Key takeaways
- Attendance answers who was working and for how long. Time tracking answers what the time went on.
- Automatic attendance tracking removes timers and the corrections that follow them.
- TIMO360 records punch in and out with active, idle, break and meeting time, and has no project or task timers.
The two phrases are used as if they meant the same thing. They do not, and mixing them up leads to buying the wrong tool. Here is a plain way to tell them apart.
Attendance tracking
Attendance tracking software records when someone started and finished work. The questions it answers are simple: who was working today, when did they start, and for how long? Payroll, absence records and basic accountability all depend on it.
Time tracking
Time tracking goes a level deeper: how the hours were split across projects, clients or tasks. It usually relies on timers or manual entries, which is why it is also where most corrections happen.
Where TIMO360 sits
TIMO360 is an attendance tool with a useful breakdown. Employees punch in and out, and the agent reports active, idle, break and meeting time automatically. It does not have project timers or task entries, so it is not a replacement for client billing software. For many teams that is the point: no timers to start, forget or fix.
Which one do you need?
You need to know who was at work and for how long: attendance tracking.
You need to bill clients by the hour on named projects: time tracking.
You want accurate attendance without timesheets: automatic attendance tracking.
Getting accurate attendance
Accuracy comes from handling messy days well. Forgotten punch-outs close at local midnight, breaks pause tracking, and a lost connection queues events until it returns.
See attendance, automated time tracking and attendance tracking for remote and hybrid teams.