Most attendance projects fail after the hardware is installed, not during. The readers capture punches perfectly well; the difficulty is turning those punches into paid days across shifts, rest days and leave — and keeping the data flowing when the network drops. Buy for that, not for the fingerprint sensor.
Questions to ask before the hardware
Ask these of your software vendor first, then choose readers that fit the answers.
- Which device protocols does the HR system speak natively, and which need middleware?
- If the internet drops, does the device buffer punches — and can the system backfill a date range afterwards?
- Can one system manage readers across multiple branches, with data scoped per branch?
- When we move servers, do the devices need to be re-pointed on site?
- What happens to a punch from an employee who is not yet mapped?
Connectivity mode is the decision that bites later
Some readers push data to a server address held in their own configuration; others hold a persistent connection. This sounds like a technical footnote until you migrate servers — push-mode devices keep sending to the old address, and attendance stops silently. Nobody notices until payroll.
Ask, before purchase, how each device is configured and what a server move would require. A list of which readers need a physical visit is far cheaper to produce now than to discover during a migration.
Punches are not attendance
A punch log tells you someone touched a reader. It does not tell you whether they were scheduled to work, whether they were late against their own shift, whether the day was a rest day, or whether an absence was authorised leave.
The software has to resolve punches against rosters, rest days, holidays and leave to produce a day you can pay. If it cannot, someone will do that reconciliation in a spreadsheet every month — which is the cost the project was supposed to remove.
Plan for the messy cases
Every deployment meets these, so ask how each is handled before you sign.
- Missed punches and manual corrections — who approves them, and is it audited?
- Night shifts that cross midnight.
- Staff who move between branches.
- Field staff with no reader nearby.
- A new employee punching before HR has mapped them to a device ID.
Questions
Do biometric machines work without internet?
Most readers keep recording locally when connectivity drops and hold the punches until the link returns. What matters is whether your HR system can pull that historical window afterwards and backfill attendance, rather than losing the day.
General information for Pakistani employers, not legal or tax advice. Statutory rates change with each Finance Act — verify current figures before relying on them.
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