How to choose workforce management software: 8 weighted criteria

What is the best workforce management software?

There is no single best workforce management software for everyone; the best one for your business is the one that scores highest with your weights and fails none of the knock-out criteria. A 40-person crew on construction sites and a 40-person call centre in one building should not pick the same product: the first needs offline recording and location checks, the second needs shift rules and break control.

When you read “best X software” lists, check who wrote the list. A large share of such lists is published on a software vendor’s own site; that does not make them wrong, but the ranking criteria are often not stated. You cannot verify a ranking whose criteria are not written down. That is why this page names no products; it gives the criteria, the weights and how to test each one — so you can check the claims of any list you read.

Which criteria matter when choosing workforce software?

The eight criteria below cover every question that decides whether a time and attendance program does its job. The weights out of 100 are a starting suggestion; how to shift them for your type of business follows in the next section.

Weights are an example and add up to 100. Change them for your business; keep the total at 100 so different quotes are compared on the same scale.

How do you calculate a weighted score?

Score each criterion from 0 to 5, divide by 5, multiply by the criterion’s weight and add up; the result is a score out of 100. Score the test result, not the vendor’s word: a feature that is not shown on screen gets 0.

Example: two hypothetical products (A and B) scored with the weights above.

Hypothetical example; it does not represent a real product. Points = score ÷ 5 × weight.

The total does not decide on its own. Knock-out criteria come before the score: a product that proposes biometrics for attendance, does not let you export your data or will not put its price in writing leaves the list whatever its total. Knock-out criteria are not weighted, because they cannot be “a little bit missing”.

Which criteria matter most for your type of business?

The same eight criteria apply to every business, but the way people work sets the weights. The table shows which way to shift the weight and the most critical question for each type.

• Field and construction. A card terminal is useless on site; the record must come from the employee’s phone within the workplace’s defined area. Where coverage is poor, the record should be stored on the phone, sent when a connection returns and flagged to the manager. Location should be taken only at clock-in and clock-out; more in the field staff tracking guide.
• Shift-based manufacturing. The rules engine matters more than the recording method: the 7.5-hour night limit in shift work, 45 hours a week and the 270-hour yearly overtime cap. A system that does not warn while you plan shows the error at month end, when it is too late. See how to create a shift schedule.
• Retail chains. The real risk is access: no branch manager should see the whole company’s HR data. Adding a branch, moving an employee between branches and reporting holiday work separately should be easy.
• Office and remote. No recording hardware is needed; what matters is the leave request, the approval flow and employees seeing their own balance. Taking a remote worker’s home location is rarely proportionate to the purpose.

What should you ask the vendor?

Ask every vendor the questions below in the same order and in writing; a verbal answer does not make it into the contract. Next to each question is what a good answer looks like.

• Is the price published? Good answer: the per-person or package price is on a public page with its tiers. If “a quote just for you” is the only answer, know that two similar businesses may pay different prices.
• Per person, per package or per module? Per-person pricing grows in a straight line with the team; package pricing jumps at the package limit; module pricing makes the base package look cheap. Ask for a figure based on your headcount 12 months from now.
• Are set-up, training and hardware included? Each should be its own line with an amount. A quote that says “free set-up” may still bill terminals and cards separately.
• Where is the data hosted? The server’s country and hosting provider should be in writing. Transferring personal data abroad is subject to conditions in the law (Law 6698 art. 9); if it is hosted abroad, ask on what basis it is transferred.
• Is there a data processing agreement? The vendor processes your data on your behalf, so it is a data processor (Law 6698 art. 3). As data controller, the employer is jointly liable with the processor for data security measures (Law 6698 art. 12/2); you need an agreement that sets out those measures.
• What happens to my data when the contract ends? Good answer: you get all data in an open format (CSV/Excel), then the vendor deletes it within a set period and confirms in writing. Personal data should not be kept longer than needed for its purpose (Law 6698 art. 4/2-d).
• Are biometrics used? Fingerprint, face recognition, iris or retina should not be used for attendance; the KVKK Board’s principle decision 2026/921 held this unlawful even with explicit consent. Attaching a photo to the record and matching a face are not the same thing; ask which one is done.
• What happens without a connection? Is the record stored on the device with its time and sent later, and can the manager tell it apart?
• How does it get to payroll? Does “payroll module” mean producing the official payroll, or preparing data for the accountant? Show the file format to your accountant.
• How is support provided? Channel (phone, email, in-app), hours and response time should be in writing. “Unlimited support” cannot be measured.
• Do corrections leave a trail? When a clock-in is changed later, the old value, who changed it and when should be kept; in a dispute the record’s credibility depends on it.

