Knowing when employees are present at work is what attendance tracking does. This piece is about attendances and kiosks in Odoo.
What attendance tracking is
Attendance tracking is the recording of when employees are present at work: when they arrive, when they leave, the time they are genuinely there. The Attendances application in Odoo handles this, building a record of employee attendance. A business tracks attendance to know when its people are genuinely present, which is useful information for managing the workforce and for the processes that depend on knowing the time employees worked.
How attendance is recorded: checking in and out
Attendance is recorded by employees checking in when they arrive and checking out when they leave, which records the time they were present. Each check-in and check-out builds the attendance record. The recording is, in essence, the employees marking their presence, and the accumulated check-ins and check-outs are the attendance data.
What a kiosk is
A kiosk, in the attendance context, is a shared point where employees check in and out, a shared device or station, set up for the purpose, that employees use to mark their attendance. Rather than each employee checking in some other way, a kiosk gives a shared, common point for it. Odoo supports a kiosk for attendance, so a business can have a station where employees check in and out. The kiosk is a practical way of providing the check-in and check-out, particularly where it is convenient for employees to mark attendance at a shared point as they arrive and leave.
Why attendance tracking is useful
Attendance tracking is useful because the record of when employees are genuinely present is information a business uses. It tells the business about its workforce's presence, which matters for managing the work. And, importantly, attendance connects to other people processes. The time employees genuinely worked relates to payroll, and attendance, the record of presence, can feed into that. Attendance can also be related to other things, such as comparing it against recorded timesheets. So attendance tracking is not just a record for its own sake; it produces presence data that the connected people processes draw on.
Attendance should fit how the business works
An honest note. Attendance tracking, and whether and how a business uses it, including a kiosk, should fit how the business genuinely works and what it genuinely needs. A business for which knowing employees' genuine presence matters, for managing the workforce, for payroll, for other processes, benefits from attendance tracking, and a kiosk where checking in at a shared point suits the workplace. A business for which attendance tracking is not genuinely needed should not adopt it for its own sake. Attendance tracking is worth setting up where the record of presence is genuinely useful to the business.
The takeaway
Attendances and kiosks in Odoo handle the recording of when employees are present at work. Attendance is recorded by employees checking in and out, building a record of their genuine presence, and a kiosk is a shared point where employees do that check-in and check-out. Attendance tracking is useful because the record of presence informs workforce management and connects to other people processes, notably payroll. Attendance tracking should be adopted where the record of presence is genuinely useful to the business. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.