Fingerprint Time Clocks

There is nothing so debilitating to the financial structure of a company than employee theft. Employee theft can occur in two ways: the theft can be internal as in cases of embezzlement or fraud, or the theft can also be in terms of goods, services and resources of the firm. Theft doesn't have to be on a large scale; it can just be a gradual consistent internal bleeding. Many a company had its solvency shaken by employees stealing paper goods, cleaning supplies, office supplies and the like. These losses gradually eat into a company's profits and they often go undetected for a considerable length of time.

The other type of employee theft is in the realm of theft of service with regard to time. We all remember the days of the time clock. In those instances, each employee was issued a weekly time card and the worker punched in when reporting to work, and punched out when through with the shift. However, this archaic system has been proven over the years to be quite ineffective. First of all, the time card in and of itself did not substantiate the identity of the person, or that the person whose name was reflected on the time card had, in fact, worked those hours.

In a greatshare of the time, the worker didn't actually work the hours that were outlined on his time card. In actuality, the employees would concoct time scams in which they would punch each others' cards in a system to defraud the company of money. The only thing that the time card did was establish that someone punched that particular time card at the time and day reflected by the punch. There was no positive verification that the employee had worked those hours as stated on the time card. The other factor to keep in mind was that, at the end of the pay period, the bookkeeper had to calculate the hours and post the figures. This double whammy of time theft by employees and the time consuming calculations on the part of the support staff cost the company large sums of money that could have been utilized in more beneficial ways.

As the 9/11 incident shook the security net many Americans mistakenly thought they had, business owners began to come to grips with their security issues. Fingerprinting as a means of establishing personal identification became commonplace after 9/11, and business owners began to realize the efficacy of installing fingerprint time card systems for employee authentication because it has become so easy to steal another person's identity. With time cards, passwords, PIN numbers and identification cards, the employee need not be present, only his items for identification need be present. With fingerprint time card systems, there is personal identification authentication because no two individuals have the same fingerprints.

The biometric time clock systems of today eliminate the necessity for items such as identification card and badge, password or PIN, although companies can entertain the utilization of these items as additional verification if they wish. The fingerprinting time clock systems actually scan the finger upon the employee "punching in," and compare this scan to a geometric template of the fingerprint containing the measurements of each employee's fingers. In this way, the employees' individual rights are not usurped, because no fingerprint images are stored.

The advantages to installing a fingerprint time card system are impressive:
  1. Elimination of paper time sheets which saves the cost of developing and tracking these time sheets as well as the time involved in their retrieval and computation.
  2. Office efficiency is maximized through ease of recording and documenting employee time.
  3. Ease of managing time and attendance data and establishing employee profiles.
  4. Eliminates data duplicity which is both time and cost effective for the company.
  5. Eliminates employee theft due to "buddy punching."
  6. Eases the payroll process.
  7. Facilitates the employee scheduling process.
  8. Automatically tracks employee breaks and time deviations from normal routine which saves time in payroll calculations.
  9. Yields more control over actual work time and payroll matters, which saves the company time and money.
Fingerprint time card systems can be installed today at relatively low cost, and they are worth every penny because they curtail card fraud and time wasted on employee payroll calculations. Fingerprint time card systems have proven to be a cost effective, high value business solution for tracking employee time.