# Check-ins and time tracking

## Rebuilt check-ins and time tracking, cutting attendance disputes by 65%

At Spotwork, I led the rebuild of the staffing platform, doubling daily shift postings in eight months.

[Video: A video of a floor manager on the Check-ins page checking in one worker and marking another absent, adding a note to each.](https://pub-3f00bf1204d54dbe88e07be7288fe49c.r2.dev/media/6c9661a5-42e5-4c1b-ab70-5302cd606ecd-check-ins-1-check-ins-page.mp4)

[Video: A video of finance opening a worker's timecard, with checked-in and posted hours listed separately, then adding an off-app shift to the timesheet.](https://pub-3f00bf1204d54dbe88e07be7288fe49c.r2.dev/media/5c8b3a48-bfbe-409c-991a-a1d298cacc69-check-ins-2-timesheet.mp4)

[Video: A video of the operations team reviewing a missing check-in's risk signals and location, then messaging the worker, whose side sheet logged the message.](https://pub-3f00bf1204d54dbe88e07be7288fe49c.r2.dev/media/4953b2b8-cc0a-4e7e-b789-857866d1ff41-check-ins-3-dashboard.mp4)

## Business fit

### Time tracking drove pay and billing

Every week, 15% of workers raised pay issues, rising to 20% in busy season.

- **Offline attendance records**: Floor managers kept attendance on paper and in spreadsheets of their own.
- **Reconciliation by hand**: Matching those records to the timesheet took floor managers 30 minutes a shift.
- **Attendance disputes**: Mistakes from that manual work surfaced as disputes over workers' pay and companies' invoices.

## UX gap

### The timesheet worked until a shift went off plan

- **Shift begins: Check-in needed mobile data**: At remote sites with poor signal, workers' hours went unlogged.
- **Shift in progress: Missing check-ins turned into phone calls**: Our operations team chased each one, even when the worker was already on site.
- **Shift ends: Submitted times overrode the worker app's check-ins**: Workers could replace the worker app's check-in and check-out times with their own, which became the hours on record.
- **Invoicing: Off-app shifts missed the invoice**: Companies booked extra workers at short notice, off the platform, causing billing gaps and pay issues.

## North Star

### Get every hour worked from check-in to invoice with full traceability and the flexibility to handle any exception.

## Let floor managers fix attendance while the shift runs

Floor managers could correct attendance **only after the shift**. Until then, a worker whose phone had died showed as missing.

The new Check-ins page let floor managers **check a worker in or out, or mark them absent**, with a note saying why.

## Keep the worker app's times and worker-submitted times apart on every timecard

The old timesheet showed both kinds of time identically, **hiding which hours a worker had changed**.

Each timecard now **listed every source of hours separately**, with one selected for billing and each edit logged with who made it.

## Give finance sole control of off-app shifts

Finance appended off-app shifts to invoices **on spreadsheets, outside the platform**.

Now **only finance added them, as off-app timecards during invoicing**. Companies saw them read-only, which kept their scheduling on the platform.

## Risk signals

### Six signals added up to a worker's no-show risk

_Interactive demo on the page_

## Traceability

### I built a dashboard where our operations team used these risk signals to monitor likely no-shows

## Watch new workers and new teams more closely

No-show risk ran higher on **a worker's first shifts, and on a team's first 10**. Established teams had a roster of reliable workers that were likely to show up.

The dashboard split all check-ins into tiles: missing check-ins, late check-ins and absences, alongside new workers and new teams. One click on a tile let our operations team **switch to the workers they needed to track closely**.

## 65% fewer attendance disputes

Correcting hours during the shift, with every change on record, **cut attendance disputes by 65%**, from an average of 90 a week to under 35 after launch.

## Takeaway

### Workarounds write the brief

Floor managers' spreadsheets and photos of their paper attendance sheets, along with an invoicing cycle I spent apprenticing with finance, surfaced all four gaps.

The records a team keeps by hand point to the work its software should take on.