A great idea, poorly designed & executed.

I'm designing a software system for a busy company. Automated staff clocking and time recording would save a great deal of work, so I looked into providing this also.

After much research the best value for money looked to be an off-the-shelf solution; the cost of a decent fingerprint scanner device and the time to design and code the software was much more than the products I had seen on the internet.
So rather than re-invent the wheel I went for a device from a company called 'Safescan'.

Unfortunately there is precious little information on the actual design and operation of the attendance software, supplied as part of the package. What I could find did sound as though the system would meet most/all of our needs.
And the few general reviews I found indicated no issues (apart from not allowing shifts across 12 midnight).

So we tried to purchase the Safescan TA-855 from Safescan themselves. Two days after we received an email stating that it was out of stock and they would ship their new model instead..I have no idea of the new model!! Or any reviews of specs!
On top of that the 'salesperson' failed to offer any similarities or features to put our minds at rest that this was the right device to purchase - zero score for the Sales department then.
So we cancelled that order and instead ordered the original model from Viking direct.

It was then on using the device that the biggest flaw was exposed:

USER MUST TELL THE DEVICE IF THEY ARE CLOCKING IN OR OUT!!
Not only that but there are separate buttons for in, out AND break, plus Return -
AND they are NOT labelled as such.

Let me ask you - when you open the door of your car, do you have to tell it if you are getting in or out????

In addition the time attendance software cannot deal with these simple and popular scenarios:

1) Users clocking in within x minutes after official shift start are clocked in at the shift start time, users clocking in outside x minutes are clocked in y minutes late.
2) Users can clock in any time (5am - 9am) to work their x hour shift.

I asked Safescan support if their advanced version of their software (additional £120) could deal with the above scenarios - it cannot.


So all in all I would recommend you look for something else. I hope this helps others who are in my position and looking for honest and specific feedback on these devices.