9 Ways to Use Your Time Clock Software More Effectively

FingerCheck is a versatile time clock software solution that offers customizable features many other employee time clock software systems don’t. Here are nine ways to use our software that you may not have thought of:

1. Set Up Punch Alerts

Did you know you can have alerts sent to you whenever a punch occurs? If you like to stay on top of your staff’s time and attendance, you can set up punch alerts that notify you by email, text message, or push notification (or all of the above!) The punches you can be notified for are endless, and include employee punches, missed punches, employees that punch in/out early or late, and the list goes on. Check out our knowledge base on setting up punch alerts for more on the different kinds of FingerCheck software alerts you can create.

2. Get Exceptions

If you’d like to keep track of employees who come in late or early, you can set up FingerCheck clock in “exceptions,” which are notifications that trigger when employees breach a certain type of punch or don’t punch at all. Unlike punch alerts, exceptions only go to your dashboard, though you can set up email alerts or a report that sends all the day’s exceptions to you at the end of the day. You can build exceptions to trigger for missing in punches, missing out punches, unscheduled punches, over/under hour punches, early/late punches and the list goes on. Setting these alerts uptake just a minute, but you’ll need to build schedules the system can use as a basis for sending the punches.

3. Upload Employee Images and Send to Clock

Whether it be in-office, on the mobile app, or online, uploading photos of your employees can make your time and attendance software more personable. Employee photos are displayed throughout the mobile app and online application, including the employee online time clock page, the employee directory, employee dashboards on the mobile app, our biometric time clocks, and while hovering over the icon in employees’ profiles. All you need to do is upload an image and send it to the clock. Once that is done, it will take effect throughout the employee time clock software.

4. Run Reports Online and on the Mobile App

FingerCheck’s advanced reporting allows you to easily analyze the data you want, providing a simple and easy-to-read PDF report that can be loaded to your smartphone or online. Simply head to “Reports,” select the report you’d like to run, and select the employees and date range. In our help desk article, we break down the most popular reports, and how to run a report once you’ve decided on one. You can even run your own custom report with our custom report building feature!

5. Auto-Close Payroll

Have you ever wondered why you have to manually click through the Time Card in order to get to the correct pay cycle? If so, the FingerCheck software holds a workaround that you can employ to auto-close payroll, and always see the newest pay period. By creating a scheduled task that triggers at the close of each pay period, your timesheets will automatically be updated each time the scheduled task is triggered so that they will open on the current pay period.

6. Set up Job Fencing

Are you a control freak? If the answer is yes, that’s okay! With FingerCheck’s job fencing feature, you can enforce geographical restrictions on where employees are able to punch, and what jobs they can punch for. When punch attempts occur outside a specified perimeter, FingerCheck can conveniently alert managers of the incident via punch notification by text, email, and push notification. If you want our online time clock software to not accept the punch, you can program it to do so. If you want to accept the punch, but be notified, you can do that too. If you are interested in using FingerCheck’s job fencing feature, here is a step-by-step guide outlining the process of setting it up.

7. Get a Head Start on Setting up Holiday Vacation

The holidays are coming up, and if you’re a generous boss, no doubt you’ll be offering your employees holiday time. In order to pay your staff holiday pay, refer to our overview of three different methods you can utilize to add holiday time to your employees’ timesheets. To create automatically paid holidays (the way you’d probably prefer holiday time to work), read our help desk article on how. If you’re not feeling up to building an entire policy, you can enter holiday time for all your employees in one step using mass entry. You can also directly enter holiday time within each employee’s timecard.

8. View the Punch Sites of All Your Employees Using GEO Live Map

If you have multiple offices or have mobile/traveling employees, you don’t have to give up the comfort of knowing where your employees are. You can check-in and make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be using our GEO live map, powered by Google Maps. Simply click on Live Status in the Time Card tab and you’ll see “GEO Live Map.” Click that to open a pop-up that displays all your employee’s whereabouts on a map, according to where they’re punched in. Hover over each pin and you can see their address and punch time, in real-time!

9. Require Photo on Mobile Capture

If you’re determined to have a buddy-punch-free attendance system, you can require employees to take a selfie in order to submit a punch on the mobile app! Simply select an employee, go into Web Access and check “Take a photo on the mobile punch.” From that point on, whenever an employee punches using their smartphone, they will need to capture a picture in order for the punch to go through. This way they can provide photographic proof of their whereabouts and whether they are on-the-job. There you have it! Nine ways to enhance your FingerCheck software experience for the long-haul.