Guide · Troubleshooting

Biometric attendance machine showing offline? Check these eleven things, in this order

A terminal that shows offline in cloud attendance software is almost never broken. In roughly nine cases out of ten the cause is a cable, a setting, or a serial number typed wrong on the day it was installed, and it can be found from the device's own screen in a few minutes. This is the checklist our support team runs with a caller, in the order that finds the fault fastest. Start at the top; do not skip to the one you suspect.

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A biometric machine shows offline when the cloud software has not heard from it recently; AionHRMS, for example, flags a terminal offline after ten minutes without contact. Check, in order: power and the adapter; the network cable or Wi-Fi and whether the device has an IP address; whether the LAN allows outbound internet on the server's port; the domain-name toggle and the server address and port on the ADMS or Cloud Server screen; whether the serial number registered in the software matches the device character for character; whether the device is still pointed at a previous vendor's server; the device's date, time and time zone; a firmware hang cleared by a restart; and finally the hardware. Punches made while the terminal was offline are stored on it and upload once it reconnects.

10 minutes

of silence before AionHRMS marks a terminal offline; a brief blip does not trip it

9 of 10

cases are power, network or a setting, all fixable from the device screen

0 punches lost

the terminal stores punches while offline and uploads them on reconnection

1 photo

of the Comm / ADMS screen shortens any support call by half

First, understand what "offline" means

The software is not testing the device; it is reporting silence. A terminal with ADMS or a Realtime push enabled contacts the server every few seconds. The software marks it online on the first contact and offline when the contacts stop for long enough. In AionHRMS that threshold is ten minutes, so a thirty-second router restart never shows, and a terminal that has been offline for an hour has genuinely not spoken for an hour.

Offline does not mean punches are being lost. The terminal keeps verifying people and stores each punch in its memory. When it reconnects it uploads the backlog. Reassure the site first; then find the fault.
Online with missing punches is a different problem, usually the clock or the employee ID, covered at the end of this page.
If every terminal at a site went offline at the same minute, it is the site's internet or power, not the devices. If one terminal at a site is offline and its neighbours are fine, it is that device's cable, IP or settings.

1 to 3: power, cable, IP address

The boring causes are the common ones, and each takes thirty seconds to rule out from the device's home screen.

1. Power. Is the screen on? Many sites run terminals from a small adapter on a shared socket that a cleaner unplugs or a surge trips. Check the adapter is warm and the LED is lit. If the screen is on but dim or rebooting, the adapter is failing; replace it before doing anything else.
2. Cable or Wi-Fi. For wired units, check the link light on the socket and reseat both ends. For Wi-Fi units, open Menu, Comm, Wi-Fi and confirm it is connected to the right network, not a guest network with a captive portal. A terminal moved to a different wall often ends up on a dead port.
3. IP address. Menu, Comm, Ethernet (or Wi-Fi) shows the device's IP. 0.0.0.0 or 169.254.x.x means it did not get one: DHCP is off on the device but nobody assigned a static, or the switch port is dead. A fixed IP that another device now uses (a printer, a new laptop) causes a conflict that looks like random dropouts.

4 to 5: can the device reach the internet at all?

The terminal needs ordinary outbound internet on the port the software gave you. Offices that have recently changed ISP, router, firewall or Wi-Fi password are where these two live.

4. Outbound port blocked. A new firewall or a stricter ISP router sometimes allows only web ports out. Ask whoever manages the network to allow outbound traffic to the server address and port. Nothing inbound is required. A quick test: connect a laptop to the same switch port and open the server address in a browser; if the laptop cannot reach it, the terminal cannot either.
5. Proxy or DNS. If Enable Proxy Server is on and the proxy is gone, the device cannot reach anything. Turn it off unless IT says otherwise. If the server address is a hostname and the network's DNS is broken, the device cannot resolve it; the laptop test above reveals this, because the browser fails the same way.

6 to 8: the settings on the ADMS screen

Open Menu, Comm, then ADMS, Cloud Server Setting or Server Settings, and photograph the screen before changing anything. Three fields account for most setting faults.

