Many companies are switching from biometric attendance systems to mobile enabled attendance apps.

There are many technologies that can be used to track employee attendance and WiFi technology is the latest of them.

The technology of WiFi is not new in itself but its application in attendance tracking is innovative.

WiFi Attendance apps uses your office WiFi network to mark employee attendance. It is simple and uses the infrastructure that you already have.

This revolutionary application is different from biometric systems in many ways.

Here are 7 Differences between biometric and WiFi attendance tracking.

1. Live Tracking

Live tracking of employees on premise is possible with WiFi technology. The system works by detecting the registered mobile devices as soon as they are in office WiFi range.

This is useful to track employees in the big campus with multiple building. HR can log-in and check the whereabouts of any employee at a given point in time.

2. Accuracy of records

WiFi attendance tracking is more accurate that biometric.

Although biometric requires the employee to be physically present for punching in, there is no record of whereabouts of the employee in between. Because of this there is a possibility to manipulate attendance in the biometric system.

Attendance records of WiFi attendance system are far more accurate. WiFi can track not only the in and out time of the employee but also record the number of hours in office.

With the help of complete records HR can also run reports like average hour spent in office, absenteeism, break hours, etc,. This can be run for a team of per employee.

3. Infrastructure

The biggest cost saver in WiFi Systems is the zero infrastructure required. Because all offices already have a WiFi and each employee has a smartphone, there is no need for additional equipments.

WiFi systems can be plugged into your current WiFi network and all the employees registered by the admin account. Once the employees download app to their smartphone you are good to go.

In contrast biometric systems need fingerprint scanning machines at multiple access point. Depending on the accuracy required, these can cost anywhere from $50 to $500 per machine.

Maintaininace and repair of these equipments is another burden that falls on your admin department.

4. Down-Time

Another difference between biometric system and WiFi attendance system is the absence of down-time in the later one.

Since there are no extra machines required in WiFi system there is no question of downtime. You are good to go as long as your WiFi is working.

Faulty equipment and downtime in biometric systems can be an interruption in your day to day HR activities. If a biometric machine is out of service, then employees miss on attendance marking.

This adds on to everyone’s work including employees, managers and HR. Besides, they also cause mistakes in payroll calculations and leave management systems.

attendance app

5. Self-Service

WiFi system is pretty much self servicing once its set-up. There are minimum possibilities breakdown and the attendance data is recorded in cloud regularly. All the features can be accessed by HR and admin account through the web-portal.

There is no need to call an engineer because everything from customization of reports to historical data is available from the admin dashboard.

Also in case of any support required it can easily be provided remotely as the system is on the cloud.

In contrast making changes to biometric will require raising a request and mostly a visit by an engineer. Since the data importing and record is not on cloud, remote support is not possible.

6. Flexibility to Scale

Biometric systems cannot scale quickly to your requirement whereas WiFi attendance systems can easily do so.

No matter the number of employees in your company, the cost of installation is high because of the biometric equipments and software.

For this reason biometric is not a good option for startups and small companies. Also, the cost remains fixed even if you scale down your workforce.

On the other hand WiFi systems have a flexible monthly payment option that can easily be scaled down or up depending on the workforce size.

It also has a per employee payment so that you only pay for what you use. And in phases of growth you can simply add users in the next month without the hassle of equipment installations and new fingerprint records.

7. Integration with HR Functions

As WiFi app clocks in employee working hours accurately it is a useful application for other HR functions as well. For example, this attendance record can be used to automatically calculate paid off time, overtime and vacation time.

It can also be integrated with scheduling apps to maintain an hourly record of each employees work.

Some WiFi attendance apps have an inbuilt leave management and scheduling system that can be accessed through dashboard on login.

This kind of integration is not possible in a biometric system which remains just a means to record attendance.

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Summary

There are many differences between biometric and WiFi attendance systems. From accuracy to cost savings, WiFi systems are definitely a better choice for small as well as big companies.

Rather that capturing data at two points, a WiFi system records data throughout the working hours in a day.

Data is power today. And you can only imagine how a detailed and accurate employee data can help companies take empowered HR decisions.

HR managers play a crucial role in the success of any organization. The role of an HR manager includes tasks such as human resources and employee management, attendance management, leave management, payroll management and so on.

But, very often the processes are time- consuming and tedious as well.

So, wouldn’t it be great to have a quality app to make the whole process easier and more efficient?

We have designed a unique app for attendance management as well as HR management – WiFi Attendance App.

Here are 5 ways WiFi Attendance App helps the HR manager

attendance app

1. Attendance Management & Employee Location Tracking

WiFi Attendance App offers an impressive dashboard to manage employee attendance effortlessly.HR Managers will get accurate data of attendance details via this app.

Unlike usual attendance apps, this app works only on pre-set office WiFi range.  Employees can mark their attendance at office WiFi zone. HR mangers can easily track employee location with a few clicks. This ensures real time employee presence at office and prevents buddy punching as well.

WiFi attendance is absolutely a replacement for biometric systems and usual employee attendance apps. Besides attendance management it has several other features to make HR management easier and effective.

Check this video to know how effective is a WiFi attendance system

2. Leave Management

What makes WiFi attendance app different is its easy to use user interface. It‘s easy to apply leaves via this app. Employees would get a clear data of available leave details for the month.

There are separate fields to enter data such as reason for leave and number of days required . This will help employees to apply leave with a few clicks via their smartphone.

A notification message will be sent to the reporting manager or HR manger for approval. HR managers will get the leave details of each employee precisely. This will help them in payroll processing at the end of every month.

3. Employee Productivity Hours

It’s obvious that nobody likes spending time on doing unnecessary admin work. Your employees might be using spreadsheets to enter their task details and worked hours.

It would be difficult for HR managers or Project managers to check each and every spreadsheet to evaluate the performance of employees.

WiFi Attendance App offers you timesheet feature to track employee productivity and worked hours. Project managers can assign tasks to the team members via team preference module.

Employees can enter the time spend for each projects in respective sections. There are sections to enter billable and non-billable tasks. This feature will be helpful for project managers and HR managers to check the workflow.

4. Data Based Actions

Wifi attendance can offer many features that help HR managers in data-driven decision making. Features such as timesheet, attendance management, and leave management are helpful for them to make decisions on actual and accurate insights.

An overview of attendance, leaves and productivity would help HR managers or Project managers to make right decisions at the time of appraisals and picking right employees for projects.

Analysing data can also help to identify the changes needed for overall development of the organization.

5. Useful for Sending Notifications

HR managers can make use of the notification feature to compose and send notifications to an employee or a group of people. This feature allows notifications to be sent immediately at a scheduled date, or as recurring events.

Notifications can be delivered in the form of:

  • Email messages
  • Announcements on homepage or dashboard page

Attendance App

 A Final Thought

Using a WiFi Attendance App can offer businesses many benefits such as smart attendance management and real employee presence tracking. So think about choosing a future proof app for next level attendance tracking and smart HR management.