Guides

Signs You Need to Replace Your Time & Attendance Machine

A terminal rarely dies outright. It degrades until people work around it — and that is the expensive stage.

26 May 2026 · 5 min read

The tell is behavioural, not technical. When supervisors start keeping a paper list "just in case", the device has already failed even if it still powers on.

Six signals worth acting on

Failed reads have crept above roughly one in twenty attempts
A queue forms at shift change that did not used to form
The device is at or near its user or log capacity
HR is manually correcting more than a handful of punches a week
Firmware is no longer updated by the manufacturer
It cannot talk to modern software — no ADMS, no API, export by USB only

Repair or replace?

A cracked sensor or a dead power supply is worth repairing on a device under four years old. A worn optical sensor on a five-year-old entry-level unit is not — the repair is half the price of a new terminal that reads faster and holds four times the users.