Manufacturing buyer’s guide

Manufacturing time and attendance systems compared: an honest UK guide

Seven suppliers, including us, and where each one fits

The right time and attendance system for a factory depends on three things: how complex your shift patterns are, whether you need to cost labour against jobs, and how you want to pay for the software. This guide compares seven suppliers selling to UK factories and says plainly where another supplier offers something we do not.

If you want to know what our own system does on a factory floor, our time and attendance for manufacturing page covers it. This page is for choosing between suppliers. We have not linked to other suppliers, but everything we say about them comes from their own published information.

Last reviewed September 2026 · Supplying UK businesses from Leeds since 1989

The short answer

Which system suits your factory?

Before you compare

What a factory needs from a time and attendance system

Most time and attendance systems record clockings well. The differences show up in the awkward parts of factory work: night shifts, premiums, gloved hands and labour costing. These are the six questions worth asking every supplier, including us, and they are the same six the comparison below is built on.

1. 1
   

   Shift rules that match how you actually work

   Night shifts that cross midnight, continental patterns and rotating crews are where weaker systems fall over. A good system knows which shift a clocking belongs to, pays the hours against the right day, and applies premiums without anyone editing the timesheet.

   Ask the supplier: can you run one of our real, awkward weeks through the system during the demo?

2. 2
   

   Overtime, premiums and rounding

   Factories often pay several overtime rates, weekend and bank holiday premiums, and shift allowances. The system should apply them from your own rules and let staff see how their hours were worked out. Be careful with rounding: rounding that routinely trims paid time can take someone below the National Minimum Wage.

   Ask the supplier: where are rounding and grace periods set, and can we see them applied to a real clocking?

3. 3
   

   Clocking hardware that suits the factory floor

   Dust, gloves, cold stores and worn or dirty hands all affect how reliably people can clock. Proximity cards and face recognition usually cope better with manual work than fingerprint readers. If you choose biometrics, you are processing special category data under UK GDPR, and the ICO’s biometric guidance expects staff to be offered a genuine alternative, such as a card. In 2024 the ICO ordered one employer to stop using facial recognition and fingerprint scanning for attendance because less intrusive options were available. The guidance is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, so check the current version before you commit.

   Ask the supplier: which terminals would you put in our environment, and what do staff use if they decline biometrics?

4. 4
   

   Labour costed against jobs

   If you need to know what a job or works order actually cost in labour, you need job clocking, where staff clock on and off each job as well as in and out of work. It is a separate feature and not every system has it, so rule it in or out early.

   Ask the supplier: can staff switch between jobs at the terminal, and how does labour cost per job reach our reports?

5. 5
   

   The records you may be asked for

   Time and attendance software does not make you compliant, but it gives you the records to show what happened. The ones factories are asked for most are hours against the 48 hour weekly limit, rest breaks between shifts, and who was on site during an evacuation. An evacuation list built from live clocking data helps with the fire safety responsibilities every employer has, although no system can account for someone who left without clocking out.

   Ask the supplier: can we produce working time and evacuation reports ourselves, without asking you?

6. 6
   

   How hours reach payroll

   Every system says it works with payroll, so ask how. A direct integration writes hours straight into your payroll software. An export produces a file your payroll team imports. Both work, but they suit different teams, and neither runs your payroll for you unless the supplier also sells payroll.

   Ask the supplier: is it a direct integration or an export for our payroll software, and who fixes it if the format changes?

The comparison

Manufacturing time and attendance systems compared side by side

This table sets our two systems against five other suppliers, using the questions above. Everything about other suppliers comes from their own websites. Where a supplier’s site does not say whether they offer something, the table says “Not stated”. That means they do not publish it, not that they lack it, so ask them directly.

All prices exclude VAT. On a small screen, scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Where each one fits

Which supplier suits which factory

The table shows what each supplier offers. This is the plainer version: who each one suits. Where another supplier offers something we do not, we say so.