Every time clock makes three decisions for you: when a shift is deemed to start, what happens to the minutes either side, and who may change a record afterwards. Vendors present these as settings. They are your pay policy written in software, and they will be read back to you if anyone ever disputes a week.
Write the rule down before any demonstration
Rounding, grace period, break treatment, overtime threshold. Four lines. Most disputes about hours come from one of those four being applied differently by two supervisors, and a product either encodes your version or leaves it to memory. Writing them down first also makes the demonstrations much shorter, because you are testing rather than browsing.
Rounding and grace, which are not free choices
Rules about how recorded time may be rounded are set by law rather than by preference in many places, and a setting that systematically favours the employer is the kind of thing that turns a small dispute into a large one. Configure to your own rules, document why, and keep the configuration history.
Breaks are where the money is
An automatic deduction for a break nobody took is the single most common source of unpaid working time. If your product deducts automatically, make sure there is a way for somebody to say the break did not happen and for that to be reviewed. Recording breaks as punches is more work and produces a record that answers the question.
Questions people ask about company time clock
Can we round to the nearest quarter hour?
Rules on rounding vary and a practice that consistently favours the employer is the risky one. Check the rules that apply to you rather than the vendor default.
Should breaks be automatic?
Automatic deduction is convenient and creates the commonest unpaid time problem. If you use it, provide a simple way to correct it.
Who should be able to change the rules?
A short named list, with changes logged. A rounding rule quietly altered mid year is very hard to explain afterwards.