Time and attendance systems are used by organizations of all sizes, across a range of industries to ensure accuracy of employee's time and attendance, pay and absence requests. It also allows business a greater degree of control over labor costs, freeing them to drive up productivity and profitability. Generally, a Biometric attendance System functions on the technology scanning fingerprints, face, or retina to record the attendance of the employees. As soon as an employee enters the office and punches in or out in the machine, the data goes to the database and matches it with the existing employee information.

The best time and attendance systems allow organizations to monitor absenteeism closely in order to improve absence processes and reduce rates of absence. They do this by systematically comparing real hours worked and patterns of absence against expected 'normal' working patterns.