An "attendance clock" today can be anything — from a biometric clock on the wall to an app on a phone. The right choice depends less on technology and more on three questions: where your employees work, who runs payroll, and what happens when the calculation is wrong. This guide covers the types, the criteria and the prices — and the questions worth checking at a demo.

Step 1: Map your business

• Where are your employees? All in one office, spread across branches, or in the field? That decides the clock-in method.
• Do you run shifts? If so, the clock needs to talk to the shift schedule — not just record arrivals.
• Who does payroll? An outside accountant, an in-house payroll administrator? The month-end report has to fit their payroll system, or someone will retype everything.
• How high is turnover? High turnover makes employee onboarding (Form 101, contract) part of the decision.

Step 2: Know the types

• Biometric clock (fingerprint / face recognition). Clocking in at a fixed point, but expensive hardware — and a real legal problem: the National Labor Court ruled that an employee can't be required to give a fingerprint without free consent. What used to be the default option now carries risk.
• Mechanical punch-card clock. Cheap, but the data stays on paper — someone still types it into Excel, with all the errors that come with it.
• Web clock-in. Suits offices: clocking in and out from the browser, nothing to install. It should be limited to the people who are meant to use it.
• App with location verification (GPS). The answer for field and branch staff — each clock-in is checked against the work site. We wrote a separate guide on the legal side: GPS attendance clocks — what's allowed and what isn't.
• NFC station. A physical station at the entrance without expensive hardware: an NFC tag on the wall or a personal card per employee, used with an existing tablet. Full details on the NFC attendance station page.

Step 3: The criteria that really matter

• Calculation under Israeli law. This is the most important criterion, and the easiest to miss in a demo. A translated global system doesn't know the 125%/150% tiers, break deductions by employee type, or Shabbat and holidays by the Hebrew calendar. You pay for a wrong calculation in a lawsuit, not on the payslip.
• Payroll export. Does the report come out in a format your payroll system imports directly? "Generic Excel" means manual work every month.
• Real-time alerts. A missing clock-in found at month end is a reconstruction job; one found the same day is a one-minute fix.
• Leave management in the same system. Otherwise leave balances live in a separate Excel file, and you're back to the same problem.
• Audit trail (audit log). Under Amendment 24 to the Wage Protection Law, the burden of proof in an hours dispute falls on an employer without proper records. A system that logs who changed what and when is your defense.
• Ease of rollout. How long from sign-up until the first employee clocks in? If the answer includes "technician" and "installation" — there are simpler options.

Step 4: Price

The common pricing model today is per employee per month, usually in the range of ₪10–30 per employee. A few things to check beyond the number:

• Do you pay for an employee who has left? (The right answer: no — pricing per active employee.)
• Is there a setup fee, an annual commitment, or an exit penalty?
• What exactly is included in the base and what costs extra — sometimes the cheap price climbs once you add leave, reports or another user.
• Is there a real free trial, with no credit card?

To calculate the total cost of employment, including employer contributions, you can use the employer cost calculator.

Questions to ask at every demo

• "Show me how you calculate a Friday for an hourly employee who worked 10 hours" — the answer shows right away whether the engine is truly Israeli.
• "What happens when an employee forgets to clock out?"
• "How does the report get into my accountant's payroll system?"
• "How much of this price is fixed, and how much depends on the actual number of employees?"

And in the end — the safe way to choose is simply to try: have a few employees clock in for one week and look at the report that comes out. The full comparison of clock-in methods will help you decide where to start.

Already down to a shortlist? See the 2026 roundup of attendance systems in Israel, the alternatives by what you're leaving, and the comparison RayClock vs legacy systems.

The information in this article is general and is not legal or tax advice. Collective agreements, industry extension orders and personal agreements may set different, sometimes more favorable, arrangements, and the rules themselves change from time to time. For any specific question, we recommend consulting a lawyer who specializes in labor law or an accountant.