Why a Monthly Attendance Sheet is Important for Your Business
Effectively tracking attendance and patterns over the course of a month can be challenging, as your workforce expands. Monthly attendance sheets provide businesses with simple tools to track who was present on which days and provide an overview of the entire team's attendance.
The benefits of an effective monthly attendance sheet include:
- Improved Payroll Accuracy and Efficiency: Catch mistakes before they're sent to payroll and reduce timesheet errors. Accurately recorded hours, overtime and breaks on a monthly attendance sheet can be reviewed and approved/rejected. Fewer errors means faster, better payroll.
- Performance and Productivity Insights: Identify patterns of absenteeism, rates of attendance, tardiness and turnover to improve workforce planning, uncover attendance issues, boost employee engagement/transparency and enhance overall productivity by addressing underlying issues and promoting higher employee accountability. With all the right data in one place, streamline productivity and attendance analysis for an accurate picture of your workforce.
- Legal and Compliance Requirements: Record, collect and store accurate data to ensure ongoing compliance with labor laws, provide evidence for audits and to conduct regular compliance checks.
6 Steps to Set Up a Monthly Attendance Sheet
Finding and setting up the best monthly attendance sheet for your business needs doesn't need to be challenging.
With these steps, your business can easily set up a monthly attendance sheet.
Step 1: Define Key Information to Track
Before creating an attendance sheet, it's essential to decide what is going to be tracked. Monthly attendance sheets primarily serve as an overview of days present and absent for each employee. For monthly attendance sheets with multiple employees on the same sheet, the information collected is often simply if they did or did not attend that day. Other attendance sheets include clock-in and clock-out times, week-by-week attendance tracking and automatic calculation of hours.
Try our free monthly attendance sheets to see the difference for yourself and which type will better suit your business needs.
Step 2: Choose a Format (Paper vs. Digital)
Many businesses start out utilising pen and paper as an easy-to-use and portable method to track hours and attendance. The format you choose for your monthly attendance sheet is based on the needs and size of your business. Paper can go anywhere and be updated wherever you have a flat surface, but runs plenty of risks. It's easy to lose or damage paper monthly attendance sheets, and they require physically returning and transferring the information.
Digital monthly attendance sheets, like our free Google Sheet templates, have the benefit of being accessible digitally and easily modifiable. If mistakes are made, users can edit their times and fix errors. Cloud-saved documents won't be lost or damaged like paper and can be easily saved and shared.
Both manual options run the risk of user error, especially with double-handling to process accounting and payroll. They also lack transparency in the field and require a lot of administration hours to create and process.
Software-based solutions like ClockShark include time-tracking and attendance as standard, available from anywhere on any device. Software combines the portability and ease-of-use of paper and the safety and collaboration of digital. ClockShark's time reporting software includes insights on employee locations throughout the workday, productivity insights and attendance discrepancies.
Step 3: Populate the Sheet with Employee Data
Of course, to accurately track attendance, you need to know who's who. Depending on your type of attendance sheet, the amount and detail of employee data may change, but at a minimum employee's names need to be on the monthly attendance sheet. Our free monthly attendance sheet template also has a column for employee ID. Inputting and reading a name can be enough to differentiate, but if there are similar/shared names on the attendance sheet, it can be easy to mix up when using the data for payroll. An employee ID is unique and easy to reference.
ClockShark's time-tracking software connects employee data and identification directly to time-tracking and attendance, streamlining employee management and providing valuable productivity data to your business.
It's up to your business how much employee information is used, but it's required that the right data matches the right employee in any record. This isn't just essential for your business records, it's essential to keep your business compliant with FLSA regulations.
Step 4: Calculate Regular Hours, Overtime, and Breaks
One of our free monthly attendance sheet downloads includes clock-in and clock-out times. These calculate the employee's hours and track attendance each day and automatically total the times per week throughout the month. Attendance sheets with simpler checkbox attendance tracking are easier to manage, but they don't reflect the details of time-tracking, including clock-in and clock-out times and breaks.
It's also challenging to calculate overtime with manual monthly timesheets, regardless of the type. Clock in and clock out times can be recorded, added and tallied over the month, but a manual timesheet makes it difficult to assess the breaks and overtime employees accrue. To remain compliant with FLSA regulations, your business will need to take multiple time-consuming steps to ensure overtime is being calculated in payroll.
Daily attendance sheets are an option here, especially for businesses that require regular checks on duties, performance and productivity, with hours/overtime calculated at the end of a work shift or collected and processed each week. Similarly to monthly attendance sheets, daily attendance sheets come in different formats depending on the amount of data required.
Attendance software like ClockShark allows employees to record clock-in and clock-out times, breaks and overtime calculations. It seamlessly connects approved attendance hours to payroll, removing double-handling risks and streamlining the payroll process.
Step 5: Include Signatures
Because monthly attendance sheets will be updated by different crew members and managers/supervisors, it's necessary to set up an easy system for employees to verify their monthly attendance. Including a space for a signature/initial provides a simple method for an employee to confirm that they filled in their attendance accurately.
Step 6: Establish an Attendance Policy
The heart of any effective time-tracking/attendance system in your field service business is a consistent attendance policy. This policy should outline definitions of good/bad attendance records, how time/attendance is taken, the responsibilities of the employee and the employer, methods of contact for late attendance or absence and consequences for unexcused absences/tardiness.
If your business decides to use a monthly attendance sheet as part of its policy, outline how employees access the template, when they need to fill in their attendance/times and what to do if they can't access the sheet or attend a shift. Outline how the sheet will be used to assess good attendance and used for payroll purposes, if applicable.
A consistently applied policy ensures everyone is on the same page and following the same rules.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using a Monthly Attendance Sheet
- Not updating the month/year: It's easy to overlook, but it can throw off the entire sheet, including weekends and the correct dates worked.
- Rubberstamping attendance sheets: assuming all information is correct and not manually reviewing a sheet can lead to inaccurate records.
- Manual input errors/discrepancies: Missed or incorrect details, such as names, dates, teams and checks, can lead to inaccurate records and information passed on to payroll and admin. Manual work processes and sheets are at a higher risk of manual errors and simple mistakes.
- Data insecurity and privacy concerns: Manual attendance sheets can be difficult to track and secure, leading to concerns about data privacy and safety.
Your Monthly Attendance Template
Ready to use a monthly attendance template? Download our FREE templates and try digital attendance tracking.
Multiple Employees, daily attendance 
Make Attendance Tracking Easier with Clockshark
Digital templates can be a great place to start for your business to handle monthly attendance and improve accountability and attendance records, but as your business grows, inefficiencies and mistakes add up. ClockShark's attendance and time-tracking software is designed to seamlessly integrate every part of your business, streamlining the entire process. Protect valuable data and ensure employee privacy to improve accountability and foster a positive company culture.
Joel P., Director of Marketing at Santa Barbara Forge, recommends ClockShark to boost productivity and employee morale. "Our workers' morale is higher because they have an easy and clear way of recording hours that can't get lost and destroyed (like paper records). Employees are able to quickly and easily log into several different jobs with just a few taps on their smartphone, saving us 'dead time' in transition between jobs."
ClockShark is flexible for your attendance needs. Employees can clock in and clock-out from any device, or managers can set up kiosk clocks or run attendance from their mobile devices. Track attendance patterns and productivity and boost efficiency for the whole crew. Signup today and see how much time ClockShark can save your business.
