers. 

1. Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch combines attendance management, time tracking, and employee scheduling into one easy-to-use tool.

You start by creating an employee schedule using Buddy Punch’s drag-and-drop scheduler. Employees can set their availability in the app so you can create and publish schedules quickly and easily, and you can also create recurring shifts to minimize the amount of time it takes to build your schedule each week.

Once you have your schedule created, you can start tracking employee attendance.

Employee attendance is monitored in Buddy Punch via its time-tracking tool. Employees clock in and out using their computers or mobile phones, or you can set up a central time clock kiosk on a computer or tablet that everyone can use to punch in/out.

Employee clock-in/out data is used to create timecards that automatically calculate total hours and overtime. Additionally, the clocking in and out features let you track employee attendance. At any given moment, you can see exactly who’s clocked in out on the admin dashboard:

Or if you want real-time alerts, you can set up notifications that will alert you when employees clock in late, clock out early, or miss a shift. You can also run reports to see how often an employee was late/absent so you can take measures to address the issue.

Beyond simple time and attendance tracking, Buddy Punch also offers many features to help you keep employees accountable, reduce labor costs, and run payroll quickly.

Features to increase employee accountability

If time theft is a problem for your business, Buddy Punch offers many optional features that you can turn off and on for everyone you employ or for individual employees:

  • Geofencing: Geofencing lets you prevent employees from clocking in before they arrive at the office/job site or clocking out after they leave. You simply set up virtual barriers around your work locations, and Buddy Punch prevents punching when employees aren’t within the set boundaries.
  • IP address locks: If all of your employees work at an office, you can limit clocking in and out to when employees are connected to your company’s Wi-Fi.
  • GPS tracking: Log an employee’s location when they clock in and out, then review that data later to make sure they were where they were supposed to be. Or you can track employees’ locations in real time throughout the workday.
  • Photo clock-ins: Require employees to take a picture of themselves when they clock in and out. This prevents buddy punching — when employees clock in and out for one another.
  • Facial recognition: If you don’t want to have to review all employee photos on clock-in/out, you can use Buddy Punch with Face ID to validate employees’ identities using biometrics before they can clock in/out.

Features to reduce labor costs

While all of the accountability features listed above will reduce your labor costs by preventing time theft, Buddy Punch also has features that aren’t time-theft specific that will help lower your labor costs:

  • Punch limiting: Prevent employees from clocking in before their shift starts so you don’t end up paying for extra minutes for multiple employees every pay period.
  • Automatic clock-outs: Automatically clock employees out at the end of their shifts to prevent paying for unexpected labor and avoid issues where employees forget to clock out at the end of their shifts.
  • Automatic breaks: Create break rules that specify how often employees should take breaks and how long those breaks should be, then Buddy Punch will automatically remove breaks from an employee’s time card at the end of the day.
  • Overtime alerts: Set up notifications that alert you when an employee is nearing overtime so you can adjust your schedule to avoid paying time-and-a-half rates.
  • Time card approvals: Create managers in Buddy Punch, then assign employees to their managers. Those managers will then be responsible for reviewing and approving time cards before you run payroll.

Features to save time on payroll

Speaking of payroll, Buddy Punch can help you streamline your work so you can run payroll in minutes, with features like:

  • Payroll exports: Buddy Punch automatically calculates regular, overtime, and time off hours. You can then download those reports in Excel, PDF, or CSV formats and upload them to your existing payroll provider.
  • Payroll integrations: In many cases, you don’t even need to download a report to run payroll. Buddy Punch integrates with popular payroll providers like QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, and more, letting you run payroll in just a few clicks.
  • Payroll services: If you don’t already have a payroll provider, you can run payroll using Buddy Punch. Pay employees via check or direct deposit, remove mandatory and voluntary deductions, and access all the compliance reports you need to file taxes.

Additional features

Buddy Punch also offers many other features which are not outlined above:

  • PTO accruals
  • Time-off tracking
  • Project tracking
  • Time and attendance tracking by location
  • Single sign-on
  • Punch rounding
  • And more!

Visit the features page to explore the full list of options you’ll have to track attendance data.

At the time of writing, Buddy Punch has an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars on Capterra across more than 1,000 customer reviews. Here’s what one customer loves about the platform:

“The customer support team is super responsive, thorough, and effective. Their team is knowledgeable about my organization and the way that we use the platform. I have received many helpful suggestions on how we can best leverage Buddy Punch in our sometimes-complicated organizational structure.”

Want to learn more about Buddy Punch? Start a free trial, watch a recorded demo, or request a personalized demo.

2. Zoho People

Zoho People is a great option for attendance, HR, time tracking, and payroll as it offers features for all of these things within one product. One of Zoho’s more unique aspects is its HR Chatbot, which can be a major time-saver. Employees can use it to ask for time off, check the schedule, ask questions, and clock in and out. Other key features include:

Zoho People has an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 254 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“This system was fast to set up, easy to navigate, and had a lot of functionality for managing HR admin, including tax and legal document records. It gave a professional first impression to new recruits for onboarding admin and also linked very easily into our recruitment process via integration with Zoho Recruit.”

3. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a great option for remote businesses. It’s focused on keeping track of employee productivity through activity monitoring. The nice thing about Hubstaff is that it does not track personal data, and it allows employees to know what exactly you’re tracking. You can even customize these features within Hubstaff. Other key features include:

Hubstaff has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 1,489 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“Hubstaff makes remote work easy. It can be easily installed on a computer and used immediately by employees. The time-tracking and task management is the appeal of the software. Both users and managers are able to check in with their daily progress for task and time management.”

4. TeamSense

TeamSense is a great option for businesses that purely need an attendance management system. It’s focused on creating a system that makes scheduling communication easier for every part of your team by utilizing an app and texting instead of phone calls. Key features include:

TeamSense has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 15 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“Quick and easy to understand staffing at the start of shift to make adjustments as needed. I know from emails before I get to work who has already called off. I can go to reports to make manager notes and time sheet code changes at a later date.”

5. OnTheClock

OnTheClock is a great option for businesses that need to have contact with their employees during the time they’re working. It has communication features on both ends of the working relationship — you can send announcements and surveys to your employees, and said employees can send you notes and photos to keep you updated.

Other key OnTheClock features include: 

OnTheClock has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 541 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“My employees find this software perfectly easy! As the administrator, access is flawless, changes can be made easily, I can archive all previous entries, I can easily make changes to each employee’s details such as pay, vacation, holidays, etc. The cost, well, you just can’t afford not to have this as an important tool in your office!”

6. Jibble

Jibble is an amazing free option for any business but can be especially useful for smaller businesses who can’t always afford these services but still need an attendance management system. Jibble has a lot of clocking in/out options that other services keep behind paid plans, like their biometric attendance feature.

Some of the top features of Jibble include:

Jibble has an overall rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars on Capterra across about 1,000 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“Jibble is easy to set up and integrate with both Slack and Microsoft Teams. Tracking time is a lot easier while doing the work as opposed to filling a timesheet as an afterthought. Leave and time-off management has made it easier to keep track of preplanned leaves. Overall, Jibble has become irreplicable in our day-to-day operations.”

7. Clockify

Clockify is a great option for businesses with clients, as Clockify’s task timer allows for employees to record when they’re working on a project and for how long. This can be helpful as your employees may not always be working on one project at a time. With Clockify’s project tracking, you can still make sure that they’re getting the work done on time and effectively. 

Some of Clockify’s top features include:

Clockify has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across nearly 5,000 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“The report section works awesome! Also, it offers really good access-level control and organization management features. You can use and try it for free (as we did) for as long as you like and then decide to continue with premium plans or not.”

8. Insightful

Insightful is a great option for remote businesses that want to keep better track of their employees and encourage both employee productivity and accountability. Its features are mainly dedicated towards this, and attendance is decided through activity monitoring to decide what is working best and what can be changed to increase productivity. 

Insightful’s key features include:

Insightful has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 96 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“The best thing about this software is that it’s extremely easy to use. Just one-click setup. Neat and clean dashboard and gives all the required tools which are essential. We use it to track our employee’s check-in, checkout, time tracking, project tracking, idle time, and productive time.”

9. OfficeTimer

OfficeTimer is great for a business that’s also looking for project management. It features attendance and project optimization. Through features like task management and expense management, OfficeTimer can be used to increase productivity by making sure that everything is getting done when it needs to be done and that your employees are staying productive. 

Other features include:

OfficeTimer has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 22 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“I’m able to manage a team of over 50 people working in several locations without much overhead to manage the software. Adding new projects is simple and is easily handled in just a few minutes. Customizing reports is straightforward and useful when looking at resource drains or overall cost of individual projects.”

Choosing the right attendance management system for your company

The perfect attendance management system for your business depends on how you’re planning to use the software, what type of company you run, and why you’re tracking attendance. However, here are some general takeaways from the tools we looked at on this list:

  • If you’re looking for an all-in-one system to help you track attendance and time, create employee schedules, and run payroll — all for a low monthly fee — choose Buddy Punch.
  • If you employ remote knowledge workers and want to track productivity in addition to attendance, choose Hubstaff or Insightful.
  • If you’re looking for a tool that can help with attendance tracking and project management, consider Clockify or OfficeTimer.
  • If you just want something simple and inexpensive to track attendance, look into TeamSense and Jibble.
  • Choose OnTheClock if you need attendance tracking and team communication tools.
  • Choose Zoho People if you’re looking for a full HR and workforce management solution that you can scale with other Zoho products over time.

One final caveat: while free attendance management systems can be really appealing, they are often much more expensive than their paid counterparts when you need to upgrade to get premium features. So consider both the short- and long-term costs of the application to make sure you’re selecting the right one.