MinuteHound Puts Timeclock Management in the Cloud

An area of cloud service MSP Today hadn’t yet heard of is employee timekeeping and attendance. We reckoned factories still had their noisy punch systems and most other places had employees working so many extra hours in this economy that tracking specific hours didn’t much matter.

Our main concern was with remote workers, which are a mixed bag. Many end up working all the time because the office is right there in their home or on their laps. And slackers, well they will either fail to produce or monitoring software can be used to track the lack of activity.

But for hourly workers, proper tracking is still absolutely critical, and it is here that MinuteHound and other timekeeping service providers think they have a better answer: keep the time keeping device in-house, but farm out the management and data storage and analysis to a third party.

Other providers offering this approach include NETtime Solutions,TimeClock Plus, Time Station and a good dozen others.

Meanwhile, the MinuteHound system is basically foolproof. No longer can a co-worker punch you in early, or punch you after you long ago left. Instead, the MinuteHound system uses biometrics, having workers stick their finger in a scanning device when reporting for duty or knocking off for the day.

“The system offers biometric technology featuring a paperless time clock, easy management access and alerts and all handled ‘in the cloud’ by MinuteHound's expert IT engineers,” the company explained. This way the data is trusted as it uses the actual fingerprint and collects time stamps.

MinuteHound does most of the other heavy lifting for you, offering managers and HR types e-mail and mobile alerts, and an array of reporting options. The data collected is compatible with the file formats of many payroll systems.

“MinuteHound's use of the cloud to deliver their leading time and attendance software means a small professional office can use it as easily as a multi-location chain. As businesses change size or locations, the only thing they need to do is purchase additional low-cost fingerprint scanning devices or move them to new locations,” the company argued.