Every month, attendance figures from the businesses we look after arrive on our desk for payroll, and every month the same questions come with them. Was that overtime approved? Why is there no clock-out on the 12th? Did two employees swap shifts, or did one of them simply not come in? By the time these questions reach an accountant, the people who know the answers have usually forgotten, and payroll ends up relying on best guesses.

So when clients ask us which attendance system to use, our advice starts at month end, with the figures payroll needs, and works back from there to the clocking machine at the door. We compared the systems available in Cyprus in exactly that way, following the whole path from the shift schedule to payroll, and the one we now recommend is Attendance.cy. This article explains what we looked for and why it came out ahead.

Shift schedule → Attendance → Exceptions → Manager approval → Final hours → Payroll

The problem with clock-in times

A clocking machine records when someone arrived and when they left, and that is about all it knows. Take an employee rostered from 08:00 to 16:00 who clocked in at 07:54 and out at 17:12. The machine shows 9 hours and 18 minutes against an 8-hour shift, but payroll still needs to know whether the extra hour and twelve minutes is paid overtime, whether anyone authorised it, whether the six minutes before eight count, whether there was an unpaid break, and whether the employee was rostered differently that day.

None of that is in the clock times. Someone has to decide it, and it should not be the accountant guessing weeks later from a spreadsheet.

What payroll actually needs

From our side of the desk, good attendance figures have been checked against the roster, split into normal time, overtime and exceptions, approved by the manager responsible, and backed by a record of every change made along the way. If any of that is missing, the questions come back to us at month end, when they are hardest to answer.

Hourly and monthly staff

Most businesses in Cyprus pay monthly, and many of their staff are on a salary rather than an hourly rate, so a system that only counts hours leaves half the job undone. In Attendance.cy each employee is paid by the hour or on a monthly salary, or follows the default rate set for their department or position, and pay periods can run monthly or weekly. Overtime, paid leave and attendance deductions are worked out for each person within the period. When the month is approved and closed, the figures are ready for payroll, together with the labour cost for the period.

Shift schedules

Lateness, absence and overtime only make sense against a schedule. If the system does not know someone was rostered until 16:00, it cannot tell you they stayed late, which is why we wanted the schedule and the attendance records in the same system.

In Attendance.cy managers plan their department's week or month, and the plan is checked against weekly hour limits and rest periods while they build it. Once it is published, staff can ask a colleague to cover a shift from their phone and the manager settles the request, so swaps are recorded instead of agreed in the corridor.

Late arrivals and missed clock-outs

With traditional reporting, problems surface at month end. Payroll notices a missing clock-out on the 7th, and by then nobody remembers what happened. It works far better when the manager sees it on the day: who is late, who was expected and has not arrived, who forgot to clock out, and who is working outside their shift.

Attendance.cy shows managers who is in at any moment and keeps a short list of the days that need their attention. Routine cases such as a forgotten clock-out, grace minutes, rounding, Sundays and Cyprus public holidays are handled by rules the business sets once, so the list stays short.

Who approves the hours

An accountant can calculate pay, but we cannot know whether an employee really worked an extra hour last Wednesday. Their manager can, and whether that hour is accepted as overtime is a decision for the business.

In Attendance.cy managers approve their own team's hours before anything goes to payroll, usually from their phone, a day at a time or a whole week at once. An approved day stays fixed. Changing it means reopening the day and giving a reason, so the figures payroll used cannot quietly change afterwards.

Corrections

People forget to clock in, and records will always need correcting. What matters is that a correction sits alongside the original instead of replacing it. Attendance.cy keeps the original punches and logs every correction with who made it, when and why, as well as every approval. When an employee queries their pay months later, or someone asks to see the working-time records an employer has to keep, the history is there.

Clocking in

Businesses clock in differently, and the method matters less than what happens to the record afterwards. Attendance.cy works with QR codes, RFID cards and PIN codes on its terminals, and with check-in from the phone. The face-recognition terminals also take a photo at every check-in and check-out, which helps whenever there is a question about who was actually there. Whichever method a business uses, every record goes through the same checks and approvals.

Departments

In a hotel, the front office, restaurant and housekeeping managers each know their own team far better than head office does. Attendance.cy lets each manager plan, check and approve their own department, while HR and the owners keep the full picture. It works in Greek and English, for managers and staff alike.

Sending the figures to payroll

None of this means replacing the payroll software a business already uses. In Attendance.cy each pay code is mapped to the code the payroll system expects, and when a period is closed the approved hours, overtime, leave and deductions are exported as a file the payroll software imports. Where the business uses a connected HR system, the figures can go to it directly.

Why we chose Attendance.cy

Several systems in Cyprus can record attendance. What decided it for us was how much of the month-end work Attendance.cy takes off the manager. Most cases are settled by rules set once. The manager deals with the few days that genuinely need a decision, often from their phone, and approves the rest of the week in one step. Pay is set up once for each employee, department or position, and the schedule, attendance and approvals all live in the same place.

For managers, month end stops being a round of phone calls and spreadsheet checks and becomes a short review. For us, the figures arrive already checked and approved.

Questions to ask before you choose a system

Whichever system you look at, do not judge it by watching someone clock in. Ask the supplier to show you what happens in situations like these:

• An employee forgot to clock out yesterday. What happens now?
• Someone was rostered until 17:00 but left at 18:30. Who decides whether that is overtime?
• Two employees want to swap shifts. How is the swap recorded?
• A manager corrects an employee's hours. Can you see later who changed them and why?
• An employee works overnight. Which day do the hours count on?
• There are several departments. Can each manager see only their own staff?
• Some staff are salaried and others hourly. How does each reach the monthly payroll?

Then ask to see exactly what the accountant or payroll department receives at month end. That tells you more about a system than any demonstration at the entrance.

Our view

From a payroll and accounting point of view, Attendance.cy is the system we recommend to businesses in Cyprus. Managers spend much less time on attendance, every correction can be traced, and payroll receives approved figures for hourly and salaried staff alike, in the format its system expects.

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About the author

CYAUSE LTD provides accounting, payroll, tax and business advisory services to businesses in Cyprus through CyprusAccountants.com.cy.

About Attendance.cy

Attendance.cy is a Cyprus-developed time attendance and shift scheduling platform by Lemorange Ltd. It combines shift scheduling, attendance recording, manager approvals and payroll-ready figures in one process. Lemorange Ltd also builds and hosts this website.