Time and attendance

Time and attendance means tracking whether rostered staff turned up for their shift and how many hours they worked, compared with what was scheduled.

What gets recorded

At its simplest, time and attendance tracking records a few facts per shift, per person:

• Attendance: did the person turn up, and were they marked present, absent or late.
• Hours worked: the actual start and finish, against the shift's expected start and finish.
• Exceptions: no-shows, early departures or unplanned cover, each usually logged with a reason.

This can be kept on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in a live digital roster where a supervisor checks people in and records hours against the shift, often on a phone or tablet during the night.

What depends on it

Time and attendance data underpins two things a business cares about directly: payroll (the hours actually worked decide what people are paid) and reliability (a reliability score is calculated from attendance history). Without accurate records, both turn into guesswork. Pay disputes are harder to settle, and a worker's record can't be judged fairly.

It matters on the night too. Knowing in real time who is on site, as well as who was rostered, lets a manager spot a gap and start dropout recovery straight away instead of finding out later.

In Chronomancer

Chronomancer's Live view is built around this: a checklist on a tablet or phone for marking attendance and entering hours for each person on each shift. Expected hours (hours_expected) come from the night's scheduled start and finish, and the results feed the reliability formula when the period completes.