Attendance software is bought by a small employer on the day the spreadsheet stops being enough: a shift lead scored a tardy as half a point in March and a whole point in June, an employee at the threshold says nobody told them, and the write-up cites a policy nobody can find. The category is sold as a clock-in app with a per-user price, which is a different product for a different buyer. What the person taking the roll call needs is narrower and harder: the policy held as its five numbers, every absence, tardy and no-call scored by those numbers whoever took the roll, the points total visible in the rolling window, and a write-up that cites the paragraph it enforces. This page says what attendance software has to do, and the free tools on this site do the arithmetic now, with no account.
What attendance software has to keep
Four things, linked: the employees, the shifts they were scheduled for, the events against each shift (an unexcused absence, a tardy, a no-call no-show, an excused absence that scores nothing) and the points each event earned under the policy in force that day. Software that keeps a clock-in log and a report builder has kept the first two and left the employer to derive the rest by hand, which is where the March-versus-June inconsistency comes from. The test in a demo is one screen for one employee: their shifts, their events, the points those events scored, the total in the window and the write-ups on file, with the policy version each write-up cited. RollCallWorks Pro keeps exactly that record for a crew; the free tools on this site work the same arithmetic from a policy typed in, with nothing stored.
What it has to compute, from the policy's own numbers
The policy is five numbers: points per unexcused absence, per tardy, per no-call no-show, the threshold at which employment ends, and the rolling window the points live in. On this site's worked example those are 1, 0.5, 2, 8 and 12 months. From them the software must compute, for any employee on any day, the points that have not yet aged out of the window, the room left under the threshold, and which single event would cross it: three tardies and one no-call is 3.5 points, so a fifth event of any kind still leaves room, but a second no-call takes the total to 5.5 and one more absence to 6.5. The attendance points calculator on this site does that arithmetic on the page. Software that cannot show the room left is software that finds out at the write-up.
Where employees attendance software differs from a time clock
A time clock records when a badge was scanned. Attendance software records whether the scheduled shift was worked, and scores the gap between the two against a policy. The clock is capture; the software is judgement, applied consistently. A small employer can run the second without the first: the shift lead's roll call at the start of the shift is the capture, and the tracker template on this site turns scheduled shifts and missed shifts into an attendance rate and an on-time rate without any hardware at all. The suites bundle both and price per user; for a crew of twelve the arithmetic of that bundle matters more than the feature list, and the attendance management system guide on this site works it.
The exceptions the software must leave room for
Some absences score nothing by law, whatever the policy says, and attendance software that cannot mark an event as excused will score them anyway and produce a write-up the employer has to withdraw. Leave protected under the FMLA, an accommodation an employee is entitled to under the ADA and military service under USERRA are the ones a small employer meets most; the Department of Labor's and the EEOC's own pages, linked below, say what each covers. The software's job is not to know the law; it is to hold an excused event at zero points and keep the reason with it, so the record shows the policy was applied and the exception was honoured.
Questions people ask about attendance software
What is the difference between attendance software and time and attendance software?
Time and attendance software usually bundles a clock (capture of when someone arrived) with the record. Attendance software is the record and the judgement: whether the scheduled shift was worked, what the event scored under the policy, and where the employee stands in the window. A small employer can run the record from a roll call with no clock at all.
Is there free attendance software for a small business?
The tools on this site are free and need no account: the attendance policy states the five numbers, the points calculator shows where an employee stands, and the tracker template turns scheduled and missed shifts into attendance and on-time rates. RollCallWorks Pro is the stored record: employees, shifts, points in the window and write-ups, kept against the person.
What should attendance software cost a crew of twelve?
The suites price per user per month: Deputy Lite is $5, Core is $6.50 and Pro is $9 per user per month in USD. RollCallWorks Pro is $6.50 per month for the whole crew, flat, because the roll call is a crew record and not a per-seat one.