How a punch becomes an attendance day
- A punch arrives — from a biometric terminal, from an employee's self-punch, or entered, bulk-uploaded or imported by HR.
- The shift is found. A day-level override wins, then the employee's own shift assignment, then the department or branch rule. Optionally, HRMSMax can detect the shift from the punch times.
- Punches are paired into in and out times inside the shift's punch window, and breaks are measured the way the shift's break rule says.
- Rules are applied: grace, full-day and half-day thresholds, late penalties, overtime and what a missing punch means.
- Issues are raised — a missing punch, a late arrival, an early exit — for the employee to regularise or for HR to review.
- The day is recorded with its status, hours and reasons. Every date gets a record, and a past month is recalculated with the rules that applied at the time, not today's.
Where punches come from
- Biometric terminalseSSL and ZKTeco terminals that push punches over the internet (ADMS), or terminals polled on a local network. See biometric attendance integration.
- Employee self-punchCheck-in and check-out from the employee's self-service portal and from the HRMSMax mobile app, switched on per employee for each channel.
- Geofenced punchesA work location can have one or more circular geofences. The server measures the distance itself; a punch from outside is refused unless the employee gives a reason, and then waits for manager approval.
- HR entriesManual, bulk and imported punches, and an "ignore punch" action for a stray swipe — each one recorded against the person who made it.
Attendance rules you configure
Rules are set per employee category, so staff, workers and contract labour can each follow their own policy.
- Shift types: fixed timings, flexible (total hours only) or open.
- Grace and thresholds: late-arrival and early-exit grace; minimum hours for a full day and a half day, and below which a day is absent; optional quarter-day rounding.
- Late penalties: arriving late or leaving early beyond a set number of minutes can become a half day, and a number of late marks in a week, month or payroll cycle can mark a half day, an absence or a leave deduction.
- Breaks: none, a fixed break, the actual gap inside a break window, or every gap; paid breaks and a maximum break.
- Missing punch: treat the day as absent, half day, present without hours, hold it for regularisation (the default) or credit fixed hours.
- Overtime: eligibility, approval mode, minutes authorised automatically, daily and monthly caps, rounding and multipliers.
- Weekly offs: fixed days or patterns such as the second and fourth Saturday, or alternate weeks.
- Holidays: holiday lists scoped to a legal entity, a branch or a holiday group, with bulk import.
- Working on an off day or holiday: ignore it, pay it as overtime (optionally once approved), credit a comp-off, treat it as a normal day or pay an extra day; plus an optional sandwich rule.
Night shifts that cross midnight
A shift marked as crossing midnight — say 22:00 to 06:00 — has a punch window that runs into the next calendar day. Both punches are filed against the date the shift started, so a night worker's Monday shift is one Monday record with its full hours, not two half days on Monday and Tuesday.
Corrections and approvals
Employees raise a regularisation for a missing punch, a wrong time, a status change, outdoor duty or work from home, from web self-service or the mobile app. It goes to their approver; nobody can approve their own request. Outdoor-duty requests, comp-off claims and overtime use the same approval engine as leave.
From attendance to payroll
Payroll reads attendance day by day: present, half day, paid leave, unpaid leave or absent, including fractional days, each with the reason. A day with no attendance record is not a paid day. The payable days and loss-of-pay days that result are what payroll prorates salary on.
Freezing a payroll run locks the attendance days it paid for. A correction that arrives after the freeze does not silently rewrite a paid month; it becomes a pending adjustment — arrears or a recovery — in a later payroll. Unfreezing needs its own permission and a recorded reason.
Attendance reports
Daily and monthly attendance, the attendance register and summary, late arrivals, early exits, absentees, missing punches, manual punches, regularisations, overtime (calculated, approved and exceptions), work on holidays and weekly offs, working hours, shift assignment and the monthly shift schedule. Reports download as CSV, Excel or PDF, and a daily attendance file can be scheduled for delivery by SFTP.
What to know before you roll it out
GPS can be faked, and no software makes it spoof-proof. HRMSMax checks what it can on the server — the phone's mock-location flag, how old and how accurate the location fix is, clock tampering and replayed requests — and can refuse or flag the punch. It does not verify a selfie or a face at self-punch.
- Self-punch needs a connection at the moment of punching: the mobile app does not queue punches offline.
- Holidays apply by legal entity, branch or holiday group. They are not picked automatically from the employee's state.
- The HRMSMax mobile app is not yet published on Google Play or the App Store; see self-service for its status.
Questions
How does HRMSMax attendance work?
Punches from biometric terminals, self-punch and HR entries are matched to each employee's shift for the day, paired into in and out times, and judged by the company's rules for grace, half days, overtime and missing punches. The result is one attendance record per employee per day, with the reason for its status.
Can attendance feed payroll?
Yes. Payroll reads each day's attendance and approved leave to work out payable days and loss-of-pay days, and prorates salary on them. Freezing the payroll locks those attendance days; later corrections become adjustments in a later month.
Does HRMSMax support biometric attendance?
Yes, for eSSL and ZKTeco terminals that support the ADMS (cloud server) push protocol, and for terminals polled on a local network. Terminals that only speak eSSL's JSON "DM" protocol do not connect. See biometric attendance integration.
Can employees check in from a mobile phone?
Where the company switches it on for them, employees can check in and out from self-service, with the punch checked against the work location's geofence. A punch from outside the geofence needs a reason and a manager's approval.
How are overnight shifts handled?
A shift marked as crossing midnight has a punch window that runs into the next day, and both punches are filed against the date the shift started — one record with the full hours.
Is GPS attendance spoof-proof?
No. HRMSMax checks the mock-location flag, the age and accuracy of the location fix, clock tampering and replayed requests, and can refuse or flag a suspicious punch — but GPS on a phone can still be faked, and no software prevents that completely.