A Time Clock Partner that Makes Integrating Time Clocks Easy

If you want to provide a complete employee time tracking system, include a time and attendance clock in your offer. 

But we get it, you’re in the software business, not hardware. We understand if your organization is worried about managing and maintaining time clocks for your customers. 

The path to simplifying time clock management – especially at scale – is using the right cloud-based time clock middleware. A strong middleware layer makes it easy to deploy and manage fleets of time clocks for different clients. Middleware is indispensable to maintaining quality customer support as your business grows. 

The middleware is the lynchpin to connecting all the time clocks and integrating them with your solution. It makes it all work. And by making it all work, we mean making reselling time clocks highly profitable for you and valuable for your customers. 

Your time clock partner should offer you more than employee time clocks. It should support its clocks and time clock software with a robust middleware layer. 

The Solution to Managing Time Clocks Easily 

AccuCloud is our cloud-based time collection solution. It's our only time system that includes a middleware component to manage tasks like data validation, software updates, and real-time monitoring insights into your ATS time clocks.  

With AccuCloud, we made it easy to deploy, integrate, and manage your customers' time clocks. Because of the middleware’s power, you can assure your customers that they can be almost entirely hands-off with their time clocks. They’ll need someone to install the time clocks, but that covers most of their hands-on involvement. Installation is so easy that most companies use their own team to do it. Also with AccuCloud, our ATS team members will take care of updating your time clock software.  

On your end, your support team can use the middleware functionality to automate and centralize task management. 

This article sets out the middleware functionality that is critical to managing large deployments of time clocks. You can use this as a guide for building your own high-function middleware. This route, however, will make your employee time tracking system more expensive and delay your entrance into the market. 

A middleware layer is needed. Without one, it’s impossible to manage employee time clock deployment, integration, and management on a large scale without raising your costs. 

Planning Stages for Stress-Free Software Development 

The middleware controls the data and communications flow between the time clocks and your solution. It also pushes out the right time clock profile on each time clock. 

The ATS team works with you to design how you want the time clocks to operate within your environment. This includes what time clock profiles you want to set up for your customers.  

You’ll determine what information the time clocks will need from your system and what information they are going to collect to send back. You will also decide what other available features you want to include on the time clock, beyond tracking time. 

Working with our team, you’ll finalize the time clock profiles. You specify which profile applies to which time clocks. Our team will program those time clocks with a code string identifying the right profile.  

The middleware layer sends the correct profile to each employee's time clock using the code string. This happens when the time clock is connected to the customer's network. 

Time Clock Integration for Maximum Value 

Sharing data between the time clocks and your system enhances the value of both solutions. The AccuCloud middleware is responsible for controlling this data flow. 

Your team can easily see the integration status of each time clock in real-time on the AccuCloud web management portal. This allows your support team to proactively monitor each time clock’s data flow.  

When the middleware sends employee attendance records to your system, it marks each record as sent. Flagging attendance records ensures accurate payroll without duplicate records, eliminating the need for manual cleanup of employee hours. 

The AccuCloud middleware also uses business rules and data sets, as defined by you. You can use these tools to automate and simplify many workflows. 

#1 Business Rule Example: Meal Break Management 

Many states have labor laws that mandate an unpaid meal break for employees, which usually specifies how long that meal break must last. With a meal break business rule, you can help your customers use time clocks to track meal breaks and avoid paying for time that should be unpaid break time. 

 With a meal break rule, the time clock won’t accept any employee punch back from a meal break if the set time for the break hasn’t expired. If meal breaks are set for 30 minutes, the time clock won’t accept a punch-in within 30 minutes of the meal break punch-out. 

Let’s say the jurisdiction changes its law to require a 45-minute meal break. One update to the rule on the middleware and this change gets pushed out to all employee clocks in that jurisdiction. There’s no risk a clock won’t get updated, and it requires no manual effort by your customers. 

#2 Data Set Example: Employee Location 

To provide a positive employee experience at the clock, you want them to be able to punch clocks quickly. Speed at the time clock also keeps productivity up.  

