Attendance - chip/fingerprint

Module Time‑Tracking System allows you to record your employees’ attendance accurately and quickly using chip cards or fingerprint scanners – all integrated into eIntranet.net.

• Recording devices: Compatible terminals and chip/fingerprint readers that automatically add timestamps to the central database.
• Automatic synchronization: Attendance is reflected instantly in the HR module and accounting, eliminating manual entry and reducing errors.
• Detailed overviews and reports: Generate daily, weekly or monthly reports – easily exportable to Excel for audit or payroll purposes.
• Seamless integration: With the API, attendance is linked to other eIntranet.net modules (CRM, helpdesk), keeping data consistent across departments.
• Privacy and security: Encrypted communication and the ability to set access rights based on employee role.

Save time, reduce administrative burden, and ensure accurate attendance – try Time‑Tracking System in eIntranet.net today!

What chip-based attendance is and what it does in a company

Chip-based attendance is a way of recording arrivals and departures in which the employee identifies themselves with an RFID or NFC smart card, or with a fingerprint, and the terminal writes the time into the working time records for them. The Attendance - chip/fingerprint module in eIntranet covers both sides: it gives the administrator the settings for chips, buttons and security, and it gives the employee the terminal at the entrance.

Against manual entry it differs in one thing, but a decisive one: the time is created at the moment somebody walks through the door, not when they remember at the end of the week. A chip record carries the arrival time, the departure time, the working time type and the IP address of the device it came from. Depending on the permissions, the employee cannot edit it by hand at all.

The module is typically deployed by production sites, workshops, warehouses, restaurants and construction firms — anywhere people are not at a computer and the paper arrivals book gets filled in from memory anyway.

Chip, fingerprint or browser: how people check in at the terminal

The module knows three ways of identifying someone, and each suits a different kind of workplace.

Smart card or sticker (RFID/NFC)

Every employee is assigned a security chip code in the settings. The code lives inside the card itself, so the employee never enters it and does not even need to know it — which makes choosing a sufficiently complex one all the more important. Next to the code field is a clipboard icon that copies the chip's direct URL; that is what the card is programmed with. Chips come as a sticker or a plastic card. A lost card is dealt with by rewriting the code, not by replacing hardware.

Fingerprint at the terminal

A physical terminal with a biometric reader can verify an employee by fingerprint. The administrator registers the fingerprint directly on the device; the User rights table then shows a green icon for people who have a fingerprint stored and a red one for the rest. Fingerprints suit places where cards get lost or lent out repeatedly — but they carry legal implications that deserve careful thought before you commit.

Buttons on the application dashboard

The third route needs no hardware at all. Once the option Show Arrival/Departure buttons on the dashboard after login is switched on, employees see a green Arrival button, a red Departure button and every configured special button on the dashboard as soon as they log in. For offices and home office that is usually enough.

Where the data goes

All records — from the terminal and from the browser alike — are stored in the Attendance module. From there they continue into the payroll systems PAMICA, Money S3 and VEMA PAM F90, and into the Excel timesheet for the labour inspectorate. The chip module itself exports nothing; it is the entrance gate, not the register.

How a chip scan works step by step

The terminal is a web page running on a dedicated tablet, touchscreen or computer at the entrance to the building.

1. Idle state. The screen shows a digital clock with the date and the prompt Please present your chip. If the terminal has a biometric reader, an invitation to present a finger appears as well.
2. Identification. Once the card or finger is presented, the employee's name appears along with the prompt Please choose an action.
3. Choosing an action. A green Arrival button, a red Departure button, and any further configured buttons such as Doctor or Business trip.
4. Confirmation. The terminal answers with the name and the time — Welcome on arrival, Welcome back from your break when returning the same day, and on departure a note that if the employee comes back later, this time will be recorded as a break.
5. Back to idle. After seven seconds the screen returns to its starting state and waits for the next person.

Two safety catches run in the background and are worth knowing about. A departure recorded less than a minute after the arrival is not saved — the system says it does not record such a short period. And if more than 18 hours have passed since the last arrival, the record is not saved either; the terminal states that you evidently forgot to clock out. Nothing is calculated in, because a calculated time would be an invention.

Everything the Attendance - chip/fingerprint module can do

Chip attendance for production, offices and work from home

Production, workshop, warehouse. The classic deployment. A terminal at the gate, a card in the wallet, Arrival and Departure buttons. Switch on the minimum break length and the block on manual editing — without those, the whole point of the chip evaporates. A photo at each scan pays off where cards are traditionally lent around.

