Custom time and attendance app, linked to payroll

Off-the-shelf clocking in apps or a custom build

There are plenty of clocking in apps for staff, and for a business with fixed hours, a few locations and a payroll package they already support, one of them is the right answer. They are quick to set up and someone else maintains them. We will say so on the first call.

A custom build starts to pay off when the rules are what make your business different:

What the app records, and what your adviser decides

An app holds records. Whether those records meet your legal duties is a question for your employment adviser, not for the software. For context, in Great Britain the Working Time Regulations require employers to keep records adequate to show whether they have complied with the working time limits and to keep them for two years; since 1 January 2024 the regulations say an employer does not have to record each worker's daily hours if it can demonstrate that it has complied without doing so. For the National Minimum Wage, gov.uk says employers must keep records for at least six years, and payroll records are commonly used to prove total hours worked, including absences and overtime.

Northern Ireland and Ireland have their own rules, and sector agreements can add more. So we design the app to hold what your adviser tells you to keep, in a format you can export, and we do not claim that the app on its own meets any legal requirement. Check with your adviser.

Clocking in with GPS: useful, but plan it

A clock in app with GPS helps when staff start the day at a customer's premises or on a site that changes every week. It is also monitoring, and the ICO's guidance on monitoring workers says workers should be told about the nature, extent and reasons for it, that it must be necessary and proportionate, and that a data protection impact assessment is needed where it is likely to result in a high risk to workers' rights. In practice:

• Record location only at the moment of clocking in and out, not throughout the day.
• Use a zone around the site to confirm presence, rather than storing exact routes.
• Offer alternatives: a PIN on a shared tablet at the entrance, or a QR code on site.
• Write it into your staff policy before switching it on.

Time and attendance integrated with payroll or your ERP

The aim is that approved hours reach payroll with no retyping. BrightPay, for example, imports hourly payments from a CSV file each pay period, matched by name, NI number or works number, with hours at premium rates such as time and a half or double time. Xero's UK payroll API includes timesheets, so approved hours can be sent directly; see our page on Xero integration. With Sage, it depends on which payroll product you run, so we check what yours accepts before quoting. Hours allocated to jobs can also be posted to Business Central or Sage 200 for costing.

Before anything is exported, a manager reviews exceptions such as missed clock-outs or unusual overtime, approves the period and locks it, so the figures payroll receives do not change afterwards.

What shapes the price, and how we would build it

The guide how much it costs to build an app gives market reference figures. What weighs most here is the number of shift and pay rules, the devices used to clock in, the payroll or ERP link, and whether holidays and absences are managed in the same app.

A contractor with teams on several sites could start with clocking in by site and a payroll export, then add job costing and absence requests once the hours are trusted. Supervisors test every working demo, one every two weeks, under one fixed price per project. The method is on our page about fixed price software development.