Heh, it can be worse. In my last job we actually had three parallel time reporting systems. One for billable hours, one for hours worked on project, and one that clocked on entering/exiting the building. Of course, they all three had to match.
I've always wondered how that's useful to anyone. Judge me by the quality of work I do, but not whether I sit in the chair the required number of minutes.
Judging quality is difficult, and sadly does not scale well. It is much easier to measure time. A lot of (bad) management is about measuring things which are easy to measure instead of measuring things which matter.
That's also one of the rationale for constantly asking to do the same stuff with less (money, employees, etc...): because trying to measure efficiency is almost hopeless in most companies, just asking that 10 % improvements actually leads to actual improvements globally. You just don't know where exactly. The bigger the organization, the more efficient this inefficiency is in some ways.
Of course, in small companies, this is awful, because most smart people, especially smar engineers, really hate this way of working.
A couple of years ago I worked at a place that introduced a card reader at the door. You walk in, you swipe. You walk out, you swipe. Everyone gets a card, everyone gets their times clocked and scrutinised.
A couple of months of dutiful swiping later, one of the guys got curious and... found that it wasn't connected to anything.
I've always wondered how that's useful to anyone. Judge me by the quality of work I do, but not whether I sit in the chair the required number of minutes.