Pyramid Time Systems TimeTrax Elite TTELITEEK Biometric Fingerprint Clock

For my small retail store, this has been such a great way to keep track of employee hours. Since I work with a young staff, it would be easy for someone to guilt someone else into signing them in. I protect my staff from that kind of pressure by using a biometric sign in. And it is super easy to run reports for my payroll. I haven’t set up for it to go directly to my payroll company as I need to check their hours and make sure they aren’t signing in when they aren’t supposed to be working, but I understand that is an option.

This hardware works well, but the software is kind of flakey. Sometimes it doesn’t run and we’re left worrying we won’t be able to do payroll. They only provide 90 days of Tech support and so if it does give out on us then we will be in serious trouble.

Also the software is not particularly intuitive or user friendly. It takes a while to learn how to use it. Most likely you will need to call them to help you get it up and running.

After a great deal of comparison shopping and research we decided a fingerprint scan time clock was what we needed to reduce the mechanics in our payroll and to ensure accurate reporting. After scouring the internet we discovered a few things. 1- Local stores are really pushing the subscription software clocks. We did not want our payroll held on a cloud, we wanted it held local and our back up locations not dependent on an outside company. 2-We are a small company so were looking for in the lower end price scale. 3-it needed to be very easy to operate for the employee as many do not even own a smart phone yet.. 4-we wanted to be able to reduce the manual time card process for our 1 gal office. This little clock was recommended by another company as a good fit for our size of roughly 20 employees.

We received the item the next day and I was the kid in the toy store, anxious to try it out. Here is what I have found so far:

If I were to sum the product up I’d say simple. Sometimes aggravatingly so. Other reviewers have mentioned what a pain it was to set up. I can’t completely agree but we are not fully operational yet.

For some context, I am a secretary who tends to double as the resident expert. I am not trained in IT but I do have a knack for computer software. I learned computers on the old DOS and Word Perfect F keys, prefer the windows old style control panel and detest icons instead of menus. Pictures are great but give me my words to go with it, I don’t want to guess if that’s a computer picture or a network picture for instance. And I dislike they hide slightly advanced settings hoping to streamline software. Not sure that gives a good representation when you are searching through trying to place the expertise level as I did when reading the reviews, but I found it an important tidbit when I was reading the reviews.

So let’s get to set up.
1-It follows today’s typical trend of less is more in the explanation department, hoping to be intuitive enough you don’t have to do anything but answer questions. It falls a little short on it’s goal on the actual clock itself. The software I have found to be quite a nice little package so far.

2-easy install into our windows 10 environment. Popped in the CD, allowed the access and off we went. It asks that you have the device connected as you enter set up but I added mine after seeing what came up and it worked just fine. The quick guide was accurate allowing me to insure I was looking at things correctly. First it asks to sync. Was a bit surprised it tried to change my computer time (You will find it tries to default to it’s information over the computers/quickboos information so keep an eye on that) But it sync’d just fine with no problem, recognized the device and was fast to load it up.

3-Quickbooks-This was a touch trickier but not overly complicated. You must have an admin log into quickbooks and give it access in the integrated apps preference for the company in quickbooks and QB won’t let you do that until the device has asked. So you will need to be in single user mode with the admin password in QB for the first set up. Once I realized the qb popup was behind the other information it was simple. I must confess this was a trickier part of the set up but again not overly so and is the way QB is set up and not a reflection on the clock.

4-Registering users. This is where their quick start guide fails you and intuitive becomes a hindrance. You have to go to the reference guide within the software to find how to register your user. page 10 or so if I recall. Simply put, you have to first add a supervisor in the software and assign them a code before you can add users. This would be mighty helpful on the quick start guide in my opinion and save a great deal of frustration.

For me personally this is what I would say pros/cons are on initial glance.
pros:
Affordable
Good fingerprint recognition
Simple setup if one has set up any financial software before
Reduces time card cost and ink costs
Reduces buddy clocking

cons:
Biggest one is that it doesn’t say in or out clocking so if an employee forgets if they clocked in our out they cannot correct it without a supervisor
No menu button on the clock
Must be connected to a computer to work
quick start guide missing an important quick step that is integral to operation.

I will attempt to update this as we go with the ease of actually using the software for payroll and how well it does with varied users but that’s my initial impression.

When reading reviews I try to filter comments that say I’m an expert and couldn’t get it to work against the easy to use don’t know why everyone says it isn’t so I hope I’ve been able to capture a bit of what each of us means in difficult to set up or easy to set up.

