If an employee is having issues scanning their fingerprint, consider the following:

Is the employee using the same finger as enrolled? Different fingers won’t work.
Is the finger placement correct? The center peak of the fingerprint needs to be touching the center of the sensor.
Is the finger injured, dirty, or wet?
Is the fingerprint sensor clean and not damaged? See clean sensor.
Is the fingerprint properly in the system?
- Is the finger possibly not enrolled?
- Has the enrollment been deleted? Deletions can occur on other clocks, and pass from clock to clock if you have more than one.
- Has the same number been enrolled by somebody else? This also can happen on another clock.

Use the Finger Test mode, option 7, as an easy way to find out. This will allow you to test the print without punching anyone in or out.

If none of these resolve the problem, try deleting and re-enrolling the finger.

Enrolling a Fingerprint

To enroll a fingerprint:

Press (1) from the Enrollment Menu.
Enter the PIN number for the employee. This is the same number used to identify the employee on the timekeeping web site.
The employee will be asked to touch the fingerprint sensor a total of four times: three to capture the enrollment, and once more for verification.

Saved Fingerprints

Fingerprint enrollment is simple and only needs to be done once per employee. If you own more than one FlexClock Z-Series, the fingerprint enrollments will automatically be copied to all of your other clocks. The timekeeping server stores a backup copy of the fingerprint template files, and they will automatically be restored if you ever replace or clear the memory of your clock.

Getting Good Results

We strongly recommend that immediately before enrollment, each person completely wash and then completely dry his or her hands. It is always important to have good image quality, but even more so for the enrollment process. Poor image quality at enrollment will cause poor matching. A supervisor should ensure that the employees touch the sensor the proper way.

The finger should be touched firmly enough to the sensor so that the skin is flattened and easily read. The center point of the finger should be in the center of the sensor.

The following things should be avoided during enrollment.

Avoid moving the finger.
Avoid using an injured finger.
Avoid using a wet finger. The finger should be towel dried if wet.
Avoid using a dry or dirty finger.

Clean Sensor

The fingerprint lens in the Z-series clock needs to be clean to function properly. A toothbrush and light soap can be used.

Re-Downloading Fingerprints

At any time, you can force the clock to re-download the entire fingerprint database from the server. This is done by selecting option (5) from the menu.

You can choose whether the clock should download prints from other clocks (assuming you have more than one), or whether it should download only prints enrolled on the same clock.

When you select the re-download option, nobody can use the clock until the re-download is complete. It normally only takes a couple of minutes.

Punches Allowed Without Finger Verification

A common concern clients have is that the clock seems to be accepting punches without requiring any fingerprint verification. This is normal if an employee PIN number is entered that has never had a fingerprint enrolled. This is intentional, so that new hires can immediately begin using the clock with minimal inconvenience. Once a fingerprint has been associated with that PIN, however, the clock will always require fingerprint verification in order to accept that PIN in the future.

It is true that employees can simply make up non-existent PIN numbers and clock them in and out, without any verification. But this provides them no benefit. Since they cannot be matched to any employee’s time card, the website shows them as “unprocessed punches”, where they can be viewed by a supervisor and then either posted to a time card manually (if considered valid) or simply deleted.

Z33: Troubleshoot fingerprint