Facial recognition is becoming more popular today for many reasons. The popularity of facial recognition skyrocketed when Face ID was introduced as a replacement for Touch ID for unlocking iPhones. The technology has proven to be very sound and stable. Hence face recognition attendance systems have become popular for enforcing accountability within many businesses. Face recognition is used in areas such as student attendance systems, tracking attendance at events, access control and many more.
You are probably reading because you are searching for a face recognition based attendance system for your business or team. There are many facial recognition time tracking apps on the market today so my team and I decided to do the research homework and save you a lot of valuable time.
We researched pure app-based solutions as well as hardware clocks that support facial recognition. These are the apps we researched:
Timeero (this is us)
Jibble
TSheets
Fareclock
How They All Work
The general way in which the apps work is that each user enrolls by taking an enrollment picture or image of a human face; ideally a clear picture of themselves in a well-lit environment. Then when it’s time to clock in, the user takes a photo of their face. The now captured photo is compared to the photo on file or the enrollment photo. Using machine learning and deep learning algorithms, the face detection tool can confirm the photo images match.
Fareclock
HOW FARECLOCK WORKS
Fareclock comes with a set of features to allow you to track time accurately. The mobile app runs on, both iOS and Android phones, the most popular phones you will find on the market.
The Fareclock interface seems very clean and organized. Once I logged in on the web dashboard, I was given an option to download the mobile app. I found the design to be very convenient and well thought through. Using an iPhone 11 Pro Max, I downloaded the iOS app and proceeded to clock in.
Once you tap on the “Employee start screen”, it pulls up a camera that can capture your face. I wasn’t sure if it was capturing my face for registration or if it was trying to clock me in. The admin portal was not very clear on how to do that and there was This is where you take a photo of your face to ensure that you are really the right person clocking in. It wasn’t exactly clear if I was registering my base photo for comparison purposes. The other confusing part was where I needed to enter the PIN. I simply could not find a place to enter a PIN so I dug into the documentation a little more.
Does it work with dark skin faces?
For a dark-skinned person like me, it is normal to wonder if face recognition will work for me. The Fareclock mobile app was able to detect my face in a well-lit location. According to Fareclock:
Our face recognition works well with any person’s face, no matter the color or shade. The most important factor in achieving successful recognition is how the employee presents him/herself to the time clock. Here are some tips for employees how to face the device camera.
On the web dashboard page, logged in as an admin, the Fareclock software gives you an opportunity to approve or decline failed entries. My punch-ins were deemed failures probably because I did not know what PIN to enter while attempting to clock in.
I think the overall Fareclock Face recognition based attendance system does what it needs to do. The onboarding portion for facial recognition could be improved to make it easier to understand.
Jibble
HOW JIBBLE WORKS
The Jibble interface seems very clean and simple to follow. The user interface doesn’t feel very cluttered.
To use the Jibble facial recognition, you first have to enable the Facial Recognition power up.
Once enabled you can go to the employees page to enroll your baseline photo. So we decided to use a photo of Crystal, instead, so we could experience what a false photo match looks like.
We downloaded the mobile app and logged in with our credentials. The Jibble app gives you the option to turn the app into a terminal orOn the mobile app I was able to jibble in, which I guess means to clock in. Jibbling in was very simple. It opened up the camera and I was able to take a photo of myself. Not too long after I got a notification stating that there was a possible mismatch for my photo.
Does it work well on dark skin tone faces?
According to Jibble:
You could receive unwarranted mismatches with selfies that have darker skin tone photos or dark lighting, but as the facial recognition improves over the months this shortcoming will be overcome.
Jibble’s face recognition attendance system is simple to use it and gets it done.
TSheets
HOW TSHEETS WORKS
The TSheets app works very similarly to every other app we’ve reviewed so far. The biggest difference is that the TSheets app is built only to work on the TSheets terminal app. To use the TSheets facial recognition time tracking software, you will need to have an iPad, an Android tablet or a desktop to be able to clock in with facial recognition.
Setting up the TSheets app was fairly straight forward.
When setting up, the system first gives you a 4 digit code to enter on your terminal app.
If you do not have a 4 digit PIN setup for your account, the system will ask you to create one, before you are allowed to punch in.
Like most of the time clock punch in page shows your face on the camera. The TSheets app also has a cool little reminder if you are taking forever to clock in.
I didn’t see a place to register my face yet. I would assume there’s instructions on how to do that somewhere but it wasn’t immediately clear.
If a user is not recognized by the TSheets app, an email is sent to the admin to confirm if the photo is correct or not.
Overall we think the TSheets app is simple enough to use. However, it will not work out for you if your employees are not allowed to clock in from a terminal.
OTHER FEATURES
Most time and attendance systems these days will do more than just a simple clocking in and out. You will want to get more out of your ideal time and attendance system. We’ve listed a few of the features we think you may want to pay attention to.
Live GPS Tracking
A lot of time and attendance systems these days will simply capture your clock in and clock out locations. In fact, all the solutions listed here will do that. However, it’s easy to beat such a system; we’ve seen several scenarios where a person will clock in, only to leave to go do a side job or some non-work-related work and then later come back to clock out.
If you are looking to add extra accountability to your facial recognition time tracking, then I recommend looking into live GPS tracking.
Live GPS tracking will track employees while they are on the clock.
Scheduling
Are you using paper to track your employee’s schedules? You don’t need to because some time and attendance applications will do that for you. Scheduling and time tracking go hand-in-hand so be sure to look out for a scheduling feature if your business or team can benefit from one.
Time Off
Do your employees need a better way to request time off? Using an automated system can save you loads of time and errors. Investing in a time tracking system that handles time off can be very valuable. Employees can request time off right from their mobile apps and administrators can be notified when a time off request is made.
Payroll Integrations
Most people need to be paid for work done. It’s important that your face recognition time clock integrates with payroll solutions. Many solutions will do a simple file export, but this creates a problem…..it leaves room for error as you are left to manually enter or import time entries. Some of the popular payroll solutions out there are QuickBooks and ADP.
REVIEWS
We pulled out the most recent on the Google Playstore from actual users and these were our findings.
Timeero – 4.5 star rating as of (June 8, 2020)
Fareclock – 4.1 star rating as of (June 8, 2020)
Jibble – 4.1 star rating as of (June 8, 2020)
TSheets – 3.9 star rating as of June 8, 2020
PRICING – FACE RECOGNITION ATTENDANCE SYSTEMS
These are the different prices we’ve seen for these products. The cheapest product to get simple face recognition is Jibble and the most expensive is TSheets. However, cheapest doesn’t always mean it’s the most cost efficient solution.
If you are looking to get more out of your time tracking app such as GPS tracking and payroll integrations, then Timeero will be a better value for you in terms of pricing.
Timeero $5/user/month + $10 base fee.
Fareclock has a price of $10 base + $1.25 per employee.
Jibble: Free (stores only 2 months of data), $2 per active user/month.
TSheets: starts at $8/user/month + $20 base fee.
All apps are not built equal. We hope our research on the top facial recognition attendance based systems was helpful for you. Here at Timeero we are happy to assess your usecase and needs and offer a few recommendations for you.
You can start a trial or start a chat with us (circle on the bottom right) if you are interested in testing out our face recognition attendance app.