Clock in system for employees, or a timesheet app UK staff will actually use

Checking an employee clock in system against British duties

1. Check minimum wage arithmetic on your worst week. Unpaid time that is really working time, and deductions for uniform or equipment, are how employers fall below the rate without meaning to. Model one awkward week and see whether the product shows the problem or hides it.
2. Check what feeds holiday. Where hours are irregular, entitlement and holiday pay depend on hours actually worked. If your clock cannot export that history in the form your payroll or HR system wants, somebody is going to rebuild it by hand every year.
3. Check the record survives a year. Working time and pay records have to be produced long after the week ends. Ask what is retained by default, change it if it is short, and confirm the export includes history rather than the current period.

What a staff clock in system has to capture

Start, finish, and the breaks, with the last of those treated correctly as paid or unpaid according to your own terms. Rest breaks and the boundary of working time are defined in law rather than by a vendor default, so the configuration is a legal decision made once and then inherited by everybody.

Beyond that, capture the exceptions honestly. Training, travel between sites during the day, and time spent waiting are all commonly working time and commonly missing from a record that only knows the front door.

Terminal, app, or a timesheet app UK staff will use

Fixed sites favour a terminal because nobody needs a phone and nothing needs installing. Care, construction, cleaning and field work favour an app because there is no door to pass. Many British employers need both and should say so at the first demonstration rather than the third.

A timesheet app is a different purchase again: it records what somebody says they worked rather than when they arrived. For salaried professional staff charging time to clients that is exactly right, and for hourly staff it reintroduces the problem a clock was bought to solve.

The join to payroll and to holiday

The value of the record is realised at two moments: when hours become pay, and when hours become entitlement. Products are usually built for the first and indifferent about the second, which is why so many employers with variable hours still keep a parallel holiday spreadsheet.

Ask directly what the product does about irregular hours holiday and whether it exports the history that calculation needs. The honest answers are useful; the evasive ones tell you where the work will land.

Common questions

Is an employer required to record hours worked?

Records adequate to show that pay and working time rules have been met are expected, and in practice that means hours. The detail required rises where pay is near the minimum or hours are irregular.

Can we require staff to use a personal phone?

It is contentious and frequently resisted. Offering a shared device at a fixed point removes the objection cheaply and is worth doing before anybody raises it as a grievance.

Does a clock in and out system for employees handle holiday too?

Some do. More produce a history that a holiday calculation needs, which is enough provided the export works and somebody has checked it against a real irregular hours case.

How long should we keep clocking records?

Long enough to answer a pay or working time question years later. Vendor defaults are commonly shorter than that, so check the setting rather than assume it.

Coverage by country

• Employer of record vendors covering Singapore
• Employer of record vendors covering Mexico
• Employer of record vendors covering Spain
• Employer of record vendors covering Colombia
• Employer of record vendors covering United Kingdom
• Employer of record vendors covering France
• Employer of record vendors covering Hungary
• Employer of record vendors covering New Zealand