What Is Buddy Punching And How To Prevent It?

Most businesses want a friendly workplace where colleagues help one another. But that same trust can backfire when employees start clocking in or out for each other. This is called buddy punching (or buddy clocking) and it is one of the most common forms of time and attendance fraud.

According to the American Payroll Association, time theft (including practices like buddy punching) affects a large majority of companies and can cost businesses up to 7% of annual payroll.

Even if your organisation is not seeing obvious abuse, small time leaks add up fast. Over a year, a few “favours” at the time clock can quietly turn into a major drain on profit, morale, and trust.

This guide explains what buddy punching is, why it matters, and practical ways to stop it with a mix of policies, culture, and modern attendance tools.

Key Takeaways

• Buddy punching happens when one employee clocks in or out for another, creating time theft and payroll fraud.
• Even modest levels of time theft can silently push payroll costs up by several percentage points.
• The best buddy punching prevention strategy combines a clear policy, employee education, and secure time-tracking technology.
• Modern systems using biometrics, GPS time tracking, and geofencing can make buddy punching almost impossible.
• If buddy punching is already showing up in timesheets or morale, now is the right time to strengthen your time and attendance system.

What is buddy punching?

Buddy punching is when one employee clocks in or out on behalf of another employee who is not actually present at work. It is usually done to cover late arrivals, early departures, long breaks, or even full missed shifts.

Common examples include:

• An employee running late asks a friend to clock them in on time.
• Someone leaves 30 minutes early and requests a colleague to clock them out at the scheduled time.
• A worker skips a shift entirely but still gets paid because a coworker clocks them in and out.

At first, this can look like a harmless favour between colleagues. In reality, it is time theft that leads to employees being paid for hours they did not work and creates inaccurate records for payroll and compliance.

How Common Is Buddy Punching?

Buddy punching is much more common than most managers expect.

A 2017 study found that 16% of employees admitted to buddy punching, costing an estimated $373 million in unworked wages each year (TSheets study, summarised by Lathem) 

Another analysis drawing on Nucleus Research data reported that 74% of employers experience payroll losses related to buddy punching, averaging 2.2% of gross payroll 

These numbers make one thing clear: if you still rely on manual timesheets, swipe cards, or PIN-based clocks, buddy punching is likely happening in your organisation, even if you have not caught it yet.

If these patterns sound familiar and you want to see how automated attendance can work for contract or multi-site staff, you can schedule demo and explore how Truein handles buddy punching prevention in real-world setups.

Why Buddy Punching Is A Problem?

Buddy punching is not just a small payroll issue. Over time, it changes how people behave and how the organisation functions.

Hidden Cost To Payroll

Time theft seems minor when you look at a single incident, just a few minutes here or there. But when you zoom out to an entire workforce, the numbers become serious.

The American Payroll Association estimates that the average employee can steal around 4 hours per week, roughly six weeks per year.

Even if only a fraction of that is driven by buddy punching, the annual cost per employee is significant and compounds across teams, locations, and contractors.

Unfair Workloads And Low Morale

When frequent absentees still show perfect attendance in the system, others are forced to pick up their work. Over time, honest employees notice that:

• Some colleagues rarely arrive on time but never get marked late.
• Certain team members are “missing” during busy periods but still get full hours.

This leads to resentment, frustration, and disengagement. High-performing employees may leave, while others start copying the behaviour to “even things out.”

Compliance And Legal Risk

Many labour regulations require employers to maintain accurate time and attendance records. If buddy punching leads to underpaid overtime or falsified timesheets, the organisation can face:

• Back pay claims
• Fines from labour authorities
• Audit issues and reputational damage

Even if the immediate fault lies with the employees, regulators still expect employers to have reasonable controls in place.

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How To Detect Buddy Punching?

Before you can stop buddy punching, you need to see where and how it occurs. Warning signs include:

• Timecards that always show perfect start times (for example, 9:00 am on the dot) for certain employees, across many days.
• Frequent corrections and manual edits on the same employees’ timesheets.
• Staff who are “present” in the system but regularly missing from the floor or job site.
• Multiple employees using the same badge, card, or PIN at a shared time clock.
• Complaints from supervisors or honest colleagues about others “never being around” despite full hours recorded.

Spot checks, manager feedback, and occasional reviews of CCTV (where used) can help validate whether these patterns are tied to buddy punching or other forms of time theft.

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How To Prevent Buddy Punching?

The most effective prevention approach combines policy, culture, and technology. Think of it as three layers that reinforce one another.

1. Set A Clear Buddy Punching Policy

Start by defining buddy punching clearly in your attendance policy:

• Describe what it is with plain examples.
• State that it is treated as time theft and falsification of records.
• Outline consequences (warnings, suspension, termination) for those who engage in it.

Make sure this policy is covered during onboarding and periodically revisited in team meetings. When expectations are explicit, it becomes easier to take action consistently.

