Skip to content

Biometric Attendance

Note

Available since sERP v2.1.

sERP can capture student and staff attendance automatically from biometric devices — fingerprint, facial recognition, or card-based terminals — alongside the manual entry described in Students → Attendance and HR → Staff Attendance & Leave. Access biometric administration from Biometric in the main navigation menu.

Tip

Manually-recorded attendance always takes precedence. If a class or staff member's attendance for a given date has already been recorded manually, biometric capture will not overwrite it.

Integration Options

There are three ways to connect a device, and a school can use any combination of them:

Direct Device Push — the device sends attendance records straight to sERP as they happen, if it has its own internet connectivity and supports a configurable push destination. Gives near real-time updates.

Local Relay Agent — a small program runs on a computer within the school's network, communicates with the device locally, and periodically forwards records to sERP. Recommended when the device isn't (or shouldn't be) directly exposed to the internet.

CSV / Excel Import — punch records exported from the device as a spreadsheet can be uploaded and imported manually (see CSV Import below). This uses the same processing pipeline as the live options.

Managing Devices

  1. Go to Biometric → Devices
  2. Click Register Device and complete: device name, type (Fingerprint, Face, Card, or Other), whether it's used for students, staff, or both, its location, and integration mode
  3. Click Register Device — a one-time Device Key and Secret are shown

Warning

The device secret is shown only once and cannot be retrieved again. If it's lost, use Rotate Secret on that device to generate a new one — the device or relay agent will then need to be reconfigured.

Use the power icon next to a device to disable it (rejecting further punches) without deleting its history, or re-enable it later.

Mapping Device Users

A biometric device identifies people by its own internal user ID, which won't match a student's or staff member's ID in sERP.

  1. Go to Biometric → Mapping
  2. For each unmapped device user ID listed, choose Student or Staff and enter the corresponding sERP ID
  3. Click Map

Once mapped, any punches already received for that device user ID are resolved automatically — no need to wait for new punches.

Settings

Go to Settings → Biometric Attendance to configure:

  • Enable biometric attendance — master on/off switch
  • Automatically resolve punches into attendance records — when on, an automated process (running roughly hourly) turns received punches into attendance and staff attendance records
  • Staff late-arrival cutoff time — a staff member whose first punch of the day is after this time is marked Late instead of Present
  • Notify staff by SMS when marked late — sends an SMS to a staff member's registered mobile number when biometric capture marks them late

CSV Import

  1. Go to Biometric → Import CSV
  2. Choose which device to attribute the punches to (or leave as CSV Import (generic)), and select your file (.xlsx, .xls, .csv, or .ods)
  3. Click Next: Map Columns, then match External User ID, Punch Date/Time, and optionally Type (In/Out) to the corresponding columns
  4. Click Run Import

The results screen shows how many rows imported successfully and how many failed, with a downloadable CSV of failed rows and the reason for each (e.g. a missing user ID or an unrecognised date format). Imported punches are processed by the same automatic resolution described in Settings above.