6. Domain-name toggle. Enable Domain Name must be on for a hostname and off for a bare IP. Set the wrong way, the device tries to treat one as the other and never connects. Installers sometimes copy this setting from a previous site.
7. Address or port typed wrong. A trailing space, a missing digit in the port, http:// pasted into the address field, the port typed after the address with a colon instead of in its own field. Retype both from the details your vendor gave you, not from memory.
8. Still pointed at the old server. A terminal that was on eSSL Cloud, a dealer's hosted server or a previous vendor may have been reset or replaced under warranty and come back with the old address. If the screen shows an address you do not recognise, that is where your punches are going. Replace it with yours.

9: the serial number does not match

This is the cause that fools people, because the terminal reports connected on its own screen. The device identifies itself by serial number in every message. If the serial registered in the cloud software differs from the device's actual serial by even one character, the server answers the device, so the device is happy, but attaches nothing to your account, so the software shows offline or, worse, never shows the device at all.

Read the serial from the Device Info screen, not from the box or the invoice. Boards get swapped under warranty; the sticker may be the old one.
Compare with the registered serial character by character: O versus 0, I versus 1, a trailing space, a missing prefix.
If a terminal was replaced by the dealer, the new unit has a new serial. Register it; the old registration stays offline forever.

10 to 11: clock, firmware, hardware

The last three are rarer and are the ones where the device's own screen stops helping.

10. Date, time and time zone. A wrong clock does not itself cause offline, but a device that has been off the network for months can hold a date so far out that the server rejects its records, and punches then appear to vanish while the device looks connected. Set the time zone to India (+05:30) and the date and time on the device, and set them again after any long power cut, because a flat backup battery loses the clock.
11. Firmware hang. A terminal that has been running for months can stop its network task while the screen still works. Restart it from the menu or by power. If it comes back online and drops again within days, ask the dealer whether a firmware update exists for that model; if it drops within hours, the network board is failing and the unit needs service.
Hardware. A cracked Ethernet socket, a failing adapter, a swollen battery, a unit that reboots on its own. These are dealer visits. Everything above this line is a phone call.

Online, but punches are missing: a different checklist

If the software shows the terminal online and someone's punch did not appear, the connection is fine and the problem is in the record itself.

The person's user ID on the terminal does not match the ID on their employee record, so the punch arrived and was attributed to nobody, or to the wrong person. Check the ID on the device (Menu, User Mgt) against the record.
The device clock is wrong, so the punch is sitting on the wrong day or at the wrong hour. Look at the previous and next day before assuming it was lost.
The person's device access was blocked, deliberately or by an exit date. A blocked person is refused at the terminal and the refusal is logged; that is working as designed.
The punch is genuinely still on the device because the terminal was offline at that moment and has since reconnected but not finished uploading. Give it a few minutes; large backlogs take time.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a biometric machine have to be silent before it shows offline?

It depends on the software. AionHRMS marks a terminal offline after ten minutes without contact and back online on its next handshake or poll, so a router restart does not show but a real outage does. Other products use different thresholds; ask your vendor what theirs is before you send a technician to a device that reconnected on its own.

Are punches lost while the biometric machine is offline?

No. The terminal keeps verifying people and stores each punch in its own memory; most eSSL and ZKTeco models hold tens of thousands. When the connection returns, the server tells the device the last record it holds and the device uploads everything after it. Punches are only lost if the device memory fills or the device is factory-reset before it reconnects.

The device says it is connected, but the software says offline. Which is right?

Both, and that combination points at one cause: the serial number. The device is connected to the server, which answers it; the server does not recognise the serial, so nothing reaches your account. Compare the registered serial with the Device Info screen character by character, and check the device is not pointed at a previous vendor's server address.

Does the biometric machine need a static IP to stay online?

Not for push-based cloud software. The terminal dials out, so it works on a dynamic address behind an ordinary router. A static IP is needed only when software elsewhere reaches into your network to read the device, which is the older model. A wrong static IP that conflicts with another device is a common cause of intermittent offline.

All our machines went offline at once. What happened?

The site's internet or power, not the devices. Check the router, the ISP and the switch the terminals share before touching any terminal. When the link returns, every terminal reconnects on its own within a minute or two and uploads its backlog.

When should I call the dealer instead of fixing it myself?

When the device will not power on, reboots by itself, has a damaged network socket, or drops offline within hours of a restart with nothing changed on the network. Everything else on this page, from the cable to the serial number, can be fixed from the device menu with a phone call to support.

Still offline after the list?

Send us a photo of the Comm / ADMS screen and the Device Info screen. Most remaining cases are solved on the first reply.