How to Set Up Biometric Attendance
for Your Factory or Office

Manual attendance registers are a headache. Proxy punching, lost records, and hours spent reconciling excel sheets at month-end — every Indian business with 10+ employees knows this pain. Biometric attendance solves all of it, and CircleWork makes the setup surprisingly straightforward.

In this guide, we'll walk you through setting up biometric attendance with CircleWork — from selecting the right device to watching live punches sync in real time.

What you'll need

• A ZKTeco or eSSL biometric device (fingerprint, face, or card-based)
• Network connectivity at the device location (LAN or WiFi)
• Your CircleWork organization already set up with employees added
• Static IP assigned to the biometric device on your network

Step 1: Set a static IP for your biometric device

Your biometric device needs a fixed IP address so CircleWork can communicate with it consistently. On most ZKTeco devices:

1. Press the Menu button on the device
2. Navigate to Comm → Ethernet
3. Set a static IP (e.g., 192.168.1.201) within your office network range
4. Set the Subnet Mask and Gateway to match your router settings
5. Save and restart the device

Step 2: Configure the device in CircleWork

Log into your CircleWork admin panel and go to Attendance → Devices → Add Device.

1. Select your device model from the dropdown list
2. Enter the IP address you configured in Step 1
3. Enter port 4370 (default for most ZKTeco devices)
4. Click Test Connection — you should see a green confirmation
5. Assign the device to a branch or location
6. Click Save

Step 3: Sync employee fingerprints

If employees are already enrolled in the biometric device, CircleWork can pull the punch logs directly — no re-enrollment needed. If this is a new device, employees must be enrolled.

To sync existing enrollments from the device to CircleWork:

1. Go to Attendance → Devices → [Your Device] → Sync Users
2. CircleWork will pull the user list from the device
3. Map device users to CircleWork employee profiles
4. Save the mapping

Step 4: Enable live sync

This is where the magic happens. CircleWork connects to your biometric device via the ZKTeco SDK and pulls punches in real time.

Go to Attendance → Devices → [Your Device] → Enable Live Sync. Once enabled, every punch on the biometric device will appear in CircleWork within seconds — no manual imports, no CSV uploads, no delays.

Step 5: Configure attendance rules

Before you go live, set up the attendance rules that CircleWork will apply when processing punches:

• Shift assignment — link employees to their shift timings
• Grace period — how many minutes late is acceptable before marking Late
• Minimum working hours — required hours to mark a day as Present
• Overtime threshold — hours after which overtime is calculated
• Missed punch rules — what happens if only one punch (in or out) is recorded

Verifying it works

Ask one employee to punch in and out. Within seconds, you should see their attendance record update in real time on the CircleWork dashboard under Attendance → Today's Live View.

Common issues and fixes

Device not connecting: Check that the device IP is reachable from the CircleWork server. On-premise setups may need port forwarding if CircleWork is accessed remotely.

Punches not syncing: Verify that the ZKTeco Real-Time Monitoring (RTMP) service is enabled on the device. Some older firmware versions may need an update.

Employee not found: The device user ID must be mapped to the correct CircleWork employee. Go to Devices → Sync Users and re-check the mapping.

Conclusion

Setting up biometric attendance with CircleWork takes less than a day for most businesses. Once live, you'll never touch an attendance register again — and your payroll will automatically use verified attendance data every month.

Have a specific device or network setup? Our onboarding team helps you through the setup at no extra cost — just book a demo and mention your device model.