A register written from memory is not a record
The gate register gets filled in at the end of the week, from memory, in the same pen. It satisfies nobody — not the employee who disputes a day, not the auditor who can see it, and not the payroll that depends on it.
Stop maintaining attendance registers
Captured As It Happens
Punches are timestamped at the moment they occur and cannot be edited afterwards — corrections are visible as corrections.
No Hardware Needed
Phones work; your existing biometric device also works. Adding a location does not require a purchase order.
Rules Do The Arithmetic
Late marks, half days, weekly offs and overtime resolve by policy, identically for everyone.
A register written from memory reads as one
The end-of-week fill-in is obvious to everybody who looks at it. The handwriting is identical for every day, the ink is the same, and the entries are too regular to be a real month.
It convinces nobody: not the employee disputing a day, not the inspector who has seen a thousand of them, and not the payroll that is computed from it.
Contemporaneous is the whole point
The value of a register is that it was made at the time. A record built from punches as they occur has that property; one reconstructed afterwards does not, however accurate it happens to be.
This is also why late-mark minutes are stamped at the punch and never recomputed later, and why the register seals once payroll is approved. A record that can be revised after payment is not evidence of anything.
No new hardware required
Phones work. The biometric device already at your gate also works — punches push in from it, so a machine you have already paid for keeps doing its job.
Adding hardware is not the obstacle to fixing this, and it should not be presented as one.
The arithmetic stops being an argument
Late marks, half days, weekly offs, holidays and overtime resolve by policy — grace, rounding, minimum block, cap, break deduction — from timestamps rather than from a supervisor's recollection of who arrived when.
That is what makes the overtime figure survive a challenge. It is computed from a record that existed before anybody disagreed about it.
The register writes itself
Punch as it happens
Phone or existing biometric, timestamped at the moment, not entered afterwards.
Rules resolve
Late mark, half day, weekly off, holiday, break and overtime from policy.
The register builds
Growing through the month rather than being produced at the end of it.
Sealed at approval
Once payroll is approved the month locks, and later changes show as corrections.
Stop maintaining attendance registers FAQs
Can we still keep a paper register?
You can, and some establishments prefer to. The difference is that it would be printed from a contemporaneous record rather than being the record itself.
Do we have to replace our biometric device?
No. Punches push in from the device you already have. Replacing working hardware is an unnecessary project.
What about employees with no phone and no device?
A supervisor can mark attendance on their behalf. That is recorded as a supervisor entry rather than as a punch, which is honest about what it is.
Is an electronic register acceptable on inspection?
Electronic maintenance is permitted under the applicable rules, and it is generally easier to defend than paper because entries carry timestamps that cannot be silently rewritten.
Are the generated registers acceptable for inspection?
They are produced in the prescribed shape and exportable on demand. What makes them defensible is that they are derived from punches and rules rather than typed at the end of the month.
Can we still keep paper?
You can, but keeping both means keeping two truths. Pick which one is the record.
Try it on your own payroll
Fourteen days, no card, and every record exports back out if you decide against it.