How Buddy Punch Helps Increase Employee Accountability During Work Hours
“How can I make sure employees are doing their work without me breathing down their necks?”
That was the thought that kept running through my mind in 2012. By then, I had grown my business to three different franchises. The only problem was, with nothing but manual paper timecards to track time, I couldn’t hold my team accountable at locations when I wasn’t present. Every week I’d run from location to location hoping that 1. timecard responses were honest and 2. timecard responses were accurate (and legible).
It was a rare week I’d get both of those things.
Employees would punch for each other, lie about when they arrived to work, or exaggerate the time they spent on tasks. To them, it was no big deal. A minute here or there, who cares, right? Except those minutes add up to thousands of dollars lost by business owners each year.
When I vented about my issues to my roommate, friend, and engineer Nick Murphy, he had a light bulb-moment. He took just a weekend to start working on the concept that would eventually become fully-fledged time tracking software: Buddy Punch.
Buddy Punch was designed as a web and mobile app that can automatically calculate hours and prevent time theft, keeping employees accountable for time spent on the clock. It's got an intuitive design and flexibility that makes it easy to onboard employees, which is why over 10,000 organizations make use of it today.
was designed as a web and mobile app that can automatically calculate hours and prevent time theft, keeping employees accountable for time spent on the clock. It's got an intuitive design and flexibility that makes it easy to onboard employees, which is why over 10,000 organizations make use of it today.
While the software has grown and changed over the years, our philosophy hasn't: keep it simple, keep it fair, and make sure every punch is a legitimate one. This includes evolving our employee accountability features to keep up with industry upheavals, such as the massive increase in remote working over the past few years.
Buddy Punch's Employee Accountability Features
Here's an overview of the employee accountability features you'll find in Buddy Punch. Keep in mind we're always evolving our software, so there's a chance we may add more features in the future.
| Feature | Price | How it works |
| GPS on Punch | $4.49/user/month | Captures GPS locations of employees upon clock-in and clock-out |
| Real-time GPS tracking | Captures GPS locations of employees upon clock-in and clock out | Monitors employee locations via an interactive map |
| Geofencing | $5.99/user/month | Restrict punches to job sites with custom radius sizes |
| IP Address Locks | $4.49/user/month | Only allows clock-ins/outs when using authorized devices |
| Photos on Punch | $5.99/user/month | Takes photos upon clocking actions for records |
| Facial Recognition via FaceID | $4.49/user/month | Verifies identity |
| Job Tracking | $4.49/user/month | Monitors task allocation and completion |
Below, we’ll take a more in-depth look at how each of these functions helps multi-location businesses increase employee accountability during work hours.
GPS on Punch
With GPS on punch, you can have employees share their GPS locations when they clock in or clock out. If they say they were on-site at 8:00 A.M., you'll see the exact map location that confirms it.
This means employees won't be able to fake information about their locations or arrival times in your records. The only way to get credit for being at the proper locations at the expected times is to actually do it.
Real-time GPS tracking
Business owners can go to another level to verify punches. Buddy Punch allows you to track employee locations in real-time throughout the day, all for just $2 more per user.
If you manage employees that travel throughout the day (such as for making house calls) you can use this feature to verify routes, locations, and travel times. This can help resolve payroll disputes quickly and encourage employees to make smart decisions.
Geofencing
Buddy Punch's geofencing features allows business owners to create a virtual boundary around job sites and company offices. Employees are only able to clock in and clock out while present at one of these designated areas.
If you manage construction crews, you can set up geofences at work sites to make sure that crew members only log time while physically at your sites.
IP Address Locks
You can assign IP address locks to employees, including naming them. This allows you to limit clocking actions to specific locations, such as the main office building.
For employees that work remotely, you can lock their IP addresses to their designated work areas, such as remote offices or their homes. This prevents employees from pretending they're at work while they're instead at unauthorized locations.
Photos on Punch
Worried about employees punching in for each other? The photos on punch option makes this impossible by taking a screenshot of employees as they clock in and clock out.
This option heavily discourages employees from even trying to engage in time theft or buddy punching.
Facial Recognition (via FaceID)
If you want to verify employee identities automatically, you can use the facial recognition feature to scan their facial features. This is available on Apple devices like iPads and iPhones.
This is a great feature when using Buddy Punch as a kiosk on a central device. For example, restaurant owners often have team members clock in on a main iPad. Facial recognition will ensure that no one’s trying to clock in for a peer.
Job Tracking
Once employees are clocked in, you can monitor their job and task completion. You can create codes for jobs and departments, and employees will be able to log their time working in those specific locations, departments, or tasks.
Results Reported By Our Customers
One thing that keeps us going is the feedback we received from customers across industries. Our goal with Buddy Punch was always to simplify payroll, increase accountability, and streamline employee management. The responses we receive from Buddy Punch’s users show that we’re succeeding.
Construction is a great example. This is an industry where crew members are constantly bouncing between job sites, making it difficult to monitor their locations and work completed. But when you add Buddy Punch to the mix, you get testimonials like this one:
Employees can punch in wherever they’re assigned and, with geofencing, we can see where they are when they punch in. It’s prevented stealing time.
There are similar issues working in healthcare, where medical staff are constantly moving on the go to take care of patients. Hospital administrators have to manage large teams in an industry with high turnover and numerous causes of stress. The last thing they need is for a time management tool to be complicated and inaccurate. But instead we hear testimonials like:
My overall experience with Buddy Punch has been positive, especially in terms of tracking hours worked. The platform is user-friendly and offers a reliable way to monitor and manage employee time. The time cards and editable punch times feature is particularly useful for ensuring accuracy and flexibility in recording work hours.
Ensuring that employees are working as required pushes them to arrive at work in a timely manner and complete the tasks assigned to them. This optimized work time translates to thousands of dollars in annual savings.
The bottom line is that Buddy Punch’s time theft prevention and employee management features have both direct and indirect impacts on your workforce. Directly, you’ll have access to greater transparency in what your team members are doing, which can be used to make data-backed decisions to optimize your operations.
Indirectly, employees will be more mindful of how they spend their time on the clock, leading to greater productivity through accountability.
Whether it’s managing remote crew members in construction, keeping hospital staff accountable for their time, or streamlining payroll at retail stores, Buddy Punch drives real results for industry leaders.
Other Features For Employee Accountability
Buddy Punch provides even more options for improving workforce management. Another popular usage is using its customizable features to incentivize improved employee performance.
For example, well-performing and trusted employees can be rewarded with the ability to receive automatic approvals on their time off requests. This creates a goal for team members to strive for, further pushing them to manage their time on the clock better.
In fact, you can automate other aspects of PTO management as well. For team members who haven't yet earned automatic PTO approvals, you can set Buddy Punch to send notifications to managers when they put in leave requests.
Buddy Punch works via the web or through mobile apps designed for iOS, Android, and ChromeOS, so it’s always easy for you and your employees to make use of the software.
Best of all, because Buddy Punch operates through the use of so many automatic features, it’s easy to let it run in the background. Information is stored for your records so you can always come back and use customizable reports to analyze employee work data.
We even have options to help you schedule your team more efficiently. Drag and drop scheduling, employee self-service, and employee availability make it easy to get your team scheduled week after week.
In the realm of attendance management, Buddy Punch will notify managers when employees arrive late to shifts, miss shifts entirely, or forget to punch in or out. This helps them identify tardiness and absences before they snowball into bigger issues.
FAQs about Buddy Punch
Here are answers to some common questions about Buddy Punch’s employee accountability features.