I just received the following pitch... (followed by my comments below)

Human resources departments spend an inordinate amount of money each year trying to streamline labor management processes.  Due to human error from manual processes, many employees are getting away with working very few hours. Companies are looking for a variety of technology solutions to decrease labor management, thereby, increasing productivity.

Thanks to the advances in technology and phones, specifically IP phones, they can now be used to help with labor management processes and help companies save money and time overall. Using IP phones for labor management saves money by eliminating hardware needs, such as time clocks or biometric devices, while providing broader functionality.

Now employees can clock in and out, review time sheets, check schedules, receive text messages, and view accrued benefits - all from IP Phone-enabled workstations. Clocking in via the phone also tends to reduce the stigma of punching into a time clock. Employees feel more at ease and are more willing to comply with the system. In turn, managers can track employee activity and produce highly accurate job costing and productivity reports.

While I think this is an interesting application of IP phones, I could have sworn traditional PBXs with ACDs already have this time-sheet capability. I could be mistaken, but ACDs track logons, logoffs, lunch breaks, etc., so it shouldn't be hard to integrate the ACD data into time sheets, payroll, etc.

Still, I'm sure IP phones due to their very nature of residing "on the network" are a much "cleaner" integration and are also much easier to integrate with databases and other external databases.