Which warning signs mean you should walk away?

Any one of the signs below is a reason to drop a product, or at least to ask for a written explanation.

• Proposing fingerprint or face recognition for attendance. After principle decision 2026/921, that is selling you a legal risk.
• Not publishing the price anywhere. If the price is only given in a meeting, you cannot compare and cannot know what yearly increases depend on.
• An unclear set-up fee. “It depends on the installation” means the amount will be set after you sign.
• Data that cannot be exported, or only as PDF. A PDF can be read but not loaded into another system; the exit is closed.
• Promoting all-day continuous location tracking. Location collection that spills outside working hours or has no written purpose runs against the proportionality principle and leaves the liability with you.
• Not allowing real data during the trial. A system shown only with sample data has never been tested against your shift rules.
• Long commitments and heavy exit fees. Whether software works is clear in the first month; a contract that makes leaving expensive turns that into your risk.
• Unsourced claims such as “fully compliant with the law”. If a question about which article is applied and how gets no answer, the claim has not been measured.

How do you calculate total cost of ownership?

Total cost of ownership is what the software costs you over three years: one-off items (hardware, set-up) plus recurring items (subscription or maintenance, replacement cards, repairs). The monthly price is only part of that total. The example below compares two approaches for a hypothetical 25-person business with a single entrance.

ALL AMOUNTS ARE HYPOTHETICAL, not market prices; they only illustrate the method. Excluding VAT. Put the figures from your own quotes in the same rows.

In this example the terminal-based system comes out cheaper — which shows how much the result depends on the assumptions. If the same 25 people were spread over three branches, A would need four terminals instead of two and the three-year total would be ₺75,250; if some staff work in the field, the terminal cannot record them at all. Conversely, for a business in one building that already owns a terminal, A gets even cheaper.

The item missing from the table, and often the largest, is manager time: completing missing records at month end, separating overtime by hand, retyping the timesheet for the accountant. Do not estimate it; measure it during the trial: how many hours did one month’s timesheet take with your old method, and how many with the new system? Multiply the difference by the manager’s hourly cost and add it to the table.

What should you measure during the free trial?

A trial is not a demo, it is a measurement period. A business that completes the list below in two weeks knows which system fits it from its own data, not from the vendor’s word. Do not switch off your old method during this time; put the two results side by side.

Week one: recording and ease of use

• Have at least one person from each group (office, field, night shift) clock in and out for real; test the method for employees without a phone.
• Time how many seconds one clock-in takes from start to finish.
• Cut the connection and clock in; see how the record appears once the connection returns.
• Fix a forgotten clock-out: how many steps does it take, and are the old value and the person who changed it kept?
• Check with a manager that they see only their own team.
• Give staff the privacy notice and note the questions that come back.

Week two: rules, timesheet and exit

• Deliberately enter a shift that breaks a rule (over 11 hours a day, no break, over 7.5 hours at night) and record how the system reacts.
• Create a week of more than 45 hours; check whether the overtime goes into its own band.
• Create and approve a leave request; see it reach the balance and the timesheet.
• Compare the two-week timesheet with your old method; classify every difference as “rule or record”.
• Send the timesheet to your payroll accountant and ask whether they can use the format.
• Export all the data and open the file in a spreadsheet.

Enter the result of each item under the matching criterion in the scoring table. A trial in which you could not complete the checklist has not produced enough data for a decision; ask for an extension or ask the vendor to show the remaining items on screen.

Who is MedyAjans Workforce Management right for, and who not?

Described with the same criteria: clock-in and clock-out are taken from the phone by location or QR code, or by PIN on a shared tablet at the door; there is no fingerprint or face recognition (if the company wants, a photo is attached to the record, not matched). If there is no connection on site, the record is stored on the phone and sent later. The timesheet is prepared automatically and an approved month is locked; data exports as CSV, PDF and Excel. The price is published: from ₺59 per person per month (1–50 employee tier, excluding VAT; ₺1,475/month for 25 people), set-up is free and there is a 30-day free trial. There are cases where it is not the right fit: we have no native app downloaded from an app store (the system runs as a PWA added to the home screen from the browser); the system does not produce the official payroll, it gives your accountant a payroll input package; connecting the card terminals you already own is not part of the standard set-up. We have no published customer reviews or ratings yet, so we suggest you test us with the list above, the comparison table and your own data. Details are on the product page.

For recording methods, the legal limits of GPS and contract clauses see the workforce software guide; for the biometric decision in detail see the biometric attendance ban guide.

This guide is for information only and is not legal or payroll advice.