A modern attendance system can produce wrong figures with great precision. The mistakes below rarely come from technology: they come from the organisation around it. They are easy to avoid once you know them.
1. Leaving the terminal on the wrong time
A clock a few minutes fast turns punctual arrivals into lateness. A wrong time zone shifts every time by an hour. In Morocco, legal time has been GMT with no daylight saving since 20 September 2026: set the terminal to GMT+0, without clock changes, with NTP synchronisation. Software that compares the terminal’s clock with the PC’s, like Tempo, warns you of a difference.
2. A “default” schedule for everyone
If every employee has 08:00–17:00 in the software while some actually rotate, every difference becomes false lateness or false overtime. The schedule is the reference for the calculation: it must reflect reality (scheduling method).
3. Cutting night shifts at midnight
Arriving at 22:00 and leaving at 06:00 is one shift. A tool that cuts at midnight produces two incomplete days and an exception every night.
4. Confusing “no punch” with “absent”
A forgotten punch is not an absence, and neither is approved leave. Software should flag a day to review rather than conclude on its own; the decision belongs to a person.
5. Correcting totals instead of punches
Changing the hours total at month end erases the reason for the difference. Correct the punch itself, with a reason, and keep the original visible. That is what lets you answer an employee who disputes it.
6. Giving everyone the same rights
A team leader does not need to see other departments, or employees’ national ID numbers or addresses. Give each person the narrowest role that lets them work, and reserve corrections to past days for HR.
7. Reviewing only at month end
Thirty days of exceptions to settle the day before payroll guarantees errors. Review every week: people still remember why someone left early last Tuesday.
8. Forgetting new hires and leavers
A new employee not enrolled on the terminal produces “unidentified” passages. An employee who left but is still active may show as absent every day. Enrol arrivals before their first day, and archive leavers while removing them from the terminals.
9. Never testing a backup restore
A backup that has never been restored is only a hypothesis. Choose a tool that verifies every backup, keep a copy off the PC (USB drive, network folder), and note the encryption password somewhere other than the PC.
10. Neglecting to inform employees
An attendance system — especially a biometric one — must be explained: purpose, data collected, retention period, who has access. In Morocco, the employer’s process with the data protection authority (CNDP) must come before a biometric system goes live (biometric attendance and privacy).
Summary
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| Clock, time zone | GMT+0 without DST in Morocco, NTP, software warning |
| Rough schedule | One cycle per team, exceptions in the day’s cell |
| Corrections | On the punch, with a reason and a record |
| Review | Every week |
| Rights | Narrowest role, scope by department |
| Backups | Verified, copy off the PC |
Before starting a new system, go through our installation checklist.
Written by the Atlaxys Consulting team from the product documentation and the sources cited.