Choosing time-tracking software – a checklist for the buyer

In brief

• Section 32 of the Working Hours Act requires hours to be distinguishable by type: regular working time, additional work, overtime, emergency work and Sunday work, and the compensation paid for them.
• It must be possible to produce one employee's working-time records for a chosen period in a readable form without the vendor's help.
• In flexitime, the accrual at the end of the monitoring period may be at most 60 hours of excess and 20 hours of shortfall.
• The format of the payroll data and the division of work with the payroll system are settled as early as the comparison stage, using the name of your own payroll system.

Buying time tracking is rarely decided by whether the system can add hours together. It is decided by whether the entries form the working-time records required by section 32 of the Working Hours Act, whether employees record their days without reminders, and whether the payroll administrator gets the hours in the form the payroll system reads. These three things are worth settling before comparing feature tables.

Download the Excel comparison for three suppliers. Record test findings and questions for the next meeting. The template is introduced at the end of this guide.

For recording methods, see the comparison of clocking, manual entries and calendar suggestions. Before testing a payroll connection, review the fields and reconciliation with payroll. This keeps the trial focused on the work you will later do in the system.

The scope of the rollout decides how many requirements you need

The same purchase means two very different projects depending on how much of the working-time model is moved into the system.

A limited rollout starts with recording, approval and transferring hours to payroll. Supplements and compensation can continue to be calculated in the payroll system. The rollout schedule depends on data migration, working-time rules and integrations.

The whole working-time model means the system knows the length and placement of regular working hours, the flexitime limits, the working-time bank rules, the absence types and the supplements of the collective agreement, and calculates balances and compensation from them. This is a project that includes a change in ways of working: who records, when approval happens, what is done with a late entry. The software is a smaller part of the work there than the agreeing is.

Either starting point is sound, as long as the choice is deliberate. If you start narrow, ask the vendor as early as the purchase stage what expanding later requires: is it a matter of settings in the same system or of a new purchase, and does the accumulated history come along.

Legal compliance: what the records must show

Under section 32 of the Working Hours Act, the employer must record the hours worked and the compensation paid for them per employee. There are two ways to keep the record: either the hours of regular working time, the hours of additional work, overtime, emergency work and Sunday work and the compensation paid for them, or all hours worked plus separately the hours of overtime, emergency work and Sunday work and the increased portions paid for them. In both cases the hours must be distinguishable by type. A system that produces one number for the day leaves the work unfinished.

Under the same section, an employee has the right on request to a written account of the entries concerning them in the shift rosters and in the working-time records, and the employer must on request deliver a copy of the working-time records to the occupational safety and health authority and to the shop steward representing the employee. The practical requirement is therefore simple: it must be possible to produce one person’s records for a chosen period in a readable form without the vendor’s help.

Working-time records must be retained until the limitation period for claims expires (section 32): while the employment continues, two years from the end of the calendar year in which the right to compensation arose, and after the employment has ended, two years from the ending (section 40).

Ask the vendor what happens to the material when an employee’s employment ends and when the contract with the vendor ends. The retention obligation is the employer’s regardless of whose server the data sits on.

Section 30 of the Working Hours Act requires a shift roster for every workplace – in everyday speech a shift schedule – showing when the employee’s regular working hours begin and end and the timing of the breaks. The roster must be communicated to employees in writing no later than one week before the period begins, and after that it may be changed only with the employee’s consent or for a weighty reason relating to work arrangements. From the system this requires three things: a draft is distinct from a published roster, the moment of publication is retained, and a change after publication leaves a trace. In work where the placement of regular working hours does not vary, or where flexitime or flexible working hours are applied, the roster may be given as valid until further notice, and an agreement on flexitime replaces the shift roster when the principles applied to the placement of working hours appear in it. For breaching the obligation to draw up a shift roster, the employer or the employer’s representative shall under section 44 be sentenced to a fine for a working hours violation.

