What is a time and attendance system (PDKS) and how does it work?

At month end the accountant always asks the same question: who came in on how many days, who was late, who was on leave? The card reader’s records sit in one file, leave forms in e-mail and the shift rota on a sheet of paper on the wall. While the HR specialist tries to reconcile the three sources by hand, an employee says, “I was here that day,” and there is not a single record to confirm it. This is exactly where a time and attendance system comes in. In this article we explain in plain language what a time and attendance system (PDKS) is, what the abbreviation means, how records turn into the timesheet and what to look for when choosing one.

A time and attendance system (in Turkey usually called PDKS, short for “Personel Devam Kontrol Sistemi”, personnel attendance control system) records employees’ entries to and exits from the workplace and calculates working time, late arrivals, early departures and absences from those records. Some organisations call the same thing “staff tracking software”, a “turnstile system” or “card access”; the device at the door is only one part of the system.

What does a time and attendance system do?

• It keeps clock-ins, clock-outs and working time per person in a single record; “who came in when” stops being a matter of debate.
• It shows lateness, early departures and absence separately; the manager sees a list of what is missing on each day.
• It separates leave days from absence. An absence that does not match a leave record is a genuine exception and should be looked into.
• It produces the raw material of the monthly timesheet. The timesheet is a summary of these events combined with leave, shift and overtime data.
• It provides clean data for payroll preparation; fewer figures need correcting by hand at month end.

How does a time and attendance system work? Five steps

1. Data is captured. Clock-in and clock-out events reach the system from a source such as a card reader, terminal or turnstile.
2. It is matched to the employee. Each event is linked to the right employee’s record, so the person’s clock-ins, clock-outs and working time are tracked in one place.
3. Exceptions are checked. People who forgot their card, swiped twice, have no recorded exit or arrived late are set aside as exceptions.
4. Approval is completed. The manager or HR approves or corrects the exception with a reason, and the record becomes final.
5. The timesheet is produced. The monthly timesheet is generated from approved records and passed on to payroll preparation.

Attendance devices and data sources: where does clock-in data come from?

The time and attendance software and the device that collects the data are different things. The same software can be fed by one or more of the sources below.

Is a time and attendance system the same as a timesheet?

No. The time and attendance system produces the daily event: “Employee A came in at 08:58 and left at 18:10.” The timesheet is the monthly summary of these events combined with leave, shift and overtime data: “This month Employee A worked 20 days, was on annual leave for 2 days and on sick leave for 1 day.” A correct timesheet needs correct event records, which is why the two terms are mentioned together.

How does one day’s event turn into the timesheet?

The table below shows with examples how a raw event passes through the exception and approval steps and is reflected in the timesheet. There are no employee names; the cases are fictitious.

The most common exceptions in time and attendance

An exception is an event the system flags as “this record cannot be accepted as correct on its own”. A good attendance process does not hide exceptions; it makes them visible and assigns each one to an owner. Typical examples are:

• A day with no recorded clock-out or no recorded clock-in.
• The same person swiping twice a few minutes apart.
• An employee asking for a manual entry because they forgot their card.
• Clock-in after the planned time (late arrival) and clock-out before it (early departure).
• A day with no events and no leave record either.
• Night records where the end of the shift runs into the next day.

Tracking attendance on paper, in Excel or on WhatsApp: where does it work, where does it break down?

In a team of fifteen to twenty people working at one address without shifts, a sign-in sheet or a simple Excel file usually does the job. The trouble starts as the team grows and the work becomes more complex:

• When shifts, branches or field work are added, the same person’s records are scattered across several files.
• You cannot see who changed a record retroactively, or why.
• Because leave is kept in a separate file, a leave day can look like an absence at month end.
• An “I’ll be late today” message on WhatsApp never becomes a record; by month end nobody remembers it.
• When the month closes, everyone has a different version and people argue over which one is right.

This does not mean Excel is a bad tool. Starting with Excel in a small, simple set-up is reasonable. What matters is asking, once errors start to pile up, “Are we managing this, or rebuilding it from scratch every month?” If the answer is the latter, it is time to move to a system, whatever the size of the team.

How does time and attendance work in YazSis KurumsalPortal?

The Time & Attendance Control module brings the five steps above together on a single screen. It combines attendance events and matches them to the relevant employee, and it tracks late arrivals, early departures and absences separately as exceptions. Once exceptions are checked and approved, the attendance record becomes final. Attendance records are matched with leave records so that leave days are separated from absences, and the timesheet is produced from this clean data. The module is used by HR, payroll and department managers.

Six questions to ask when choosing time and attendance software

1. What kind of timesheet do I want to have at month end? Define the output before the device.
2. Which device does the data come from, by what method, and can my existing device deliver data to the new system?
3. Who corrects the record of an employee who forgot their card or whose exit was not recorded, and with what approval?
4. Are leave and shift data matched with the attendance record, or do they stay in a separate file?
5. Who can see clock-in data? Does the department manager see only their own team?
6. What will be passed to payroll, and is the scope of that flow clear in the contract?

If you want to manage attendance data rather than just record it, you can explore the module’s full flow on the Time & Attendance Control page and the overall structure of the portal on the KurumsalPortal page.