The Cost of Buddy Punching and Inaccurate Attendance Records

Small differences can become a payroll problem

One person signs the logbook for a colleague. Another writes a remembered arrival time at the end of the week. A manager copies the entries into a spreadsheet. Payroll receives a clean-looking total, but the original record may be wrong.

Buddy punching means clocking in or out for another person. Inaccurate time records can also come from honest mistakes. Do not treat every correction as misconduct. The first task is to check what happened.

What the statistics actually tell us

QuickBooks reports a TSheets-commissioned PollFish survey of 1,000 US workers aged 18 and over, conducted in February 2017. Its published buddy-punching resource says 16% admitted clocking in for a colleague.

This is older, self-reported US research. It is not a Philippine prevalence rate, and it does not show that 16% of your employees do this. It does show why identity checks are a relevant timekeeping control.

In a separate 2022 ADP article, a company executive says small-business clients using electronic attendance tracking typically save about 1% of annual payroll. That is a vendor-reported observation, not an independent trial or an OLi HR savings guarantee. It covers attendance tracking benefits broadly, not buddy punching alone.

A peso example you can check

Suppose 20 affected employees each have 15 minutes of paid time incorrectly added per working day. Assume 22 days a month and an illustrative hourly cost of ₱100. This is a scenario, not a wage recommendation or measured Philippine average.

20 × 0.25 hours × 22 days × ₱100 = ₱11,000 a month. Over 12 months, the illustrative exposure is ₱132,000.

If better controls reduced that particular error by 50%, the gross reduction would be ₱5,500 a month, or ₱66,000 a year. The 50% is an assumption to test. Actual savings could be lower, higher or zero.

Subtract the cost before calling it savings

Net benefit equals verified payroll error reduction plus the value of admin time saved, less software and implementation costs. Keep recovered employee pay errors separate from employer savings.

For example, four admin hours saved per month at an internal cost of ₱200 an hour is ₱800 of time value. It becomes a financial benefit only if the business can use that capacity or actually avoid a cost.

Do not add the ADP 1% observation to the 15-minute example. They are different ways to estimate overlapping benefits and combining them could double-count savings.

Measure your own baseline

Review a representative cutoff. Compare original timelogs, approved corrections and payroll. Separate data entry errors, missing records, legitimate paid time and suspected misconduct.

Record the hours spent collecting logs and resolving exceptions. Then compare similar periods after rollout, allowing for changes in headcount and operations. This produces a more useful estimate than borrowing a national headline.

Investigate discrepancies fairly. Do not automatically deduct pay because a device failed or a timelog is missing.

How OLi HR supports better controls

OLi HR provides live face biometric technology, Geofencing and Geotagging. These help verify who is clocking in and the recorded location. Schedules, timelogs, approvals and payroll preparation stay in a connected process.

Identity and location checks can reduce opportunities for proxy clock-ins. They do not prove that every recorded minute was productive or remove the need for review. Explain the process to staff, protect personal data and provide a correction route.

Bring a typical attendance exception to an OLi HR demo. Ask to follow it from clock-in to review and payroll, then estimate value using your own data.

Sources and calculation notes

Sources checked. 5 October 2026. See QuickBooks on buddy punching, its survey methodology and ADP’s attendance tracking article. All peso figures above are illustrative calculations. No Philippine loss estimate or measured OLi savings study is claimed.