In flexitime, section 12 sets the limits the system has to follow: the flexible period may be at most four hours per day, weekly regular working hours at most 40 hours on average during a four-month monitoring period, and at the end of the period the accumulated excess may be at most 60 hours and the shortfall at most 20 hours. In a working-time bank the limits come from section 14: the accrual may not grow by more than 180 hours during a calendar year, nor may the total accrual exceed an amount corresponding to six months of working time, and at most 60 hours may be transferred from flexitime into the bank during a four-month monitoring period. When a working-time bank has been agreed, section 32 requires records of the saved items and of taking them as time off.

The collective agreement adds a layer of its own: evening and weekend supplements, increase percentages and adjustment periods. Section 34 of the Working Hours Act allows derogation by collective agreement from, among other things, regular working hours, rest periods and the shift roster. Ask the vendor specifically about the agreement in your own sector: are the rules ready, are they built during the rollout, and who maintains them when the agreement period changes.

The employee’s day-to-day work decides the quality of the data

Try recording actual working days on the devices employees use. Check how changes, breaks and work for different customers are entered. A presentation alone does not show how well the system fits your daily work.

Assess whether different teams need clocking, retrospective entry or both. Check the scope of mobile and offline use and how employees can view their hours, balances and time off.

Handling absences and hours together makes checking easier. Also try a partial-day absence, such as a two-hour medical appointment. Check how breaks are recorded or deducted and how actual events are shown. An automatic deduction for an unpaid break does not replace checking what actually happened.

The supervisor’s work: approval, balances and later corrections

The supervisor’s view decides whether the pay period is finished on time. One question tells more than a feature list: does the supervisor see from one place who is missing an entry or an approval, or do they have to go through people one by one.

Corrections are the second point where systems differ. Correcting an approved day is ordinary in every period: sick leave comes to light afterwards, the entry type is wrong, the overtime had been agreed differently. Ask how an approved day, or one already exported to payroll, is corrected, whether the original entry stays visible and who sees who made the correction. The answer also tells you whether the records survive an inspection: an hour that changes unnoticed afterwards makes the whole material questionable.

The third question concerns acting on someone else’s behalf. A supervisor or an administrator needs the right to record an absence on the employee’s behalf, and this has to remain in the log so that the event can be traced afterwards.

Data out: payroll data, reports and the interface

Confirm how data reaches your specific payroll system and what it requires. Ask for a sample export and test the import with payroll staff. CSV can work well when its columns and pay codes match the receiving system’s requirements.

The second decisive question is the division of work: does the system calculate supplements and overtime into finished pay events, or does it deliver the hours and the payroll system calculates them itself. Both models work, but they lead to different rollouts. In the first, the rules of the collective agreement are built into the time tracking; in the second they stay in the payroll system and time tracking has to produce the hours itemised precisely enough.

A transfer sometimes fails halfway through, and then repeatability is what matters: the same batch must produce the same material when it is run again, and the system must say which days have already gone through. Without this the payroll administrator checks the same period twice by hand.

Agree at the purchase stage how you get your data out. That is when your negotiating position is at its best. Ask in what form you get all the hours, absences and balances out, in what time and by whose work. The answer also tells you what options you have three years from now.

Of the reports you need at least two: the statutory working-time records for a chosen period for one person, and an accrual report that shows the balances by period. An interface is needed if the hours also go to invoicing or reporting; then ask what the interface provides and what it accepts.

Data protection and the contract

Working-time data is the employer’s data, but it is personal data at the same time. The employer is the controller of it and the system vendor the processor, so a written processing agreement under the data protection regulation is made about the processing.

Ask in which country the data is located, who the sub-processors are and where they operate, and whether the processing agreement is ready or negotiated separately.

Check how erasure requests are handled during and after required retention periods. Working-time records must remain employee-specific for as long as the law requires. Changing an identifier alone does not make data anonymous.

