Time and attendance: The unsung hero of workforce management

Employers need to track the time their employees spend working so they can ensure their staff receive the correct payment for their labor. 

If an employer failed to accurately record when or for how long an employee worked, there’s a chance that the employee could be under or overpaid for their work. Monitoring attendance also ensures employers know if/when an employee is absent. 

Tracking the hours each employee works also ensures employers remain compliant with labor laws. For example, if an employee was to work over 40 hours in a workweek, those additional hours would count as overtime (which requires a higher rate of pay).  

Timesheet management (or time, attendance and labor management) is one of those functions you don’t tend to notice when it’s going well. 

However, if your time and attendance system is inefficient or poorly resourced, you’re going to hear about it. Here are some of the consequences you might encounter: 

• Schedule clashes (e.g. over or under-staffing) 
• Employees having to chase up pay discrepancies 
• Decreased productivity due to low morale and/or time theft 
• Increased administrative workload for payroll and HR  

In more extreme cases, employers may find themselves unable to defend against allegations of time theft or non-compliance with labor laws.  

A timesheet is a system or table of data which tracks the amount of time an employee has worked over a certain period. 

Timesheets are typically used to record the hours or days an employee has already worked (rather than dictated when they might work in the days or weeks to come).  

The word “timesheet” refers to the traditional method of tracking employee time; manually logging hours or days worked onto a paper timesheet. These days, employers tend to use digital formats, like computer spreadsheets or online time-tracking software, to maintain their timesheets. 

Electronic timesheets – sometimes referred to as online timesheets – describe the various digital time-tracking solutions employers use to record their employees’ time and attendance. 

An electronic timesheet might look like a digital spreadsheet, which employers can use to log the hours each employee has worked over a certain time period. It could also be an online time-keeping system that auto-calculates overtime, absence deductions, and more. 

Electronic timesheets and time-tracking systems are also used by employers to track time spent on specific projects or client work. 

An employer timesheet and an employee timesheet are two different terms used to describe the same function.  

Most frequently referred to as an employee timesheet, timesheets are a system used by employers to manage and track employee work hours, tasks, and projects. 

In a professional context, time theft occurs when either an employer or employee intentionally misreports the hours the employee has worked. 

When committed by an employer, time theft involves under-reporting the amount of time an employee has worked to avoid paying their full wage. 

When an employee commits time theft, they would typically inflate the amount of time worked to be paid a higher amount.  

Time theft is harder to commit when there’s a transparent timesheet system with automated checks in place. 

Buddy punching is a form of workforce time theft. Buddy punching occurs when an employee clocks in on behalf of an absent colleague. 

This might look like an employee clocking in with a swipe card and, at the same time, swiping their colleague’s card despite that colleague being absent. On the system, it would look like the colleague was working and therefore, they’d be paid for that time.