Restaurants and places with shift changes. Add a button for lunch separate from breaks and the option to record a break automatically on return. The presence overview on the terminal doubles as information for the shift supervisor.

Offices. Often, do not buy a reader at all. Buttons on the dashboard after login cover the needs of people who sit at a computer anyway.

Service and installations away from the company. They will not use a terminal at all. For them the answer is mobile clock-in with a mandatory GPS position, which belongs to the Attendance module — the chip module is a supplement for people who come to one place.

Companies with several entrances or sites. There can be more than one reader; they all report into the same register and you see them in the settings in the overview of registered devices, with the time of the last contact.

Choosing an attendance terminal: what to ask before you buy

Terminals differ mainly in what they do when something goes wrong. Five questions that are worth asking.

• What happens when somebody forgets to clock out? The wrong answer is "the system fills the day in". The right answer is "the record is not saved and the terminal warns next time" — in eIntranet the boundary is 18 hours from the last arrival.
• Can an employee be barred from manual corrections but still allowed to enter holiday? Without that nuance you end up either with a terminal nobody takes seriously, or with the payroll accountant entering holidays on everybody's behalf.
• Can the terminal restrict where it may report from? Without IP filtering, knowing the chip URL is enough to record attendance from home.
• Can you see whether the reader is alive? What you want is the column with the time of the last communication. A terminal that goes quiet for two days without anyone noticing is worse than paper.
• Do you really need fingerprints? Biometrics are a special category of personal data and bring extra administration with them. If your problem is people lending cards, consider a photo at each scan first — it tends to be cheaper and simpler.

What chip attendance costs

In eIntranet the software is paid per user and every module is included in every plan. Chip attendance is, however, the one module where hardware is a substantial part of the budget — and that is why it is costed differently from the rest.

Prices are per user and month, excluding VAT. The plans differ in disk space per user (0.5 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB) and in telephone technical support, which belongs to the extra plan only. Hardware is quoted individually outside the Czech market; the current figures are always on the price list page.

When you buy nothing at all. If all you want are Arrival and Departure buttons on the dashboard after login, you need no device whatsoever — the function is part of the module and runs in the browser. The important point about hardware is that it is a purchase to be depreciated, not a recurring cost: one terminal at the gate serves the whole shift regardless of how many people pass through it.

Free chip attendance: when you do not need a reader

Anyone looking for chip attendance for free usually runs into the fact that hardware rarely is. In many cases, though, you do not need a reader at all, and it is only fair to say so before you buy one.

If you run an office and your people sit at a computer anyway, the buttons on the dashboard after login do exactly the same job and are part of the module. If your people work in the field, the answer is not a terminal but mobile clock-in with a mandatory GPS position in the Attendance module. And if the point is simply that employees record their own hours, ordinary manual entry in the Attendance module is enough — that never requires hardware.

A terminal makes sense in one situation only: people have neither a company computer nor a phone, they come to one fixed place, and you need the time to be created at the door and to be beyond retrospective editing. There the investment in a device pays off, because it replaces a paper book nobody can police anyway.

You can test the software for 14 days free of charge, with no payment details required; no device is needed for that.

How to roll out chip attendance

1. Hand out the chip codes. In Settings → Attendance - chip/fingerprint reader, on the User rights tab, enter a security code for each employee. It saves automatically when you leave the field. The clipboard icon copies the chip URL used to program the card.
2. Decide what may still be entered by hand. Tick the manual editing block for people who are meant to use the reader exclusively, and immediately afterwards use the button on the same row to allow the types they may still enter themselves. Skip that second step and holiday requests will start arriving by e-mail.
3. Add the buttons the site actually uses. Do not start with ten — two or three are enough. Choose the automatic closing method for each one straight away, or open records will hang around.
4. Secure the reader. Switch on IP filtering and enter the addresses of every device that should report in. Careful: if you activate filtering and leave one address out, the terminal will refuse entries from it with the unauthorised address message.
5. Turn on the safety catches. The warning and closing of the previous day's attendance, and the minimum break length. Both save managers corrections they would otherwise make by hand in the Attendance module.

After the first week, look at the Registered readers tab and the column with the time of the last communication. It tells you whether the device is reporting reliably, well before you find out through missing records.

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