A biometric attendance terminal identifies an employee by a physical characteristic — their face or fingerprint — and records the time of their passage. It replaces the signed sheet and the badge lent to a colleague. But on its own it does not calculate working time: that is the job of attendance software.
The three stages of a biometric system
1. Enrolment
Each employee is first enrolled on the terminal: they show their face to the camera or place a finger on the sensor, several times if needed. The terminal extracts measurable features and stores them as a template (a digital model), linked to the employee’s number.
Enrolment is when the employer must have informed the employee and met their personal data obligations (see biometric attendance and privacy).
2. Recognition
At each passage, the terminal compares what it sees with the stored template. If the match is good enough, it accepts the passage and creates an event: employee number, date, time, verification method (face, fingerprint, card), and sometimes a code for a refusal or a door opening.
3. Reading by the software
Attendance software collects these events — over the local network, through the manufacturer’s online service, or from a USB stick. Only then do passages become working days: arrival, departure, break, lateness, overtime, against the shift planned for that day.
Face, fingerprint or card: the differences
| Method | Strengths | Common limits |
|---|---|---|
| Face | Contactless, fast, nothing to lose | Sensitive to lighting and position; limited number of faces depending on the model |
| Fingerprint | Widespread, inexpensive | Worn, wet or gloved fingers; contact with the sensor |
| Card | Simple, no biometric data | Can be lent or lost |
Many terminals combine several methods. Offering an alternative to biometrics (card or code) is often recommended, especially for employees who cannot or prefer not to use it.
What the terminal does not do
This is the source of most disappointments. A terminal:
- does not know the schedule: it cannot tell that an employee was due at 7:00, not 8:00;
- does not know that arriving at 22:00 and leaving at 06:00 is one night shift;
- does not handle leave, public holidays or overtime approval;
- does not let you correct a missed punch cleanly with a reason and a record.
Exporting passages to Excel and recalculating everything by hand keeps the longest part of the work. Software like Atlaxys Tempo makes the link between passages and the schedule.
The terminal’s clock: a detail that matters
If the terminal’s clock drifts or its time zone is wrong, every lateness figure is wrong. In Morocco, legal time has been GMT with no daylight saving since 20 September 2026: set the terminal to GMT+0 without clock changes and enable NTP synchronisation. Tempo calculates times from the offset carried by each event and warns you when the terminal is set to another time zone.
How events reach the software
- The software queries the terminal on the local network (Tempo with the Hikvision terminal);
- the terminal pushes its events to a server (PUSH mode on some ZKTeco terminals);
- a file is exported to a USB stick, then imported.
The choice depends on the terminal, your network and how quickly you need the data. To select a device, read how to choose a time clock for a small business.
Frequently asked questions
Does the terminal store a photo of the face?
At enrolment it stores the data needed for recognition. Depending on the model and settings, it may also take a picture at each passage; Atlaxys Tempo never requests those pictures from the terminal.
What if an employee is not recognised?
The terminal records a refusal, which does not count as attendance. The employee tries again, uses another method (card, code) or reports it; an authorised user then adds the punch with a reason.
Written by the Atlaxys Consulting team from the product documentation and the sources cited.