A time and attendance system automatically records when employees start and finish work — using a card, fingerprint or QR code — and compares those records with the shift plan to produce timesheets. Late arrivals, early departures, absences and overtime are all calculated from these records, giving HR and payroll attendance data they can rely on.
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 can create 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 the methods compare, the steps to set one up, and the data protection side.
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, a spreadsheet, 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, that leads to a familiar picture:
- 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.
- 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.
The cost of not managing attendance data
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 the 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.
Methods compared: card, fingerprint, face, QR
| Method | Strength | Watch out for | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| RFID card (13.56 MHz) | Fast, contactless, same card as access control | Cards can be lent to others; lost cards must be cancelled | Factories, offices, hospitals, warehouses |
| Time-limited QR code | No printed card, expires automatically | Not practical on its own for permanent staff | Visitors, contractors, temporary workers |
| Fingerprint | Tied to the person, cannot be forgotten | Biometric data: special category under KVKK; explicit consent and an alternative method may be needed | High-security areas |
| Facial recognition | Contactless and quick | Biometric data; sensitive to lighting and camera angle | Busy entrances |
| Paper / spreadsheet | No upfront cost | Manual errors, retrospective edits, weak evidence | Very small teams |
We weigh up the methods in detail in our fingerprint vs card vs face recognition comparison. For most organisations the most balanced option is RFID cards for staff and time-limited QR codes for visitors and contractors. If fingerprints are on the table, settle the data protection questions first — we cover this in our article on biometric attendance and data protection. For high-security areas, fingerprint access can be combined with a card-based system.
What should a good attendance report answer?
Whatever the method, the value of the 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 still means merging spreadsheets by hand, the system is not yet doing its job — a typical sign of outgrowing spreadsheets.
Six steps to setting up time and attendance
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Data protection and attendance records
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, kept for a set period and then destroyed or anonymised. Employees must receive a privacy notice, and biometric methods bring the stricter rules for special category data into play. Addressing this through data protection compliance consultancy while the system is being set up is far less work than fixing it later.
How we set up time and attendance at Digital Bridge
We treat 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.
- 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, our own product, brings access control, time and attendance and canteen meal counting together in one system. 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. The next morning HR takes the finished report and exports it to payroll instead of stitching data together by hand. A contractor crew arriving that week uses time-limited QR codes instead of permanent cards, and their entries and exits are recorded under the same rules.
What SmartPass offers for attendance:
- No separate attendance device — the card read at the door creates the attendance record.
- Timesheets follow the shift plan, and reports can be exported to payroll.
- Canteen counting on the same card: where the employee is entitled to a meal, it is deducted (canteen meal counting automation).
- 13.56 MHz RFID cards and time-limited QR codes on the same terminal, under the same permission rules.
- Data protection by design: card numbers are not stored in plain text, records past their retention period are anonymised, an audit trail shows old and new values, and the auditor role is read-only.
- For multi-site organisations: each site keeps its own records while the group receives consolidated reports (multi-site access control).
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.