FingerTec Time Attendance TA200 Plus Color Fingerprint + RFID Time Clock

We decided to install a time clock at our office because we were hiring more hourly people (we had mostly salary before) and needed a good way to keep track of it. Management also wanted to be able to track the time of the salaried folks. I researched many products and landed on the Fingertec TA200+ as it had all the features I wanted, but most importantly I saw other reviews of great support. As an IT guy by trade, support is VERY important to me. No IT engineer can be an expert at everything, so it's good to have people that back up their product. The features of this time clock are not a short list, but the ones that are important to me are: Ease of use, Low cost of operation (nothing to buy, everyone already has fingers!), ability to have multiple schedules (for instance, my hourly people will calculate overtime, but the salaried folks just show up as hour worked), easy to read time cards (we've replaced our old manual system with a much faster version as their software prints out a nice time card and highlights late-ins and early-outs in red), and great support. I can't say it enough, the guys that have helped me in support at Fingertec have been great (Hershey, Ben, Roshan) and have always solved my problem quickly and efficiently. The TCMS (time clock management) software takes a little bit of getting used to, even after reading the manual, but the support team helped me through it very quickly. It will need some tweaking "out of the box" to get it where you want it, but Fingertec USA support uses a remote assistance program that let's them easily take control of your computer and massage the software into submission for your needs. They use a TeamViewer based system that is safe and secure, doesn't install any unnecessary software on your computer, and is completely removed when they're done their session. No chance of someone coming into your system later. We're now in our second payroll period with the time clock and everything is working very smoothly. Another feature that isn't widely advertised is if you install the TCMS application on a server you can install something called TCMS Viewer that let's your employees view a web page of their punches so they can keep track of their time and make sure they're not going over. The only issue we noticed is that you need to reboot the time clock right before you begin to enroll employee fingerprints. It just might have something to do with available memory in the device. You'll only need to do this when you're enrolling someone for the first time so it's not an inconvenience. For normal everyday operation, reboots do not seem to be necessary. Right now the system has been running for just over 3 weeks with no issues and no reboots.Update 12/18/12: We've been using this time clock for 8 months now and it's still working perfectly with no major issues. In fact, it works better now than it did when we first got it thanks to a firmware update. We did have a little hiccup at Daylight Savings time, but the firmware updated that was provided easily and for free from FingerTec Support fixed it right up. It also seemed to resolve the issue of having to reboot the clock right before enrolling fingerprints. FingerTec's support is still 100% spot on where it needs to be. Buy this time clock with confidence!

Oftentimes, it doesn't read our employees fingerprints. If a person has clearly defined fingerprints, it'll usually work, but if your fingerprints are not clearly defined or if they have lines running across, the machine will not pick them up. Half of the people here have defined fingerprints, the other half don't. Today, the machine was hanging up and wouldn't even register any fingerprints. It was unresponsive and 95% of the hard disk space was available, which means that the data it was storing didn't have anything to do with it. We deleted an employee's fingerprints and re-entered them, but after deleting the fingerprints from the Administrator menu, we didn't do anything right away, so after a while the screen is supposed to exit Admin mode and go to the standard screen. It didn't do that, it went to an all blue screen with just some menu functions on the bottom and no buttons worked. It was stuck in that screen. We had to plug and unplug the machine to get it working again. We expect better for a $550 machine. Also, the machine looks and feels a bit cheap. Some of the options are counterintuitive. It took us a while to figure out how to delete an employee's fingerprints only while maintaining the user. We finally discovered that you have to select "delete user" and then it gives you that option. Putting that option under delete user doesn't make sense because you wouldn't think to go in there since you are thinking that option is to delete the whole user account. Also, the manufacturer should use higher quality materials and fingerprint recording software and scanner for this price. Not very happy with this device. Hopefully they will improve it or another similarly priced higher quality device will be put out on the market.

I purchased this unit to track attendance at a youth recreational center. I was originally considering card swipe systems, but was won over by the cost saving and simplicity of operation. The TA200+ costs less than a decent card printer alone, and fingerprint enrollment is considerably less time consuming than producing (and inevitably, reproducing) plastic ID cards for our young members. Fairly extensive pre-purchase discussions with FingerTec sales and technical service reps gave me confidence that the product would meet our needs and that manufacturer could back us up with solid support.The accompanying software definitely presents a learning curve, but there's 6 months of free telephone support and the technical reps are available, knowledgeable and patient. The initial process of customizing settings looked like a daunting task. It ended up being pretty simple. Through the FingerTec website, you can give their reps remote access to your computer. I described our needs to a rep, he made the adjustments and we tested them together. I've made a lot of calls for support. All of them ended with questions answered, problems solved, and no loose ends.Bottom line, I'm very pleased with this purchase. (One note: Amazon shows a $2000 list price. I don't know where they got that from. You can buy the fingerprint reader and software for $600 at FingerTecusa.com.)

The clock itself is great but the software is a nightmare!! We've been using this time clock for 2yrs and I've hated every day of it. I'm actively looking for another time clock. The software must be synchronized with the time clock each time. It's not user friendly AT ALL. Going back and manually adjusting time entries is very tedious and time consuming. Also, getting ready for DOL audits is painful. For example, you can't print out one individual employee's hours for a pay period. You have to pull EVERY employee's time card in order to get just one. What a pain in the @ss!!I completely regret buying this thing. Other than the software, it works great. But what good is a Ferrari without the engine that runs it.