What is an attendance sheet, and how is it prepared?

An attendance sheet (puantaj) shows how each day of an employee’s month was spent: worked, paid leave, sick leave, unpaid leave, public holiday, weekly rest day, or absent. It ends with the month’s totals: days worked, hours worked, and overtime. In Turkey, payroll is calculated from these totals, which makes the attendance sheet the input for pay.

Why keep an attendance sheet?

Pay, leave, and overtime are all calculated from days and hours. Under Article 63 of Turkey’s Labor Law No. 4857, working time is generally capped at 45 hours a week. Under Article 41, work beyond 45 hours a week is overtime, except where working time is averaged over a longer period (denkleştirme).

Each overtime hour is paid at 50% above the normal hourly rate. The employee’s consent is required for overtime, and total overtime can’t exceed 270 hours a year.

Article 37 requires the pay slip given to the employee to show overtime pay, weekly rest day pay, and pay for national and public holidays as separate items. To show these items correctly, you need a record of how each day was spent.

How is an attendance sheet prepared?

An attendance sheet is usually built from three sources: the employee’s work schedule (how many hours on which days), the calendar of public and religious holidays, and the dates the employee joined and left. Clock-in and clock-out records from the time and attendance system (PDKS, personel devam kontrol sistemi) are added on top, along with leave and sick leave. Deviations are checked before the month closes, and the sheet goes to the payroll team or the payroll software.

Don’t confuse an attendance sheet with project time entries. The attendance sheet shows each day’s attendance status, while a time entry shows which project or task the hours went to. Comparing the two for the same person and day reveals hours that were under- or over-reported.

Biometric attendance tracking

Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Board issued Principle Decision No. 2026/921, dated April 29, 2026, on processing biometric data to track working hours. The decision was published in the Official Gazette on June 2, 2026.

According to the Personal Data Protection Authority’s announcement, processing biometric data solely to track working hours can’t rely on any of the processing conditions in Article 6 of Law No. 6698 (KVKK, Turkey’s personal data protection law). It also fails the proportionality principle, even when valid explicit consent has been given.

The announcement adds that converting fingerprint or palm scan data into a mathematical code for storage doesn’t stop it from being biometric data. Access control in critical security areas is assessed separately.

Attendance in IWB

In IWB Human Resources, the monthly attendance sheet is built automatically from the work schedule, public holidays (holiday eves count as half days), and employment start and end dates. You only mark the days that went differently, and clearing a mark returns the day to its calculated value.

You paste the time clock (PDKS) export as CSV with employee number, date, hours, and overtime columns, and IWB lists any rows with errors. There’s no direct connection to time clock devices. “Export to payroll” gives you a CSV file with day totals (days worked, paid leave, sick leave, unpaid leave, and absences), hours worked, and overtime.

IWB doesn’t calculate payroll and doesn’t collect biometric data for attendance. An approved leave request isn’t added to the attendance sheet automatically, so you mark leave and sick days on the sheet yourself.

IWB warns you when a work schedule exceeds 45 hours a week. Written overtime consent is kept in Human Resources, and the annual 270-hour counter sits with time entries in Projects.