Time And Attendance

Term Definition
Time and attendance is the process of tracking work hours. In the past this was always a manual system. Employees may have manually completed a time card and that information was used for payroll and benefits. Another option for tracking time was a punch clock. Some companies replaced the fully manual system with a simple punch clock where employees inserted a card into a clock, which stamped the time that they were punching in or out. As technology continued to advance, there were newer options for tracking time and attendance. One such advance utilizes scanning to track time. Employees are issued badges with barcodes on the back, which resemble an ATM card. The badges are then swiped through a time clock to capture the time the employee is punching in and out. All of these systems can still be labeled as "manual" as they rely solely on human intervention. The employee must remember to perform an action in order to accurately capture the data.

The largest corporate expenditure today, managing employee time, is often performed using a combination of manual and decentralized processes or multiple disconnected information systems that can lead to substantial inefficiencies and a lack of effective internal controls. According to the American Payroll Association, up to three percent of payroll imprecision is caused by human error. A survey conducted by Randy Myers indicated that cutting just $1 of operational costs could have the same impact as increasing revenue by $13.

Technology has provided time and attendance systems, which are the 21st century equivalent of the paper time sheet or punch clock. Daily tasks such as tracking work hours and calculating accrued benefits are automated, providing valuable information and making organizations more efficient. Manual or spreadsheet-based time reporting creates an administrative nightmare, lack of real-time reporting, and constant after the fact corrections and adjustments.

Area of Application
Project Management
Time and Billing
Workforce Management

Related Terms
Time and Labor

Your Comments and Recommendations

Please help us improve the project management software glossary. Was this term well described? Any suggestions of how we can improve the description, what to add, remove or change? You can also use this form to suggest new project management terms we should add to the glossary.