Every school year brings both pressure and possibility for school business and HR leaders. Across the country, districts this year are balancing tighter budgets, growing compliance demands, and a renewed focus on safety, all while trying to give every hour of staff time the respect (and accuracy) it deserves.

At Touchpoint, we’ve spent the past year in hundreds of conversations with K-12 Payroll Managers, CFOs, Technology leaders, and HR Directors. Whether it’s a small rural district or a coastal unified system, the themes have been remarkably consistent.

Here are five challenges K-12 leaders keep telling us about time, payroll, and the daily effort to keep school operations running smoothly.

1. Manual Payroll Is the Hidden Time Thief

Every district we speak with can point to at least one payroll cycle where staff lost an entire day, sometimes two, just trying to reconcile timecards.

Most school systems still rely on a mix of paper sign-ins, Google Sheets, and manual data entry into leading payroll platforms like Munis or Invision. That manual process is slow, error-prone, and exhausting for district staff.

As one HR Director in Indiana told us:

“By the time payroll hits the system, it’s already a patchwork of corrections. We spend half our week cleaning up what should have been automated.”

The result isn’t just inefficiency; it’s opportunity cost. Teams spend more time fixing timesheets than improving processes or serving staff. Automation isn’t a luxury anymore. It’s the only way to reclaim hours that should be spent supporting people, not spreadsheets.

2. “Who’s in the Building?” Has Become a Safety Question

What started as a payroll problem is now just as much about safety and accountability.

In conversation after conversation, leaders talk about wanting to know, at any given moment, exactly who is in each building. In an emergency, that information can save lives. But most door-badge systems are unreliable for that level of accuracy (employees scan to enter, but not to leave), and paper timesheets provide no real-time visibility.

As one Technology Director in Maine put it:

“When we roll out access control, I want those badges to do more than open doors. I want them to tell us who’s here if something happens.”

That’s why more districts are reframing time tracking as part of their safety infrastructure. When staff use a single badge to both access a building and clock in, administrators get a unified picture of presence, not just hours worked.

Timekeeping isn’t just payroll anymore. It’s peace of mind.

3. DIY Hardware Is Reaching Its Limits

For years, districts have been scrappy, turning Chromebooks, iPads, or legacy Linux time clocks into makeshift kiosks. It worked for a while.

Now those systems are hitting end-of-life. Google is discontinuing Chrome kiosk mode, consumer tablets struggle under 24/7 use, and older devices can’t keep up with modern integrations or security expectations.

One tech leader told us bluntly:

“We built it cheap and it worked for a year. Now it’s duct tape and luck keeping it alive.”

The shift toward purpose-built, commercial-grade devices is accelerating. Districts are tired of “DIY timekeeping” that creates more work for IT and operations. They want something built for K-12, reliable for years, and supported by a real service team, not a warranty email chain.

4. Integration Is the New Bottleneck

If there’s one constant in every district’s tech stack, it’s complexity.

Door access security systems, time tracking software, HR suites, payroll solutions—each tool solves part of the problem, but getting them to talk to each other can feel like its own full-time job. Districts often don’t even know who controls the API they need, let alone what it will cost.

As one IT manager shared:

“We’d love to move away from our old clocks, but I can’t even get [our current vendor] to tell me what they’ll charge for an API key. That’s the bottleneck.”

That lack of transparency frustrates leaders. They’re not asking for miracles, just clear communication about what it takes to make data flow seamlessly from time clock to payroll.

Integration clarity has become a major buying factor. The easier a solution connects to a district’s existing systems, the faster trust and adoption build.

5. Change Management Matters More Than Tech—Especially With Unions

Every district wants to modernize—but every district also has a union conversation waiting in the wings.
That’s why so many implementations start small: transportation, custodial, or food service teams often go first. Once those groups see success, confidence spreads.

As one Chief Business Official in California put it:

“The tech part is easy. The people part takes time—and trust.”

Districts that plan early for communication with their bargaining units move faster and with less friction. Preparing clear language and messaging for those discussions makes all the difference, and we’ve shared a few best practices in our post on addressing union concerns during time-tracking rollouts.

The technology is the easy part. The hard part is alignment—helping everyone see that the goal isn’t surveillance, but fairness, accuracy, and safety.

From Timekeeping to Trust

If 2024 was the post-pandemic year districts finally admitted their systems were too manual, 2025 has been the year they started fixing them.

Across every conversation, we’re seeing the same trajectory:

• Time tracking becoming a strategic function, not a clerical one.
• Devices doubling as both payroll tools and safety check-ins.
• Administrators reframing technology as a way to build trust with staff, not just track hours.

Districts don’t need another system. They need one that fits the way schools actually work—simple for staff, effortless for IT, and accurate for payroll from day one.

At Touchpoint, that’s exactly what we build: purpose-built time collection technology designed exclusively for K-12.

If any of these challenges sound familiar, it might be time to see what’s possible.

👉Schedule a quick conversation with our team

... and let’s talk about what your next generation of time tracking could look like.

It's about time.