Using Punch Card Time Clocks For Your Time and Attendance Hardware

Punch card time and attendance hardware has been around for almost a century, and can be an economical type of payroll time clock used to track employee hours accurately. Because of this, they can also prevent time theft, saving the company money. The downside is that they may not provide all the cost savings associated with other types of hardware. (See more time and attendance hardware options on our Payroll Time Clock Options page.)

How Punch Card Time Clocks Work

Punch cards are paper cards which an employee inserts into the time clock when reporting to work. The time he arrives is stamped on the card when he punches in and again when he punches out. The employee has no ability to "doctor" the time; if he arrives five minutes late, that will be reflected on the punch card. Because of this, time theft for employees claiming they have arrived at work before they actually did, for example, is eradicated.

To calculate payroll, the payroll specialist must key in all the data from each employees cards onto a spreadsheet or other application, and then calculate the appropriate amount of pay for each employee. Not only does it take much more time to calculate payroll, but it also does not prevent another source of lost revenue for companies: keying errors. As noted on our main time and attendance page, the American Payroll Association says a typical company will be 92% - 99% accurate in their keying in payroll data. This can result in a significant loss of revenue, which is not found with other types of time and attendance hardware, namely swipe cards, biometric, or telephone.

Hardware

Punch card time and attendance hardware is slowly being phased out by manufacturers; and most time and attendance vendors do not offer it. If you are interested in this time of hardware, we suggest going to an office supply store, purchasing a unit, and installing it yourself. You will probably be offered a maintenance agreement, which you are free to purchase, but in our opinion, not much maintenance is needed for the first five to seven years, except for an oiling and cleaning. Punch card time clocks do have a number of mechanical parts that may wear out after that time, but it may be more cost effective to just replace it with a new unit than have it repaired. Units typically cost from $150 to $300 each. They need access to a power source, and are usually either mounted on a wall or placed on a table/platform. Installation can be done easily.

Potential Drawbacks to Punch Card Time and Attendance Hardware

In addition to the potential loss of revenue that keying errors present, the time spent by the payroll specialist in entering data costs money itself. The larger the number of employees, the more time must be spent on data entry, and thus the greater the cost.

More modern technology such as swipe cards, biometric time and attendance, and the like automatically take the data into memory and export to payroll electronically. Reports can be generated (Approaching Overtime reports, or Tardy reports, for example) which can help companies make more efficient use of their employees hours.

Finally, punch cards do not prevent "buddy punching" (asking a coworker to punch your time card for you if you are late). If this is an issue at your company, you may want to consider biometric time and attendance hardware, which prevents this from happening.