Attendance management for IT companies

Office, home and client site are three different days

Hybrid policies fail quietly when every day looks the same in the records. Limit web punches to your office networks in capture controls, so web punches are accepted only from the Whitefield or Hinjewadi office Wi-Fi. On home days the engineer raises a work from home request in My Self-Service, checked against the monthly WFH limit in your work terms policy. A day at a client office in Gurugram is an on duty request. At month end, set each person's approved WFH and on duty days against their office punches to see who is keeping to the hybrid rule.

• Office day: web or app punch from an allowed office network
• Home day: approved work from home request within the monthly limit
• Client site: approved on duty request naming the client location
• Missed punch: attendance correction within the monthly limit

Judge lateness against the engineer's own shift

A support engineer on the US shift who punches in at 6:40 pm is ten minutes past a 6:30 pm start, which a 10-minute grace forgives. Attendance rules read the rostered shift first and then apply the grace set on that shift. The US shift ends at 3:30 am, after midnight, and ZeniaHR files the whole duty to the day the shift started, so Monday night's work stays on Monday. For product teams without a fixed start, a flexible shift with core hours of 11 am to 4 pm and a minimum hours rule stops late marks for someone who starts at 10:45 am one day and 9:15 am the next.

Late marks that engineers accept

Few engineers will accept a salary cut for a 9:50 am arrival after a midnight release, but managers still want to spot a pattern. A workable setup starts from the Lenient preset, keeps the late step as mark only, allows three free late marks a month, and deducts half a day for every three late marks after that, under a monthly penalty cap. Early-out marks follow their own rule, which catches 4 pm exits on office days. Before switching anything on, run the rules as a dry run on last month's punches and share the result with delivery managers.

Corrections and month close before payroll

Engineers forget to punch out after a late client call more often than they skip work. A missed punch-out alert goes to the engineer and the manager 60 minutes after the shift ends, and the fix is an attendance correction in My Self-Service, within limits you set, for example three a month and no more than seven days back. The reporting manager approves, then HR, and the original punches are kept. In the first days of the next month HR checks for open corrections, closes the month and freezes it, so paid days reach Direct Payroll without a second spreadsheet.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. Create each office, such as Bengaluru or Pune, as a location and add its IP ranges as allowed office networks in capture controls.
2. Add shifts for General 9:30 am to 6:30 pm, UK 1 pm to 10 pm and US 6:30 pm to 3:30 am, marking the US shift as a night shift.
3. Add a flexible shift with core hours for product teams and set grace in and out on every shift.
4. In the work terms policy, choose hybrid as the default work model and set the office days and WFH days allowed per month.
5. Start from the Lenient preset in attendance rules, keep late marks as mark only, set correction limits and run the dry run on last month.
6. Close each month in Attendance Punches once corrections are approved, so Direct Payroll picks up final paid days.

Read more about attendance in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions