Odoo Attendance Implementation
Check-in/out, biometric, ZKTeco.
Attendance tracking via biometric devices, mobile app, kiosk, or PIN, with late/early/OT auto-detection and shift awareness.
Odoo Attendances records two timestamps per employee and derives everything else from them. A check in, a check out, worked hours, and the difference against the working schedule that Odoo calls extra hours. The app is part of Odoo Community as well as Enterprise, which surprises buyers who expect to pay for it. What is not in the box is the hardware. No fingerprint reader, no face terminal and no turnstile speaks to Odoo natively.
Most of the delivery work sits either side of those two timestamps. Getting the resource calendar right so a late arrival is measured against the shift the person actually works. Deciding whether extra hours are information for a manager or money in a payslip. Connecting whatever clock is already bolted to the wall. Attendance projects rarely fail on the Odoo screens. They fail on device mapping, night shifts, time zones and the check out nobody made.
The honest framing for a buyer is that Attendances is a time capture layer, not a workforce rules engine. It carries no shift premium logic, no award interpretation, no absence approval and no geofence enforcement. Time Off handles leave, Planning handles the roster, Payroll prices the result. Configured alongside those apps and a working device connector, the monthly attendance summary becomes a number finance will sign. On its own it is a clean list of timestamps.
Who Odoo Attendance is for
- → Companies with hourly, shift or site based staff where pay, overtime or client billing depends on hours actually worked rather than hours contracted.
- → Employers in the Gulf and South Asia already running fingerprint or face terminals who want the data inside the ERP instead of in a vendor desktop tool.
- → Contracting, facilities, security and manufacturing operations that have to evidence presence per site or per project during an audit or a client claim.
- → HR teams who rebuild the same payroll input spreadsheet from device exports every month and want that reconciliation to happen once.
- → Organisations with a large workforce and few Odoo users, since an employee needs no user account to be clocked in at a kiosk.
- → Not for salaried head office teams on a fixed schedule where nobody will read the report, and not for buyers expecting geofencing, roster building or shift premium calculation from this app on its own.
Key features
- ✓ ZKTeco biometric integration
- ✓ Mobile/kiosk check-in
- ✓ Shift & roster management
- ✓ Late/early/OT detection
- ✓ Geo-fenced check-in
- ✓ Monthly summary reports
What Odoo Attendance actually does
Three ways to record a check in
An employee with an Odoo user account checks in from the clock icon in the top bar of the backend, in a desktop or a phone browser. Everyone else uses kiosk mode on a shared tablet, which is an ordinary browser page and works in Community as well as Enterprise. Each record stores how it was created, so a manager can tell whether a timestamp came from the kiosk, from the systray or from a manual entry by an HR user. That distinction matters during a dispute.
Kiosk mode, badges and the PIN
Kiosk mode identifies people by scanning a badge barcode or an RFID card, by selecting a name from a list, or by both. The badge value is a field on the employee record and Odoo can generate and print the badge itself. A PIN can be required so that picking a name off the list is not enough on its own. Recent versions can read the badge with the tablet camera rather than a scanner, which removes a piece of hardware per door, and a keyboard emulating card reader plugged into the tablet still needs no extra software.
Extra hours measured against the working schedule
Odoo compares each day of recorded attendance with the working schedule on the employee and stores the difference as its own daily record, which is what the running balance on the employee form adds up. Two company level tolerances decide when a difference counts, one in favour of the company and one in favour of the employee, so arriving three minutes early does not create overtime. A start date setting controls the first day counted, which is what stops a data load producing balances nobody agreed to. This is a calculation and not an approval workflow, so who signs the balance off is a policy you design rather than a switch you enable.
What a record captures besides the time
Recent versions store more than a timestamp. A check in can carry the IP address, the browser, the mode it was created in and, where the device allows it and the employee permits it, a city, a country and coordinates. Two things follow. It is genuine evidence for remote and field staff when a day is questioned weeks later. And it is captured rather than enforced: Odoo records where a punch came from and accepts it anyway.
Reporting that survives a payroll query
Attendance data is available as a list, a pivot and a graph, grouped by employee, department or month, with worked hours and extra hours side by side. That answers the two questions HR is actually asked: how many hours did this person work last month, and why is the number different from the schedule. Export the pivot as a payroll input file, and filter on records with no check out to find the open ones before the month closes rather than after.
Handing hours to payroll and timesheets
In Odoo Enterprise Payroll the employment contract carries a work entry source, and attendance is one of the options, which makes recorded hours rather than the theoretical calendar the basis of the payslip. Community ships no payroll engine, so the handover there is an export into whatever pays people. Timesheets is a separate reconciliation: the clock says somebody was on site six hours while the timesheet claims eight against a customer task. Community puts no standard report beside those two numbers, so the comparison is a pivot built once, and on billable work it often pays for the attendance project by itself.
How we configure Odoo Attendance
Resource calendars before anything else
Every late arrival, early leave and extra hour is measured against the working schedule on the employee, so the calendars are the real configuration work. Build one per genuine working pattern rather than one per company. A Friday and Saturday weekend site, a rotating twelve hour pattern and a half day Saturday are three calendars, not one. Set the time zone on the calendar and on the employee record, and load public holidays before the first month end.
Employee identity data for the terminal and the kiosk
Badge number, kiosk PIN and biometric enrolment ID are three different values and none of them arrives clean. Before go live, decide which one is the key that links a terminal user to an Odoo employee, populate it for every active employee, then check for duplicates and for people who left two years ago. A device reporting user 214 with no matching employee produces silent gaps in the month, and nobody notices until payroll asks.
Connecting a biometric terminal
ZKTeco and similar clocks reach Odoo one of two ways. The device pushes records to a listening endpoint using its own protocol, or a scheduled job pulls them from the device over the network. Push copes better with poor connectivity because the terminal buffers locally when the link drops. Either way you need a reachable address for the device, a mapping table between device user IDs and employees, and a rule for duplicate punches. None of this is standard Odoo.
Agree the overtime policy before setting tolerances
The two tolerance settings look small and are not. Decide what counts as late, what grace period applies at the start of a shift, whether early arrival can generate paid time, and whether a manager approves extra hours before they reach payroll. Set the date extra hours start counting from in the same conversation, so last year's imported punches do not create balances against a policy that did not exist then. Changing the rule after three months of live data leaves historic balances that no longer match what people were told.
Access rights and the correctable record
Attendance records can be created and corrected by users with the right role, which is necessary because people forget to check out. It also means the number is only as trustworthy as the access rules around it. Separate the people who correct records from the people who approve the monthly total, keep a stated reason on corrections, and decide during design whether a change log is a requirement, because that is an added module rather than a setting.
Where Odoo Attendance projects go wrong
Assuming the biometric device is supported out of the box
Odoo ships no driver for fingerprint or face terminals. Attendances is a data model with a web kiosk in front of it. Every hardware clock on a real project arrives through a connector module, a middleware service or a scheduled import. Budget it as an integration with its own testing, not as a checkbox in settings. The model number, the firmware on that model and whether the device can reach the server decide the effort, so ask for all three early.
Night shifts and the midnight boundary
A shift running from 20:00 to 04:00 produces one attendance record spanning two calendar days. Worked hours come out correct. The comparison against the schedule is where it gets awkward, because the hours fall either side of midnight and the working schedule has to describe that pattern honestly. Test a full night rotation with real data before go live, including a daylight saving change if the country has one, rather than finding it at the first month end.
Open attendances quietly ruin the month
Somebody checks in on Monday and never checks out. The record stays open, worked hours for that person are wrong, and the extra hours balance inherits the error. It happens on every site with a door people can walk out of. Odoo 18 added an automatic check out that closes records left running past a set number of hours, which stops one missed punch swallowing a week, but the time it writes is invented and still needs a human decision before it feeds pay. Put a weekly review of open records into the HR routine, name the person who owns it, and run it before payroll rather than after.
The kiosk trusts whoever is standing in front of it
A tablet with manual selection turned on checks in anybody who taps a name, and a badge card travels easily from one pocket to another at the gate. Odoo offers two controls: require a PIN, and identify by badge or RFID rather than by a name list. Neither defeats two colleagues who have agreed to cover for each other. Where hours drive pay, the answer is a biometric terminal writing into Odoo, or a supervisor who signs the monthly total, and that choice belongs in the design workshop before the tablets are bought. Put the rule in the attendance policy people sign, because a shared badge argument is settled by that policy rather than by the timestamp.
