If you struggle with the hassles of manually calculating payroll every week, you may have considered buying a biometric time attendance system.  If so, you’re not alone.  Recent reports indicate that biometric time and attendance system are growing in popularity more and more every year with biometrics being one of the largest emerging technologies over the next five years.  If you’re considering buying a biometric time clock, you may have thought how innovative and simple they may make your payroll process, but do biometric time clocks work?

The answer is yes and better than ever!  However, since most fingerprint attendance systems utilize fingerprint recognition scanners you should be aware that there may be a few times when the scanner has issues reading a persons fingerprint.  Read more as Avid Biometrics takes a closer look at some of these issues that can arise from using a fingerprint based system.

Although there are a few drawbacks, don’t worry, these drawbacks generally only affect about 2-3% of your workforce, so lets take a closer look.

Age.  Just like the tread on a car’s tires, the tread on persons fingerprints can erode over time.  If a persons fingerprint is faded (which usually happens to people over 60 years old), that employee may have to use a different finger on their opposite hand to punch and out.  Newer biometric time attendance systems are beginning to use palm and finger vein scanners as these are generally a bit more accurate and dependable for people of older age.  The downside is that not that many systems utilize vein verification and the ones that do are fairly expensive.

Work Environment.  If your investing in a biometric time attendance system be aware that the work environment could affect fingerprint scans.  If your employees work in a restaurant and have oily hands and don’t wash them before punching out, or if you have a portable time clock that construction workers use on site, the clock may have difficulty reading fingerprints if your workers hands are dirty. 

These two issues are the main obstacles people may face when investing in a biometric time attendance system.  Again, this usually only affects about 2-3 percent of workers.  Most biometric time clocks, like those available at AvidBiometrics, do include some sort of backup system such as a digital PIN or an RFID key chain that employees can swipe if they ever have problems utilizing their fingerprint.

If you’re still concerned about this, you may want to spend a little bit more and make the investment into a time clock that utilizes hand geometry such as the HandPunch series from Amano or Acroprint.  These machines recognizes a users hand print, and offer more ruggedness for tougher work conditions.  They do cost a bit more; however, when you eliminate buddy punching from your work force you’ll probably find that the system will pay for itself in no time at all.

If you’re considering investing into biometrics, the time is right.  New systems are more reliable and affordable than ever.  You’ll be seeing this technology show up in more and more business applications and consumer products as well.  Before making a decision, be sure to compare features of any given model and choose the system that is right for you and your business.