A time and attendance system is software that automatically records when employees start and finish work, typically through a card read, and compares those records with the shift plan to produce timesheets. Lateness, early departures, absences and overtime are calculated from these records, giving HR and payroll reliable data. As of 2026, card reads are the recommended method in Türkiye.
Key takeaways
- A time and attendance system compares clock-in and clock-out reads with the shift plan, calculating lateness, early departures, absence and overtime without manual work.
- Türkiye's Labour Law No. 4857 generally caps working time at 45 hours a week and overtime at 270 hours a year; attendance records help prove compliance.
- Under the KVKK Board's principle decision No. 2026/921, fingerprints and facial recognition are disproportionate for attendance tracking; cards or PINs are recommended.
- Card access control and time and attendance can share the same card read, so no separate attendance device is needed.
- Setting up time and attendance takes six steps: shift plan, rules, read points, leave connection, payroll export test and informing employees.
A good system does not have to be a separate device: the same card read that opens the door in a card access control system creates the attendance record too.
In Türkiye this is commonly called PDKS (Personel Devam Kontrol Sistemi, literally "personnel attendance control system"), and you will see the term on quotes and job adverts. This guide explains what the system solves, how it works, what a good report should answer and the six set-up steps; related guides are collected in our access control and attendance hub.
What problem does a time and attendance system solve?
In many organisations attendance is still tracked in one of three ways: a paper sign-in sheet, an Excel timesheet, or a supervisor's word. All three share the same flaw — the record is created afterwards, by hand, rather than at the moment it happens.
By month end, hand-kept attendance records lead to a familiar set of problems:
- Timesheets take days. HR reconciles sign-in sheets, leave forms and shift swaps manually.
- Overtime becomes a debate. An employee says they stayed two hours late; the record neither confirms nor denies it.
- Shift changes get lost. A last-minute swap stays in a supervisor's notebook, the employee appears on the wrong shift, and pay is calculated incorrectly.
- Absence stays invisible. Individual late arrivals look small; over a year they add up. Tracking lateness and absence is about making that build-up visible.
- Legal exposure grows. Türkiye's Labour Law No. 4857 generally caps normal working time at 45 hours a week and overtime at 270 hours a year. Without knowing actual hours worked, showing compliance with those limits is difficult.
How does a time and attendance system work?
A time and attendance system turns a single read at the door into a payroll-ready timesheet line through a five-stage flow:
- Read: The employee taps their card at the gatehouse, turnstile or department entrance; the record is created with the person, the read point and the time.
- Shift matching: The read is compared with the employee's shift plan for that day; shifts that cross midnight are also matched to the correct working day.
- Applying the rules: Lateness tolerance, breaks, the overtime threshold and rounding rules are applied, and double taps are filtered out.
- Handling exceptions: Annual leave, sick leave and assignments are separated from absence; missing reads are not guessed but wait for a justified correction.
- Timesheet and export: The month is closed, the timesheet is locked and a per-person summary is sent to the payroll or ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.
What the system records is attendance; what it produces is a timesheet. The record is the raw read, and the timesheet is that read with the rules applied.
What does unmanaged attendance data cost?
Attendance data is not only an input to payroll; it is also an indicator of workforce health and productivity. International figures show what happens when working hours get out of control:
WHO and the ILO jointly estimate that working 55 hours or more a week led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischaemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000. (WHO/ILO — Long working hours increasing deaths from heart disease and stroke)
The productivity picture is similar. Gallup reports that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, with low engagement estimated to cost the world economy around $10 trillion, or 9% of global GDP (Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026). An attendance system will not raise engagement on its own, but it does make patterns of absence and lateness visible early.
A figure from Türkiye shows why attendance is more than "in or out". According to Türkiye's Social Security Institution (SGK), workers who had work accidents in 2025 accumulated 4,639,930 days of temporary incapacity (SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025). Sick leave and medical-report days must be recorded correctly on timesheets for both payroll and social security filings to be accurate.
Which attendance method suits which workforce?
Choosing an attendance method means weighing speed, security and the personal data burden together:
| Method | Best suited to |
|---|---|
| RFID card (13.56 MHz) | Permanent staff; the same card as access control |
| Time-limited QR code | Visitors, contractors, temporary workers |
| Fingerprint / facial recognition | Not suitable for attendance tracking (Personal Data Protection Board, principle decision No. 2026/921); only for high-security doors with a documented justification, assessed separately |
| Paper / spreadsheet | Very small teams, and only as a stopgap |
For most organisations the most balanced option is RFID cards for staff and temporary cards with a validity period for visitors and contractors; some systems also use time-limited QR codes for visitors. For a detailed comparison of speed, security and data protection burden, see our fingerprint vs card vs face recognition guide; in high-security areas, fingerprint access can also be combined with a card-based system. If your current fingerprint clock often fails to read, start with our guide to why fingerprint readers stop recognising fingers.
What should a good attendance report answer?
Whatever the method, the value of a time and attendance system lies in its reports. At month end, HR should have these answers ready:
- Which employee arrived late or left early on which day, and by how many minutes against the shift plan?