Expecting pay rules from a time clock
Attendances counts hours. It does not know that Friday night is at 150 percent, that the eleventh hour of a shift changes rate, or that a public holiday doubles the day. That interpretation belongs in Payroll where a localization exists, or in a rules layer built for the country. Buyers who see an extra hours balance on the employee form often assume the money follows automatically. Fix the boundary between counted hours and priced hours in the first workshop.
Storing biometric templates you did not need to store
A fingerprint or face template is regulated more tightly than a timestamp in most of the markets these projects land in, and the exposure comes from where the template lives rather than from recording attendance at all. Design the integration so the template stays on the terminal and only a device user ID crosses into Odoo. Set a retention period for raw punch data, record what employees were told at enrolment, and keep a badge or PIN route open for anyone who cannot enrol or refuses. Where the legal ground is unclear, kiosk check in by badge gives most of the control with far less to defend.
What it works with
- + Employees, which holds the working schedule, the badge, the PIN and the department every report groups by
- + Time Off, so an approved absence explains a missing day instead of showing as an unexplained gap
- + Planning on Enterprise, which holds the shift somebody was rostered to work, so planned against actual becomes a report, though extra hours are still measured against the resource calendar and not the roster
- + Timesheets, where hours booked to tasks can be reconciled against hours recorded at the clock, using a pivot you build rather than a standard side by side report
- + Payroll on Enterprise, where the employment contract can take work entries from attendance rather than the calendar
- + ZKTeco and comparable terminals through a connector module using the device push protocol or a scheduled pull
- + A keyboard emulating barcode or RFID reader plugged straight into the kiosk tablet, which needs no extra software
- + Field Service on Enterprise and Project, where site hours have to reconcile with what was invoiced to the customer
Odoo Attendance by country
Saudi Arabia (KSA)
The working day is eight hours and the week 48, cut to six and 36 for Muslim employees through Ramadan, so a second calendar is needed on Hijri dates that move every year. Overtime is paid at 150 percent of the hourly wage, a figure Attendances counts but does not price. GOSI and Mudad wage files run off contract data rather than the clock, so a clean attendance month does not by itself keep those filings right.
United Arab Emirates
Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021 caps normal overtime at two extra hours a day and prices it at 125 percent, rising to 150 percent for work falling between 10pm and 4am. The hour of the night therefore changes the cost, and the attendance record is where it is evidenced. The night uplift does not apply to employees working a shift system, which is often the exact population the clock was installed for, so any rule built on top has to know who is on shifts and who is not.
Kuwait
The multiplier follows the type of day rather than the time of day: 125 percent on a normal working day, more on the weekly rest day, more again on a public holiday. That puts the public holiday list on the resource calendar directly in the pay path, so a calendar nobody maintains prices the wrong day. Overtime also carries an annual ceiling per employee, a cumulative figure Odoo will not police, so somebody has to watch the running total during the year rather than discover it at the end.
Pakistan
Labour law has been provincial since the eighteenth amendment, so a group with plants in Punjab and Sindh works to two sets of hours and overtime rules out of one database. The Factories Act baseline is nine hours a day and 48 a week, with overtime at double rate. EOBI contributions run off the minimum wage rather than actual pay, so recorded hours and the contribution base are unrelated.
India
The Factories Act limits the day and the week and requires a rest interval, while state Shops and Establishments rules differ, so a group operating across several states needs more than one working schedule. Central rules put overtime at twice the ordinary rate on a 26 day divisor. Aadhaar based authentication is not generally open to a private employer for this purpose, so enrolment runs on the device template or a badge rather than the national ID.
Germany
Since the Federal Labour Court ruling of September 2022 employers have had a duty to record working time, so the recording system itself is under scrutiny rather than optional. The Arbeitszeitgesetz caps the day at eight hours, extendable to ten with compensation inside six months, which makes the balance on the employee record a compliance figure as much as a pay figure. Introducing a time recording system needs works council agreement, and a fingerprint reader raises that bar again.
France
For employees not on a fixed collective schedule the employer has to keep a daily record of hours worked, which is exactly what Attendances produces. Biometrics are the harder question, since CNIL has treated fingerprint clocks for ordinary timekeeping as disproportionate, so badge or PIN check in is the safer design. The 35 hour week also means overtime starts earlier than an imported policy assumes, and the tolerance settings have to be read against the collective agreement rather than against company preference.