If the system collects location, access control data or other technical monitoring data, the rollout has a procedure of its own. Under section 21 of the Act on the Protection of Privacy in Working Life, the purpose, introduction and methods of monitoring of employees carried out by technical means fall within the dialogue referred to in the Co-operation Act; in other companies the employer must, before making the decision, give employees or their representatives an opportunity to be heard. After the procedure the employer must define the purpose and the methods of the monitoring and inform employees of them. The dialogue under the Co-operation Act concerns companies that regularly have at least 20 employees; in companies with 20–49 employees it is conducted in the lighter form set out in section 7a of that Act. For the choice this means that the more the system collects, the more preparation the rollout requires – choose a level you can justify to your employees.

On the contract terms, ask for the unit of pricing (user, employee, device), the minimum charge, the price of the rollout, the contract period and the notice period, and how the price changes mid-period when the number of people rises or falls. A public price list is the fastest way to compare; if the price is available only as a quotation, ask for it in writing with the same headcount from every vendor.

Example: testing the flexitime accrual during a trial

One case reveals the balance logic more precisely than a demonstration. Give the vendor an employee who is on flexitime with a four-month monitoring period, and ask them to show what the system does as the accrual grows.

Also test the lower balance limit. Check how the system displays a negative balance, warns as the agreed limit approaches and handles the end of the monitoring period.

The most common mistakes in choosing

The system is judged with generic examples, not with your own data. A demonstration shows an ordinary day. Take your own organisation’s hardest cases into the trial: a night shift, a partial-day absence, a working-time model changed mid-period, a retroactive sick leave.

Recording gets more attention than output. The format of the payroll data and the reports are often checked only during the rollout, even though they are exactly the reason for the purchase. Ask to see a real material file for your own payroll system as early as the comparison stage.

The requirement list is written from the current system. When requirements are copied from the fields of the current tool, the result is the same system under a new name. Write the requirements from what the law, payroll and the supervisor have to get done.

The employee’s day-to-day work goes unmeasured. The choice is made from the administrator’s view, even though the quality of the data is created on the employee’s phone. Give the trial to five employees for two weeks and ask them how many times a day went unrecorded.

Checklist

Legal compliance

• Are the hours distinguishable by type so that the hours of regular working time, additional work, overtime, emergency work and Sunday work appear separately (section 32)?
• Can one employee’s working-time records be produced for a chosen period in a readable form, both for the employee’s own request and for an occupational safety inspection?
• Is the material retained for the required time also after the employment and the vendor contract have ended, and in what form?
• Is a shift roster produced showing when regular working hours begin and end and the timing of the breaks, and is the moment of publication retained (section 30)?
• Are the flexitime and working-time bank limits followed during the period, not only when it ends (sections 12 and 14)?
• How are the supplements and increases of your own sector’s collective agreement implemented: as ready-made rules, built during the rollout, or by hand?

The employee’s day-to-day work

• Does recording the day work on a phone, and what happens when there is no network?
• Can the same organisation use both clocking and recording afterwards for different staff groups?
• Does the employee see their own balance, overtime and time off without the supervisor passing it on?
• How are a partial-day absence and breaks recorded, and how do they affect the day’s hours?
• How many steps does recording an ordinary working day take? Measure the number during the trial.

The supervisor’s work

• Does the supervisor see from one view who is missing an entry or an approval?
• Can an approval be returned with a reason, and does the employee get word of it?
• How is an approved day, or one exported to payroll, corrected, and does the original entry stay visible?
• Who may record on someone else’s behalf and where is that stored?

Data out

• In what form is the material transferred to the payroll system you name: as a direct transfer, as a file or as e-mail to the accounting firm?
• Does the system calculate the supplements and overtime in full or does it deliver the hours for the payroll system to calculate?
• Does the same batch produce the same material when run again, and what happens if the same period is sent twice?
• Which reports and interfaces are ready by period, by person and by team, and what does using them require?
• Do you get all the hours, absences and balances out in machine-readable form when the contract ends, in what time and by whose work?

Data protection and the contract

• In which country is the data located and who are the sub-processors?
• Is the processing agreement ready, and how are a deletion request and the retention obligation reconciled?
• What location or monitoring data is collected, can the level be chosen, and what does the rollout require under section 21?
• Is the price public, what is the billing unit, is there a minimum charge, and what is the contract period and the notice period?