Choosing a System

Almost every product here is marketed against time theft. The questions that matter are about what it records and what it lets you switch off.

The recording questions

Does it log failures as well as successes? Without this, a dispute becomes one person's word against silence.

Does it store raw times and round at calculation, or round at capture? The second destroys the evidence for the neutrality test.

Are breaks recorded or deducted automatically?

Is every correction logged with who, when and why?

Can a worker see their own record without asking?

The control questions

Can automatic disciplinary triggers be disabled? They should be, because anomalies include system faults.

Is there activity monitoring bundled in, and can it be turned off at account level?

Are photographs stored or matched against a template? The marketing calls both the same thing.

What is enabled on a new account? Check rather than ask.

The reporting questions

Can you produce a rounding neutrality check?

Can you report by site rather than by person?

Is there a "time theft" dashboard, and can it be removed? A product that leads with a list of names by minutes is shaping how the system will be used.

Red flags

Marketing about catching people rather than about recording hours.

A time-theft cost calculator on the website, which is an industry estimate applied to your headcount.

Biometrics presented as the default.

Activity monitoring adjacent to attendance.

No failure logging.

The trial

At your worst site, with real staff, for a month.

Run the four measurements: anomaly rate, punch-to-shift distribution, break distribution, rounding neutrality.

Test a failure deliberately and see what the worker experience is.

Produce one person's full record and time it.

The contract

Retention per category, matching yours.

Notification before feature changes that alter what is collected.

Export in a readable format.

And deletion confirmed on termination, which for photographs and biometrics matters more than for timestamps.

Check the defaults

Before configuring anything.

Create a trial account and list what is enabled.

Automatic triggers, activity monitoring, a time-theft dashboard.

Document the starting state, because that is what tells you what the product assumes about how it will be used.

Then configure down and record what you turned off, and compare after every upgrade.

Turn the boundary into a test

For a concrete product reference, workforce software pricing guide can help turn this boundary into a test. Verify the current behaviour with representative fields and record what reaches the destination.