Every install outside of your average install is going to be a little quirky. This is no exception. There will be a bit of frustration, but by and large I’ve had an easier time with this then trying to get our networked printer/scanner to be consistent from computer to computer so for me it’s on the easy scale. but that may or may not be the case for you depending on what your expectations are when you open the box. It’s not a simple install that many have become used to with today’s software but you do not need to know a bunch of complicated settings either.

Good luck to each of you.

**After a couple months of use, I’m getting the hang of it. The software is a bit on the confusing side with the different groups that are not well explained, and I have found a few things such as if someone has different lunch breaks on different days but is not a clock in/out lunch it’s a bit time consuming. The add punches is a life saver for when the guys forget or have something on their hands. We’ve only had 1 employee have trouble with the not found and I’m quite sure that is user error as he’s complained about using it from the get go. I do wish it had a better message when the guys clocked in or out, it’s only there for a split second so it is easy to miss if it says not found instead of the card number. I also wish it said clocked in or out so they would know if they goofed. We’ve used the tape trick to clean the sensor once although it seemed to still be working just fine. We have not had it compute actual payroll yet as we are getting a good feel for the system before letting it touch our quickbooks. We’ve even gone through a power outage and it kept up like a champ, although we did have to run the get punches a couple times before it synced all the way. All in all we are still quite pleased.

****6 month update****
This continues to work well for us although I still find it a bit cumbersome. Because we have some oddities we have still not used the automated payroll function. I’ve found the ability to add comments quite helpful to relay notes to the owners as to why something may look odd. For instance sometimes we will borrow from one department for another and the lunch hours are different, we can add a note indicating that it has been verified they were in the other department that day. I also use the comment function when adding vacation days so we can see when they took the days we are paying for etc. We only have 1 employee that seems to struggle with getting his fingerprint to take. I feel that is more due to the fact that, that particular user doesn’t like using it than a flaw with the system. One thing we did that has proved incredibly helpful is to have a written sheet near the time clock for anything the employees need to clear up regarding their times. That way if they’ve missed a punch they can record it and when the power was out at clock out time they could record their times. (It did in fact handle the power outage well, they just couldn’t clock at that time, not sure if there is a battery function that would overcome this but it’s something to be aware of) Our first hiccup actually came today. I have an employee on vacation out of the country that shows punching in this week. Other than that it’s worked well for us. The buddy punching has been eliminated and that has settled everyone down with the bad will that was coming from it. All in all, it works well for a small company, But it helps a great deal to be familiar with computer software in order to get the hang of it. It can be quite overwhelming if you are not.

Update 5/22/19
-We continue to have success with this system. After about 2 years of use it has held up well. A couple things we have noticed.
-I really wish it had a way for the employee to check their time of punches. Because it only briefly beeps and displays their card number they cannot go back later and make sure they didn’t forget to clock in. This has caused us to have a back up plan to record times.
-Some lotions will interfere with the reading of the scanner
-Instructions could be better. Their is no information that I can find as to cleaning and maintenance. After 2 years it is starting to have issue reading fingerprints. Perhaps aging of our employees, perhaps weakened scanner, perhaps a film has developed on the scanner. We are looking to find out why it is now taking more tries to get it to read.
-However, overall it has worked and designed.
-I’d like to see more functionality at the terminal and a backup way to punch in that would not require a supervisor to enter the time. But rather just flag it as using the back up method.
-We have opted not to import the data into quickbooks at this time as the way we code our employees might pose a problem but it synced fine and easily with a click of a checkmark in a box.
-We often have the message “backup is smaller than anticipated” And power outages create a problem so you might want to add a battery backup to your device.
-My biggest complaint is the lack of our employees being able to see their times.
-One thing to watch is ours is set to use clock times not decimals and quickbooks prefers the decimal system.
-Beyond that it still cannot be beat for the price point and has proved quite reliable for us.

We bought this for our company, after spending hours thinking how it works, even reading the manual and multiple forums in the web (NOT easy to use). After 1 month of use, the unit broke down misteriously and we lost all the punches, it just stopped making the punches. I called Pyramid, they are very kind and receptive (thats why i rated 2* just for the great Costumer Service), they told me to ship them the unit so they’ll replace it free. We didn’t because we switched to a local company.

Conclussion: not recommended.

Utilise pour ma compagnie de 20 employés
Pour l’instant rien a redire tout fonctionne très bien , plus facile que celui avant et fait tout les calculs pour moi et je m’aperçois que c’est toujours les mêmes qui tire sur leur temps, de plus aucun frais mensuel.

Works good but hard to set up. Great support tho

I never write reviews, but feel I should warn others. This clock is difficult to set up. Once you have set it up the finger print rarely works. Of course, after 4 weeks of trying to use this product we gave up. Unfortunately, I am 3 days late to return this item so now I have a $300 addition to a landfill.