- Who exceeded 45 hours in which week, and what is their overtime total for the year so far?
- Which days were recorded as leave, sick leave or off-site assignment, and which absences remain unexplained?
- Which department shows noticeably higher absence or overtime than the rest?
If answering these four questions still means merging spreadsheets by hand, the system is not yet doing its job — a typical sign of outgrowing spreadsheets. To present department comparisons to management regularly, track absence and overtime rates as KPIs on a BI dashboard.
An attendance report is only as reliable as the raw records behind it. Double taps, entries that are never closed, or one person with two payroll numbers quietly corrupt timesheets; we cover these problems in data quality and duplicate records.
How do you set up a time and attendance system? 6 steps
Setting up time and attendance starts not with mounting devices but with writing down the shift plan and the rules:
- Pin down the shift plan. Which teams work which hours, how are breaks taken, is there a night shift? A system cannot measure a schedule that does not exist. How shifts that cross midnight or rotate should be recorded is covered in shift attendance tracking.
- Write the rules down. How many minutes of lateness are tolerated, when does overtime start, how is early arrival counted?
- Choose the read points. Gatehouse or department entrance? Combining attendance with the access control at the door removes the need for a second device. Sites without fixed gates, such as construction site access and attendance, need a different set-up, and where connectivity is weak, access control in offline mode prevents lost records.
- Connect leave, sick leave and assignments. Otherwise the record says "absent" when the truth is "on annual leave".
- Test the payroll export. Try the timesheet output with your payroll software before going live.
- Inform employees. Explain what data is kept, why and for how long — a legal requirement and the basis of trust.
We walk through the legal overtime calculation with worked examples in our guide to overtime calculation under Turkish labour law.
How should attendance records be kept under data protection law?
Attendance records are personal data under KVKK, Türkiye's Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data: they must be processed only for a defined purpose, seen only by authorised people and destroyed or anonymised at the end of the retention period. In its principle decision No. 2026/921 of 29 April 2026, the Personal Data Protection Board found that processing biometric data for attendance tracking is not proportionate (KVKK — announcement on principle decision No. 2026/921, in Turkish). If you use fingerprints or facial recognition, the details of the decision and a plan for moving to cards are covered in biometric attendance and data protection. Addressing the data protection framework through data protection compliance consultancy during set-up is far less work than fixing it later.
How we set up time and attendance at Digital Bridge
Digital Bridge treats time and attendance not as a device purchase but as the data source for your HR process:
- Needs analysis. We review your shift structure, current timesheet method, leave and sick-leave flow, and payroll software; how the transfer is set up is explained in time and attendance payroll integration.
- Designed together with access control. The attendance record is created by the same read as the card access control at the door, so no separate attendance device is needed.
- HR and payroll. We connect timesheet data to your HR, payroll and personnel management processes, and handle transfers between different software through system integration.
- Written proposal and support. Scope, phases and fees are set out in writing; we work remotely and on site across Türkiye.
SmartPass for attendance: one read, no extra device
SmartPass, developed by Digital Bridge, brings card access control, time and attendance, visitor management and canteen management together in one panel. Picture a three-shift manufacturing site:
A night-shift worker taps their card at the gatehouse turnstile at 23:55. One read opens the turnstile and creates the attendance record; the timesheet is then calculated against the shift plan, night shift included. At month end HR locks the month and sends the per-person monthly summary to the ERP instead of stitching data together by hand. A contractor crew arriving that week is set up under its own company with a validity period; the crew's entries and exits are recorded under the same rules, and once the company's contract ends their cards are refused at the first read. How to check contractor health and safety compliance at the gate is covered in a separate guide.
What SmartPass offers for attendance:
- No separate attendance device — the card read at the door creates the attendance record.
- Timesheets follow the shift plan, with fixed and flexible shifts, rotations and night shifts that run into the next day. Missing reads are not guessed but wait for a justified correction; the closed month is locked and a per-person monthly summary goes to the ERP as CSV or JSON.
- Canteen counting on the same card: where the employee is entitled to a meal, it is deducted (canteen meal counting automation).
- 13.56 MHz MIFARE and NFC cards; in the field, an NFC-enabled Android phone can act as a mobile terminal that keeps deciding without internet.
- Data protection by design: card numbers are not stored, only a one-way hash and the last four digits; once the retention period ends, fields that identify the person are deleted automatically; every change is logged with its previous and new value.
- For multi-site organisations: each site can be opened as a separate SmartPass organisation with its own database, and authorised users switch between sites from the "My organisations" list without re-entering a password (multi-site access control).
- One identity: SmartPass is part of the Smart360 product family; HR and security teams sign in with their Smart360 identity (SmartID), with no separate SmartPass password.
Next step
Gather your shift plan, your current timesheet method and the name of your payroll software. Contact us and we will run the needs analysis with you and show how SmartPass produces timesheets for your shift structure. To buy SmartPass, simply fill in the SmartPass quote form; pricing depends on the number of read points, the number of people and the hardware required. If you are at the buying stage, start with the ten questions in choosing time and attendance software.