Scaling Your Time and Attendance Tracking Software’s Value

Selling the perfect time clock system makes your software solution more valuable. By integrating with a complete time and attendance tracking system, you can access a wider market and increase your customers’ lifetime value. 

To make selling time clocks profitable, you need to be able to integrate, deploy, and manage time clocks at scale, including those using biometric timekeeping. 

The "perfect time clock" easily connects to your solution using a cloud-based middleware, making time clock management simple. The combination of high-quality time clocks and robust middleware ensures your customers reap maximum benefits and you reap maximum profitability. 

The Right Time and Attendance Tracking Middleware Helps You Scale

The middleware layer connecting time clocks to your solution is crucial for scalability. A well-functioning middleware layer can help you manage your time clock fleets in a cost-effective way. A poorly designed middleware layer will result in increased expenses as you expand. 

The right middleware empowers you to grow your customer base, regardless of your customer profile.

You’ll be able to support small business owners and multinational enterprises operating in multiple languages. 

The Right Middleware for Your AccuCloud System

We help our partners grow their customer base with our AccuCloud solution, a cloud-based time collection system. Our time clocks are one piece of the AccuCloud solution. Its middleware automates critical tasks:  

• Regulating data and communication flow between the time clocks and your software 

• Simplifying your customers’ time clock deployments 

AccuCloud also includes a web portal for your support team to see real-time integration status of all connected time clocks. 

The Best Time Clock Middleware Lifts Your Solution Above Your Competitors

You can boost sales and revenue by integrating the best timekeeping system into your time and attendance software. You achieve this by showcasing the impact the right time clock system has on the value they’ll get from your solution. 

We'll delve deep into how AccuCloud middleware automates, streamlines, and enhances the value of any timekeeping system. With your sales team equipped with a clear understanding of the middleware's operations, they can effectively demonstrate how integrating your solution with the right time clock amplifies its benefits for them. 

Ensuring Time Tracking Data Integrity and Security

Without a two-way data flow to manage and track all the shared data, the system cannot ensure the data integrity. AccuCloud offers two options for data integration: 

1. Data loading, whereby selected data sets are downloaded from one source and uploaded to the other.
2. API/web services that run automated data sharing running on a short cycle.

With AccuCloud, all employee time data records sent from the time clock are flagged by the middleware before it sends them to your solution. The process safeguards against records getting overlooked or duplicated, eliminating manual attendance or payroll data cleanup. 

The middleware also manages which employee and departmental information from your system get sent to each time clock. Employees can only punch in and out at a time clock that has their information. Through the middleware management of this information, employees are always able to use authorized time clocks and never those they aren’t authorized to use. 

AccuCloud also encrypts employees’ work data while at rest on the clock and middleware, as well as during delivery. 

Time Clock Profiles Ease Configuration Management

You select the time clock model, reader options, and time clock functionality you’ll offer your customers. Your customers select from the options you make available. The configurations you select are the basis of the unique time clock profiles the ATS team creates for each of your customers. 

Storing time clock profiles on the middleware simplifies configuration updates. When a customer wants new functionality or business rule, we amend the profile on the middleware and push it out to all applicable time clocks. 

For instance, meal break rule enforcement is a popular time clock function. If your customer wants it on their clocks so employees can’t clock in before a break is over, they can get it quickly. We’ve already built the most popular time clock functions, like meal break enforcement. The ATS team can add the rule to the profile and have the middleware deploy the updated profile to the clocks in minutes.  

Without middleware, changing time clock profiles would need manual contact with each clock - a slow, expensive, and mistake-prone process. The middleware’s centralized control streamlines profile deployment to new and existing time clocks. As customers grow and add more clocks, the middleware ensures that they’re properly configured. 

Managing Employee Biometric Templates

Our middleware takes a similar approach towards management of employee biometric timekeeping and the required templates. Managing biometric templates across multiple time clock fleets is difficult without a reliable, secure, and automated system. 

An efficient biometric time clock system limits how many templates are stored on a clock. You only want the employee templates needed for that time clock stored on it. This allows the time clock to continue to work quickly. 

Our middleware automatically installs and removes employee templates on the time clock based on the rules set by your customers. When an employee changes work locations, the middleware removes their template from the clocks at the old location and adds it to those at the new location. 

With all employee biometric templates stored on the middleware, it’s also the backup system. If a time clock gets damaged, employees don’t need a new template created. 

Simplifying Time Clock System and Attendance Software Updates

Dealing with devices that have different operating systems and software versions is a major support headache. Even worse if some of the hardware is running on versions that lack security updates or patches. 

The AccuCloud middleware handles the over-the-air (OTA) updates to all the time clocks you have deployed. There’s virtually no risk that your team will have to bear the strain of supporting time clocks running with different time tracking software versions. 

Use Case Solutions that Illustrate the Power of the Right Middleware 

We’ve shared a few examples, but let’s paint a bigger picture. Here are three use cases that show the value and necessity of choosing a time clock system with cloud-based middleware.

Run Accurate Payroll – Every Time 

The middleware helps ensure payroll accuracy by flagging and preventing duplicate attendance records from reaching payroll systems. 

Customers can logically group time clocks by location, so attendance records specify where the hours were worked. The location information triggers the application of the right tax deductions and labor laws rules in payroll software. 

Customers can also use middleware to enforce the meal break rule, minimizing bloat on customer’s payroll. 

Give HR Confidence  

When an employee's status changes, HR staff need to update their information in all necessary systems. This includes the time clocks. 

The middleware can distribute new employee information once it gets updates from your system. Now, the HR team only must update one system – yours. This relieves the HR workload in all these scenarios: 

• Enabling a new hire to start using the time clock from day one, automating their attendance data collection immediately. 

• Deleting a former employee's data from the time clocks to prevent them from clocking in or out without permission. Removing unnecessary employee information from a time clock also optimizes device performance and doesn’t waste storage space. 

• Any changes to an employee's working location, role, or department are quickly updated in the time clocks, ensuring all attendance records are accurate. This includes keeping the time clocks current with the department transfer options available to each employee 

• Collecting employee attestations, such as daily reporting they weren’t asked to work during breaks or to confirm they didn’t witness a workplace accident. 

Improves Employees’ Time Clock Experience

A good employee experience starts with a time clock that accurately tracks employee attendance. That meets the basic expectation that employees will get paid properly. 

After that, you want to consider the actual experience employees have while in front of the clock. Employees will appreciate time clocks that share their information with them, rather than having to go to their manager, payroll or HR staff. 

For instance, employees can see their total weekly work hours and the date/time of those hours recorded by the time clock. If an employee believes there’s an error, they can address it before payroll runs. 

All ATS time clocks process punches quickly so employees don’t have to wait in long lines. Employees of customers who select biometric timekeeping will also appreciate how quickly the clocks verify employees. 

Benefits for Your Business when You Roll Out the Right Time Clock System

The ability to scale selling time clock systems is the challenge. Having tools like AccuCloud middleware can help you scale to achieve rapid growth. Without the tools to scale, you’ll get mired down in heavier administrative burdens and higher transaction costs with each new customer. 

Integrating your solution with AccuCloud offers you the opportunity to scale your business in a way that increases revenue and profitability. 

You always have the option to design, build, and maintain custom middleware in-house. That’s a complex, time consuming, and expensive undertaking. You don’t have to put your market entry on hold while you redirect time and money to building your own middleware. Instead, you can go with a proven, reliable time clock solution supported by a vendor. One that continues to innovate its technologies, delivering an increasingly valuable time and attendance tracking solution.