Selection

A checklist for choosing attendance and payroll software

Selection · 9 min read

These projects rarely fail on missing features. They fail on the questions nobody asked before signing. This is the list worth taking into the demo.

Most attendance and payroll projects do not fail because the software lacked a feature. They fail because of a handful of details nobody asked about before signing. Below are the questions worth asking, grouped by the six risks that come up most often.

A tip: ask the vendor to answer by operating the system in front of you, not with a promise or a slide.

Group 1: shifts and attendance rules

1. Which day does a shift crossing midnight count toward, and can that be changed?
2. How are multiple shifts on the same day for one person handled?
3. If people badge in and out for a mid-shift break, can the system tell that apart from ending the shift?
4. Can the punch-collection window before and after a shift be set per shift?
5. Can pre-shift and post-shift overtime be toggled separately, and where are the minute thresholds set?
6. Are overtime tiers for normal days, rest days, holidays and night hours kept in separate columns?
7. How do you assign a rotation to a whole production line, and how long does it take?

Group 2: device integration

8. Can it read logs directly from my specific device model, or only test the connection?
9. If the network drops mid-transfer, are logs lost?
10. What key is used to detect duplicate logs?
11. Can I tell which device and which site a punch came from?
12. When a device is replaced, how do fingerprints and face templates move across?
13. Does anything need to be opened inbound into the plant network?

Group 3: payroll formulas

14. Do payroll rules live in code, or are they declarable in the interface?
15. How long does changing one allowance rule take, and who can do it?
16. Are multiple formula versions kept by effective date? If I recalculate an old period, does it reproduce the original result?
17. How is a conditional allowance expressed — for example an attendance bonus based on actual hours worked?
18. Do multiple legal entities share one formula set, or can they be separated?
19. Do mid-period salary advances flow automatically into payroll deductions?

Group 4: migrating existing data

20. How do years of history from the current system move across?
21. Is there a preview mode showing the result before anything is written?
22. Will you run one period in parallel with the current method for reconciliation? Who owns the gap if numbers differ?
23. Which data types can be imported from Excel?

Group 5: permissions and sensitive data

24. Can a user be restricted to seeing only their own department?
25. Can salary figures be masked for certain roles? Masked in the interface, or genuinely blocked at the server?
26. Who edited which timesheet cell, when, and what was the value before and after — is that retrievable?

Group 6: ownership and long-term risk

27. Where does payroll data physically live? Do I have direct database access?
28. If we end the relationship, in what format do I get all my data out?

Three answers that should stop you

• "Our software is compatible with every time clock." No product is. Ask about your exact model and require a live connection demo.
• "Your pay rules are unusual, so we will custom-code it for you." That means every policy change waits on their developers, permanently.
• "That is coming in the next release." If it is a feature you need now, put a date in the contract. Do not accept a verbal promise.