A demo usually follows the same script: the vendor shares a screen, shows a polished picture built from sample data, and moves on to pricing. A month later it turns out the most important detail was never asked about. To get real value from an attendance system demo, twelve questions are enough - and knowing why each one matters is more important still. Print the list below and take it with you; the order is not accidental either.
1. How many minutes until a record appears centrally?
"We work in real time" tells you nothing. Ask for a number and verify it during the demo: create a record and watch the central screen at the same moment.
The question matters most for shift-based and multi-site companies, where coverage decisions are made during the day.
2. What is lateness calculated against?
The answer should be "against the schedule". If it is "against 09:00", your shift teams will look late every single day.
Follow-up: is the reason for lateness recorded, and is it grouped into categories in the report?
3. How many schedule types are supported?
A company usually runs at least three: fixed, shift and flexible. If the system does not support them all, one group of employees stays outside the reporting.
Ask the vendor to build one of your own schedules during the demo - a real one, not a sample.
4. Are leave and time off in the same system?
This question determines your month-end workload. If leave lives elsewhere, "did not attend" lines will be corrected by hand.
Follow-up: are pending requests visible while a schedule is being built?
5. How is the timesheet produced?
There are two possible answers: the system forms it from existing records, or you fill it in.
The difference is practical. In the first case the human job is checking; in the second it is copying - and copying is the old process in new clothing. We describe how the timesheet is formed on the timesheet automation page.
6. What do the Excel and PDF exports look like?
Exports must exist, because finance and the archive sit outside the system. But the real question goes one step deeper: is a filtered export possible?
A system that dumps a whole month into one file is not useful - the recipient has to filter it again.
7. How are sites handled?
The right answer is "a site is a filter". If each site means a separate account or a separate file, the consolidation work remains.
Follow-up: can a site manager's field of view be restricted?
8. Which notification capabilities exist specifically?
Care is warranted here. "We have notifications" is not an answer - for which event, to whom, and included in which plan?
Some capabilities may be enabled separately. Get the answer in writing; a verbal promise is not enough on this subject.
9. What is the mobile experience?
There are two distinct questions and they must not be blurred: mobile recording for employees and mobile visibility for managers.
If you have field teams, the first is critical. If managers are often away from the office, the second is.
10. What hardware is required?
What does opening a new site need - a device, installation, a network point, or simply one record? The answer to this defines your three-year cost.
Follow-up: what should an employee do when a device fails? Without a fallback, every fault becomes manual work. We cover hardware on the does QR attendance need extra hardware page.
11. How do history and corrections work?
Ask three things: is it visible when and by whom a record was created; can an employee request a correction; is the original entry retained after a correction?
The last one matters. If a correction erases the original, the history cannot serve as evidence in a dispute.
12. How are rollout and support organised?
The final question is organisational rather than technical: who performs the initial setup, is data migration included, what hours does support work, and what is the response time?
In practice most projects fail not from missing features but from a rollout that was never finished.
Why the questions are in this order
The list is not arranged at random. The first five concern daily work, the next four concern scaling, and the last three concern reliability.
If a serious gap appears in the first five, there is no need to ask the rest - the system will not make your daily work lighter.
What to do during the demo
| Step | Why |
|---|---|
| Have them build your schedule | A prepared sample always works |
| Create a live record | To measure the visibility delay |
| Test one site filter | To see the field of view |
| Run one export | To see the format with your own eyes |
Those four steps take fifteen minutes and tell you far more than the slides.
How to record the answers
After three vendor meetings the answers blur together. Keep a simple table: twelve rows, one column per vendor.
Write answers as short sentences rather than yes or no. "Yes" answers cannot be compared, because everyone means something different by them.
What is not worth asking
Some questions consume demo time and do not affect the decision: interface colours, the number of indicators, how many report templates exist.
They look interesting in the first month and go unused afterwards. Attention is better spent on the work that repeats every day.
A practical example
A company with two sites ran demos with three vendors. The first two meetings were feature presentations and the company could not choose - both looked strong.
Before the third meeting the team printed the twelve questions and took them along. The result was telling: at questions two and three a serious difference appeared between two vendors - one did not support schedule types at all.
The company then invited the first two vendors back and asked the same questions. The decision took a week. We collected the selection criteria on the choosing employee attendance software page.
How to decide afterwards
After the twelve questions, three things are needed: which vendor fully satisfies the first five; what the three-year cost difference is; how long the rollout takes.
With all three written down, the decision usually makes itself. We compare the technologies on the QR, card and biometrics comparison page.
Next step
Copy these twelve questions onto one page and take it to your next demo. Ask them in order - the picture usually becomes clear before you reach the fifth.
QRGate keeps attendance, lateness, leave, time off and the timesheet in one context. See what QRGate can do or calculate the price.
