Clock in and out through the app

In this article, we will go through how you can let your employees clock in and out through the app. You can read more about:

How you let your employees use the punch clock
How you create geographical areas for the punch clock
How the employees clock in and out
How you can view the employees' time recordings in the "Smartplan Time" menu item
How you can view your employees' time recordings in "Hours & Salary"
How you can customise the punch clock to your needs

How to let your employees use the punch clock

If the employees have to use the punch clock in the their app, an administrator has to turn on this function. They can do this in "Settings" -> "Punch clock and time recording".

As soon as the function has been activated, the employees can use their app to clock in and out, if they are within one of the areas that have been added to the account.

How to add geographical areas

When you have to add an area, you must enter an address and give the area a name. You can add as many areas as you like, which means that you can for example add 50 different areas if this is necessary on your account. It is also possible to adjust the size of the area, if you need a bigger area. If this is the case, you can simply make the orange circle bigger.

When the employee has to clock in and out from the app

Before your employees can use the app to clock in and out, they must allow that the app can have access to their GPS, so that the app can know the location of the employee. The app will only ask for permission to access the GPS, if the function has been turned on by an administrator on the account. When the phone is turned off, the app will not search for employee's location.

This means that it is the GPS in the employee's phone which determines, if they are within one of the areas on the account, and if this is the case they can clock in.

In order to avoid cheating with the hours, it also is not possible for an employee to go into an area, leave it again and then clock in. The moment, they click on "Clock in", we will double-check to make sure that they are within the area. If they are not within the area, they will not be able to clock in.

The employees can also create shifts in the punch clock. This might be relevant, if you do not have a permanent rota. Then the employees can create their own shifts, and you can afterwards approve them.

You can read more about how to create shifts in the punch clock here: How to use the punch clock in the app as an employee

In the menu item "Smartplan Time", you can get an overview of the time recordings your employees have made today.

The two recordings on the image above are different, because one is purple and one is white. As long as the recording is white, the employee has not yet clocked out. Once it turns purple, the shift has ended and the employee has clocked out.

In the top right corner, you can choose if you want to see ended shifts. If you remove the check mark, you will only see shifts that are currently going on. This means that you can quickly get an overview of who is currently at work:

On each time recording, you can see when the employee has clocked in and out, whether they had a break (the coffee pot), and if a comment has been added to the shift (the speech bubble).

If you need to approve or edit attendance, you simply click on the gear-icon on the shift:

If you choose to edit the attendance, a box will appear in which you can make changes to the employee's time recording. It is the same box as you also know from "Hours & Salary". More about that in the next chapter.

How to see when your employees have clocked in and out in "Hours & Salary"

It is always possible to see your employees' hours in the tab "Hours & Salary". Here you can get an overview of the hours and approve them.

When an employee has used the punch clock, it might look like this:

The employee has changed her meeting time compared to what had been planned and therefore, the writing is in red. According to the rota, the employee had to work from 3 pm to 10 pm. But the employee has clocked in a few minutes earlier and also left earlier than planned. To the right, it is possible to approve the employee's hours. If the employee has created a new shift in the punch clock, this is also where you can approve it.

It is possible to get more information about the shift, if you click on the meeting time in the column "Changes to attended time":

In the activity log you can see all the changes that have been made to a shift, and who made these changes.

The employee's hours can be corrected by the employee or an administrator. Then it will also appear in the activity log - both when it was changed, and by who.

How to customise the punch clock to your needs

It might be different how companies can benefit from using the punch clock and therefore, you can also choose your own settings regarding:

Should the employees choose an expected end time, if the shift wasn't planned in advance
Should the employees register breaks in the punch clock
How should the hours be calculated when employees clock in before their shifts start
How should Smartplan handle clock out after the shifts scheduled hours
Consequences when employees do not clock in
Whether Smartplan should automatically approve time recordings

All of these settings can be found by going to "Settings" -> "Punch clock and time recording".

At the bottom of this page, you can also choose if the employees are allowed to manually edit their time recordings. This setting is independent of the punch clock.

If the employees shouldn't be able to use the punch clock through the app, you can also choose to use a computer or tablet at your workplace instead. You can read more about how to use the punch clock on a computer or tablet in this article.