The technological advancements in attendance management led to the introduction of digital time tracking templates to replace physical timesheets. Automated employee time tracking solutions have transformed the employee time tracking experience by eliminating the tedious and long-drawn process of manually filling out and managing physical Timesheets   

Businesses don’t want to waste precious hours chasing employees to fill timesheets and then manually collate them.  Now there is several employee time tracking software available to streamline the entire process and with the introduction of automated time tracking solutions the traditional timesheet has been replaced by things like punch-in cards or digital time tracking systems.  

In this blog, we will discuss 10 essential Timesheet features that can help to optimize your attendance management

What is an Employee Timesheet?

An employee timesheet is a form of a worksheet or a timecard to keep an account of the total hours worked by an employee The working hours can be tracked daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. It is a good measure to organize and manage the attendance data for further payroll processing. Generally speaking, introducing the digital Time Tracking Solutions to the organization will definitely make the whole workflow easier and increase productiveness.

A typical employee timesheet usually consists of the following basic fields 

Employee’s name
A date section
Clock in / Clock out  time 
Lunch and break periods
Overtimes

The most notable advantages of digital time sheet implication are the accuracy of hours earned assessment and the elimination of sparing time on paperwork. The integrated time tracking software uses the digital timesheet template that performs the calculations automatically and even forms a report for the supervisors

What are the essential Timesheet features for employee attendance management?

Tracking of employee hours  is the most basic application for a Timesheet, But that is not all, with an automated attendance management software timesheets can be also featured in many other activities, such as:

Overtime Hours – Overtime is one-half times regular employee rates and it is more expensive for the company as compared to the normal work hours. It is in the best interests of both the company and the employee to minimize overtime, and It can easily be tracked with an automated overtime calculation feature in digital time sheets.

Breaks – Breaks should be tracked for payroll purposes and to figure out which employees are spending most of the billable hours in breaks Although lunch breaks and other shorter breaks may marginally reduce productivity the Timesheet logic like auto-apply breaks can help organizations to stay compliant with FLSA and other Time tracking compliances.

Data Visualization Manipulations and safeguarding – The biggest disadvantage of a free employee timesheet on Excel is it does not prevent data manipulation and gives limited visualizations and calculations options, The automated time tracking software gives an opportunity to safeguard the Time tracking data, options to audit and record the manipulations and gives a comprehensive approach of exporting and managing attendance data.

 Exporting and printing Timesheets – The simple yet essential feature of exporting attendance data with digital time sheets helps users to export attendance data directly into popular payroll, accounting, HR, and CRM applications. This feature eliminates the tedious process of managing and reconciling attendance data on multiple platforms. 

Punch Location tracking – This timesheet feature allows the admins to get real-time location-based attendance updates, which helps in recording and managing employees’ attendance records working at different worksites, through a centralized system. 

PTO and Holidays – In addition to daily hours, timesheets may also be used to track Paid time offs and holidays, which helps in ensuring and planning the resource availability on work to meet deadlines and stay on budget. 

Approval Workflows – The digital timesheet offers editing and approval features that make complex approval workflows easy for both employees and approving authorities.

Conclusion:- 

The transformation of attendance management with automated Time tracking solutions can help in various aspects of business operations. You can automate a wide range of your Time tracking and payroll processing functions and adapt them by using a comprehensive Time tracking solution Like NextGen Workforce. When it comes to Time tracking and attendance management NextGen offers a complete solution for streamlining, digitizing, and automating the time tracking experience to improve the efficiency and transparency of your business operations.