Frequently Asked Questions

A time and attendance system is a workforce management tool that enables organizations to track employee working hours. The system can track regular hours, overtime, and employee absences such as sick days, vacation days, leaves, and unpaid absences. In an ideal scenario, a time and attendance system is integrated with payroll so the number of hours employees work translates directly to their paychecks.

For employees who are paid hourly and also eligible for overtime (i.e., FLSA "non-exempt" employees), you must track the number of hours they work each week in addition to their attendance. Using the scheduling and time-tracking features in a time and attendance system, you can track hours worked, overtime, and time off for all employees without paper processes or manual calculations.

Organizations of any size or industry use time and attendance software. Regardless of how many employees an organization has, this software makes tracking and reporting employee time and attendance more efficient and accurate. It can also help you stay in compliance with Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) wage and hour requirements and avoid various payroll issues, such as failing to pay overtime to eligible employees who work over 40 hours per week.

Not all time and attendance systems are created equal. If the software is a stand-alone system and not integrated with payroll, you will still need to perform manual calculations. Additionally, if the time and attendance software is a legacy or desktop program, it won't automatically update with HR regulatory compliance requirements, potentially resulting in your HR practices falling out of compliance over time. Conversely, with a cloud-based time and attendance system that is fully integrated with payroll and other HR processes, you can avoid manual payroll calculations and receive seamless updates that allow you to stay in compliance.

Payroll software automates payroll functions and makes your organization less reliant on manual and paper-based processes. It can calculate payroll based on real-time pay rules for regular pay, overtime, and policy exceptions. As a result, you can avoid performing calculations each time you need to run payroll. Payroll software can also store all current and historical payroll data, making it easy to run reports and collect the information you need for annual compliance reporting.

For employees who are paid hourly and also eligible for overtime (i.e., FLSA "non-exempt" employees), you must track the number of hours they work each week in addition to their attendance. Using the scheduling and time-tracking features in a time and attendance system, you can track hours worked, overtime, and time off for all employees without paper processes or manual calculations.

There are many available payroll solutions, so it can be difficult to find the one that works best for your organization. To avoid investing in a solution that doesn't meet your needs or is too cumbersome to use efficiently, look for a flexible payroll solution that scales with your organization's growth and improves your ability to run payroll. It should also be cloud-based and accessible from anywhere. And, in addition to running all of your core payroll processes, your payroll solution should also provide reporting and insights to help you make better payroll management decisions for your workforce.

Organizations of every size can use payroll software to cut down on manual calculations and automate their payroll workflows. Instead of managing employee pay and tax calculations with spreadsheets, they can use payroll software to consolidate payroll data and improve accuracy in payroll operations.

Although it is possible to conduct payroll without software, it is not advisable. Trying to pay employees with paper, spreadsheets, or a manual calculator wastes time and increases the chance of errors. Moreover, if you need to access historical information or investigate an error, the lack of consolidated reporting can result in having payroll eat up even more time during the week. In the meantime, employees may become frustrated, giving the payroll a reputation for being inefficient and unreliable.

Workforce analytics software captures employee data at every point in the employee lifecycle journey. It is a powerful tool that helps HR and business leaders identify trends and patterns in recruiting, onboarding, benefits, training, payroll, and more. With the insights you obtain from workforce analytics software, you can more effectively manage your workforce and make decisions that drive employee engagement and performance.

In human resource management (HRM), workforce analysis is the process of capturing data and drawing insights that measure your progress against core HR metrics, including time to hire, engagement levels, payroll expense, and more. With the ability to track these metrics over time, you can better understand your workforce and design activities that address possible areas of concern.

For employees who are paid hourly and also eligible for overtime (i.e., FLSA "non-exempt" employees), you must track the number of hours they work each week in addition to their attendance. Using the scheduling and time-tracking features in a time and attendance system, you can track hours worked, overtime, and time off for all employees without paper processes or manual calculations.

The benefits of workforce analytics reach across the many different areas of talent management. For example, analytics about your workforce can help you identify the impact of training investments on employee skill levels. It can also measure your overtime expenses so you can see the impact of new hires on overtime levels. As your workforce evolves, analytics can help you understand how HR activities impact employee performance, productivity, engagement, and more.

Workforce analytics provides the opportunity for improved decision-making about your workforce. With reporting that covers the employee experience throughout the employee lifecycle, workforce analytics allows you to measure the impact of HR activities over time. Whether you are a large company or a smaller business, workforce analytics gives you access to digestible data and reporting that helps you identify the processes that are working and those that need improvement.

Although workforce analytics and people analytics are used interchangeably, they are not always the same. Both can offer insights that improve the effectiveness of your talent management capabilities, but there are some subtle differences between the two. People analytics often describes the data and reporting covering employee attitudes and behaviors, such as preferences for remote work or work-life balance. Workforce analytics is all-encompassing, covering facts about employees, their work, and the impact of HR activities on the workforce. For practical purposes, however, many organizations are referring to the same thing when using the terms people analytics and workforce analytics.