Our time clocks have high performance processing and memory power that keep the line moving. That's still no reason to download all employees’ information to each one. Workers in Boston do not need their information on clocks at a business’s Chicago locations. 

Making employee location data sets is a simple way to control what information is saved on the time clock. 

Punch and Time Tracking Options for the Time Clocks 

Another part of the time clock profile is specifying the appearance and functionality of your customers’ time clocks. Working with ATS as your time clock partner, you’ll create clock functionality profiles, which we store on the middleware. As part of the time clock profile, you can select: 

• Which function buttons appear on the time clock. 
• The wording of all messages needed on the clock. 
• Which business logo appears on the clock screen. Enterprise customers with multiple brand names, like hotels or hospitals, can choose different time clock logos for each location. 
• Resellers that qualify can have their brand imprinted on the time clock casing. 

Once a profile is changed on the middleware, the middleware pushes out the update to all time clocks with that profile. You and your customers can trust that all time clocks with the same profile will be updated at the same time. 

We have been creating employee attendance tracking solutions for many years. We know what features businesses often want to include. Thus, we’ve already built a host of time clock functions so you can have them added quickly once requested by a customer.  

A popular request is to allow employees to view their punch records to see their hours at the time clock. We’ve got that built. If you want to turn that on for some time clocks, we can do that in minutes for you by adding it to their profile. 

Let the Middleware Handle Most of the Time Clock Deployment Work

To this point, neither you nor your customer has had to touch a time clock! The ATS team oversees the hands-on work, such as configuring the AccuCloud middleware to control time clock management for deployed time clocks. 

Now it’s time to get the time clocks on the walls and operational in the field. 

The Right Middleware Makes Time Clocks Truly Plug-and-Play 

Your customer’s facilities team can install each clock according to the customer’s deployment map. After attaching the time clock to the wall, the facilities team member can power it on and connect it to the internet.  

The middleware takes over from there, pushing out the software and profile to the time clock. 

Now the clock is ready for employees to clock in, unless the business uses biometric readers on their time clocks. Then there’s one more step: enrollment. 

Enrolling Employees with Biometric Time Clocks

Employees need to enroll in the biometric system at one of the time clocks designated for their use. 

Enrollment through ATS time clock biometric readers is easy. Employees can self-serve, follow directions at the time clock, and get themselves enrolled. To make sure their enrollment goes smoothly, your customers should: 

• Get documented consent from each employee who agrees to use the biometric reader. 
• Install the time clocks at a suitable height that makes it easy for employees to use the biometric reader.  
• Consider installment location: Facial recognition works best in well-lit areas.  
• Make sure to keep the biometric readers clean. 

You can find some more biometric reader enrollment best practices here.

When an employee enrolls at one time clock, a biometric template is created for them. The middleware gets the template and distributes it to each time clock that includes that employee in its data set. 

The middleware makes it simple to update templates on time clocks when employees change locations or leave the company. 

Benefits of AccuCloud Security

While cloud-based and middleware solutions deliver numerous advantages, they also introduce security challenges. The middleware must be designed with top-tier security and receive on-going security monitoring. 

At ATS, we built security into the AccuCloud system, which goes through annual SOC audits, as well as regular penetration testing. Our network infrastructure was built to maintain high uptime securely and is monitored all day, every day. 

The Right Middleware Makes Everything Easy 

Having a good middleware layer is crucial for effectively managing time clocks, from the start to ongoing maintenance. 

Managing a growing fleet of time clocks is hard without a middleware layer that can handle integration and updates. The AccuCloud middleware does all of this, and it provides you with oversight and reporting tools. Our web portal helps your team monitor time clocks, integrations, and other important information. 

As leaders in employee attendance time tracking systems, we invest considerable resources to build and support a powerful middleware layer.  

It’s costly for independent software vendors to build this type of middleware. The purpose of reselling a bundled solution that includes time clocks is to maximize value and profitability. 

The easier, faster, more lucrative option is to work with a time clock partner. We’re experts in time clock data collection and time clock management and can offer a complete system and ongoing support, like our AccuCloud system.  

See for yourself what our middleware can do to help you scale quickly; contact us today to set up your demo.