Reading a Vendor Claim

Marketing in this category is unusually aggressive because the problem it names is unusually hard to measure.

"Businesses lose N percent of payroll to time theft"

Usually: a survey of a different sector, scaled to your headcount, counting categories that include system failures.

Ask: which categories does that figure include, and what was the measurement method?

Then measure your own, which takes an afternoon and replaces it.

"Eliminates buddy punching"

Ask: which version — clocking in from home, or a colleague doing it on site?

A card or code eliminates neither. A location check addresses the first only. Only identity verification addresses the second.

Most products claiming this address one of the two.

"Pays for itself in N months"

Based on the percentage above.

Ask for the calculation with your numbers, including the cost of failed punches, corrections and administration.

And ask what happens if your measured figure is smaller, which it usually is.

"Compliant"

Compliance is a property of your deployment, not of a product. A vendor cannot make your configuration lawful.

Ask: which jurisdictions, which specific requirement, and is the rule library updated?

"Face verification"

Covers both a stored photograph and a match against stored facial data.

Ask which, because the legal analysis is entirely different and the marketing will not distinguish them.

"Real-time visibility"

Ask: visibility of what, to whom, and does it stop when the shift does?

A live map of staff positions is not an attendance feature, whatever it is bundled with.

The general test

Any claim without a name, a number or a demonstrable screen is a statement of intent.

Convert each into a question with a checkable answer and ask it in writing.

Written answers are noticeably more careful than spoken ones, and that carefulness is itself the information.

Ask in writing

The difference between a sales answer and a commitment.

Send the questions by email rather than asking in a meeting.

Ask for the answers to be attached to the contract.

Written answers are noticeably more careful, and the carefulness is itself informative.

Where a claim matters — what is logged, what is enabled by default, whether photographs are matched — it belongs in a term rather than on a slide.

Follow the difficult record

Use the complete feature page to frame one representative case. The useful evidence is the record created when a value is corrected, approved and exported.