2. Educate Employees On The Real Impact

Many employees who participate in buddy punching think of it as harmless help. Training should explain:

• How relatively small amounts of stolen time roll up into large annual costs.
• How this affects staffing decisions, pay rises, and bonuses in the long term.
• How it undermines trust in the team and makes workloads unfair.

Reinforce that accurate time records protect honest employees and keep pay aligned with real work.

If you want to pair training with a strong, tech-backed policy, you can schedule demo to see how Truein supports organisations with policy, alerts, and automated attendance controls.

3. Use Secure Time Tracking Technology

Policy and education reduce the temptation to cheat, but technology makes it difficult to succeed even if someone tries.

Key tools include:

Biometric Time Clocks

Biometric systems use fingerprint or facial recognition to verify the person at the time clock. Because biometric data is tied to the individual, it is much harder to share credentials.

Industry summaries highlight that biometric systems are one of the main reasons many employers are able to reduce time theft in environments with large hourly workforces.

Touchless face recognition is especially useful in high-footfall areas, factories, and field environments where hygiene and speed matter.

GPS Time Tracking And Geofencing

For field and multi-site teams, wall-mounted devices are not always practical. In these environments, GPS time tracking and geofencing help confirm that staff are at the right place when they clock in.

• GPS-based time tracking logs the coordinates of each punch.
• Geofencing restricts clock-ins to a virtual boundary around the worksite, blocking attempts from home or distant locations.

Together, biometrics and geofencing provide strong protection against buddy punching. It becomes almost impossible for someone to clock in for another person who is not physically on site.

How Truein Helps Prevent Buddy Punching

Traditional systems such as swipe cards, PIN pads, and manual timesheets make it easy for buddy punching to stay hidden. Truein is built to close those gaps, especially for contract, hourly, and multi-site workforces.

Geofenced Face Recognition Attendance

Truein combines AI-powered face recognition with GPS-based geofencing:

• Employees can clock in only from approved locations, defined on a map with a configurable radius.
• Each attendance event is verified by face recognition, which makes credential sharing ineffective.
• Offline mode ensures attendance gets captured even when network coverage is patchy, with automatic sync later.

Policy-Driven Time And Attendance

Truein supports rich policies for:

• Late marks, early exits, and minimum working hours
• Overtime rules and weekly-offs
• Contractor-wise and location-wise attendance rules

This means buddy punching cannot be disguised as harmless rounding. The system flags late arrivals, missing hours, and out-of-zone attempts.

Central Visibility For Multi-Site Teams

For businesses spread across many sites or contractors:

• Central dashboards show real-time presence by site and contractor.
• Contractor supervisors see only their staff, while central HR sees everything.
• Exports and integrations create payroll-ready data with minimal manual edits.

If buddy punching, proxy attendance, or unreliable timesheets are already costing you money or peace of mind, you can schedule a demo to see how Truein can bring transparent, tamper-resistant attendance tracking to your workforce.

Conclusion

Buddy punching may start as a favour between colleagues, but at scale, it becomes a serious time and attendance problem. It inflates payroll, damages trust, and creates compliance risk if left unchecked.

The solution is not just stricter rules. It is a combination of clear policy, culture, and smarter technology. With biometric time clocks, GPS time tracking, and geofencing, organisations can dramatically reduce opportunities for buddy punching while keeping the process simple for employees.

FAQs

What Is Buddy Punching?
Buddy punching is the act of one employee clocking in or out for another employee who is not actually present. It usually happens to cover late arrivals, early exits, or missed shifts.

Why Is Buddy Punching Considered Time Theft?
Buddy punching is considered time theft because the company pays wages for hours that were never worked. It inflates payroll costs and creates inaccurate attendance records that affect scheduling, overtime, and compliance.

Is Buddy Punching Illegal?
Buddy punching is treated as fraudulent behaviour in many countries because it falsifies time records. It can expose both employees and employers to disciplinary action, back-pay claims, and penalties under labour laws that require accurate tracking of hours worked.

How Can Employers Detect Buddy Punching?
Employers detect buddy punching by reviewing timecards for patterns like identical clock-in times, frequent manual edits, or “present” employees who are not seen on site. They also use audits, supervisor feedback, CCTV near time clocks, and reports from time and attendance software.

How Can Companies Stop Buddy Punching?
Companies stop buddy punching by setting a clear zero-tolerance policy, educating staff on the impact of time theft, and using secure tools like biometric time clocks, GPS tracking, and geofencing. These measures make it hard to share credentials and easy to spot suspicious punches.

Which Businesses Are Most At Risk Of Buddy Punching?
Businesses with many hourly or shift workers and shared time clocks are most at risk. Retail, hospitality, manufacturing, construction, security, logistics, facility management, and healthcare often see higher levels of buddy punching if they still rely on manual or PIN-based systems.

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