United Kingdom
Working Time Regulations set a 48 hour average week that an individual can opt out of in writing, and require the employer to keep records adequate to show the limit is being met. Attendance hours also feed holiday pay for irregular hours and part year workers, where accrual follows hours actually worked, so clock data ends up inside a pay calculation rather than only in an HR report.
Odoo Attendance FAQs
Is Attendances available in Odoo Community or only Enterprise?
It is part of Community. Kiosk check in, badge and RFID scanning, PIN entry, worked hours and extra hours all work without an Enterprise licence, and the Attendances app itself is the same in both editions. Enterprise matters for what sits around it: Payroll, Planning and the official mobile app. On most of these projects the Enterprise argument is payroll rather than the clock, so price both routes before assuming a licence is needed.
Do employees need Odoo user accounts to be tracked?
No, and on Enterprise that is a pricing question rather than a technical one. An employee record is enough to appear in kiosk mode, hold a badge and accumulate hours, so several hundred people on a shop floor can be clocked without adding a single user. Accounts are only needed for the systray check in, which requires an internal user, and for the managers and HR staff who open the records. Count the people who have to read attendance, not the people who have to be in it.
Does Odoo connect to ZKTeco or other biometric devices?
Not natively, and the feasibility answer comes from three things: the exact model, the firmware running on it, and whether the terminal can reach the Odoo server or only the local network. Ask for all three before quoting. Two further items decide the running cost. Terminal clocks drift, so a device an hour out writes every punch an hour out until somebody notices, and replacing a failed terminal usually means re-enrolling fingers and rebuilding the device user ID mapping. Neither is Odoo work. Both land on the same project.
Can Odoo stop someone checking in from outside the office?
Not in the standard app, and the practical answer is usually physical rather than technical. Put check in on a fixed kiosk tablet at the door for the roles where location matters, and keep browser check in for people whose whereabouts nobody will query. Where you do use browser location, it needs a secure connection and an explicit permission from the employee, either of which can be declined, and a phone indoors without a GPS fix can report a position several hundred metres out. Test that accuracy on the actual handsets before any rule depends on it.
How does Odoo calculate overtime?
Day by day against the working schedule, once the tolerances have been applied. Three behaviours surprise people. The balance nets both directions, so short days pull it down and it can sit below zero. Editing an attendance recalculates that day, so a correction made in March can move a balance February was signed off on. And the reference is the calendar on the employee record, of which there is one at a time, so moving somebody between shift patterns changes how their earlier days are judged whenever the balance is recomputed.
What happens when someone forgets to check out?
The record stays open, and the next scan closes it rather than opening a new one, so a missed Monday check out usually surfaces as a single twenty hour record on Tuesday rather than as an obvious gap. Search on worked hours above a plausible maximum as well as on an empty check out. A user with the right role can correct it, but the attendance record carries no chatter by default, so the edit leaves no trail unless logging is added. Where corrected hours feed pay, build that trail before go live rather than after the first dispute.
Can attendance hours drive the payslip?
On Enterprise Payroll, yes, through the work entry source on the employment contract. The sequence is the part worth agreeing. Records have to be corrected and the month closed before work entries are generated, because editing an attendance afterwards does not recompute a payslip on its own. Bringing hours across is also not the same as pricing them. Paying extra hours at whatever multiplier local law sets needs salary rules that either exist in a payroll localization or get written for the country, and that is a question for the contract stage rather than the parallel run.
Can several years of history be imported from the old system?
Yes, with two cautions. Odoo stores every datetime in UTC, so a file exported in local time loads each punch offset by the time zone difference and no error is raised. Extra hours are also recomputed against the working schedule, so calendars have to exist for the periods being loaded, or the counting start date has to sit after them. Import one month, reconcile it against the source, then load the rest.
How many people can one kiosk handle at a gate?
The constraint is the queue at the door rather than the server. A tablet with a card reader clears a person in a few seconds, so a gate taking two hundred arrivals inside ten minutes needs more than one device. Count arrivals per minute at the busiest entrance, then decide the number of kiosks and whether the site needs its own network path to the server. A kiosk is also a web page, so a site that loses its link loses the ability to punch at all, which is the argument for a buffering terminal at a remote location.