Time tracking for small manufacturers
Paper, a spreadsheet, a punch clock or software: what each costs you in effort, where it breaks, and what a kiosk does differently.
Four ways shops track time
Each has run a real floor. The difference is who tidies up afterwards.
A rack by the door, a card per employee, hours written by hand. The effort comes later: reading handwriting, chasing cards left in a jacket, retyping numbers.
One workbook, a tab per pay week, a row per employee. It only knows what somebody typed, and two editors can undo each other on a Friday.
A box on the wall that stamps a time. Honest about arrival and departure, but it cannot say which job the hours belong to.
A screen on the floor, or a browser tab on a laptop you already own. The employee is identified, the time is stamped, and the timecard builds itself.
Paper and a punch clock push the work to Friday afternoon. A spreadsheet puts it on one desk, with one person who knows how the file works. A kiosk moves it to the start of a shift.
The weak points
Not on a quiet week. On the week the shop is busy.
Eight hours later nobody remembers 7:04, so the card gets a round number. Two people write one shift in different pens, and the record drifts toward a normal week.
Three jobs and a setup, and the card says eight hours. By Friday the hours sit in a lump: one job looks profitable, another looks like it lost money.
A supervisor with other work to do, a stack of cards and a calculator. If a total looks wrong there is no way to check it, so payroll waits.
The alternative
The record gets made where the work happens.
Clock in by looking at the camera or touching the reader. When a reader will not cooperate, the employee's PIN is always there as a backup.
When the work changes, the employee switches jobs on the kiosk screen without clocking out. Hours before and after land on the right jobs.
It runs in a browser on a computer, laptop or tablet. No dedicated terminal, no proprietary box, nothing to mount on the wall.
Every clock-in, job switch and clock-out is an event with a time on it. Nobody retypes it, and the pay week is there when it closes.
The part that has to be right
Not a dashboard. A record the payroll clerk can work from.
The same hours three ways: one person's week, one job's labour, a whole pay period.
A corrected shift is recorded and approved, rather than quietly absorbed into a total.
Attendance and hours for the week, the job or the employee, ready for payroll.
Requests carry a type and accruals track per employee, so booked time is a known quantity.
Shift scheduling for people and Gantt-style calendars per machine sit in the same system.
The price
One annual price for the shop, not a rate per person.
20 employees included
No per-employee fees. 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel anytime.
Setup takes an afternoon: register, add employees, put a device on the floor. Your data stays yours.
FAQ
No. The kiosk runs on any computer, laptop or tablet you already own. There is no dedicated hardware to buy.
Every employee has a PIN, always available at the kiosk as a backup. Nobody waits at the screen for a reader to cooperate.
Yes. They switch jobs from the kiosk screen, mid-shift, without clocking out, and the hours land on both jobs.
Timecards are kept by employee, job and pay week, with manual entries, approvals and reports.
20 employees are included for $49.99 USD per year, with no per-employee fees, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and cancel anytime.
20 employees included for $49.99 USD a year. Set up in an afternoon on a device you already own.
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