Guides
How to track staff hours without spreadsheets
A simple routine that works for a venue with a handful of staff or fifty: record time as it happens, review it once a week, and hand payroll a clean export.
Updated
Record the time when it happens
The whole routine rests on one rule: nobody writes a time down afterwards. Each venue is one location with one QR clock-in point, and each person has their own PIN. When a shift starts and ends, the person clocks themselves in and out, and the time is recorded then.
One PIN per person matters. A shared PIN turns the record back into a guess about who was actually there.
The weekly routine
Once a week, or at the end of each pay period, a manager reviews the hours for each location.
- Open the timesheet for the period and the location.
- Clear the open shifts. A missing clock-out is flagged; add the finish time with a reason.
- Check anything that looks off, such as a very long shift or a missing break.
- Approve the period.
- Export the hours as a CSV for payroll.
Handling the awkward shifts
Split shifts are two clock-ins in one day, and each segment is recorded. A shift that finishes after midnight is a normal clock-in and clock-out, and the hours are counted in full. Someone working a single night is added like anyone else: create the person, issue a PIN, and they clock in.
What to hand to payroll
A CSV of recorded hours for the period, per person and per location. Open it in a spreadsheet, or map its columns to your payroll tool’s import. FrenchToast does not calculate pay, overtime, holiday pay, tax or contributions; your payroll process does that.
Mistakes to avoid
- Leaving the review until the end of the month, when nobody remembers the shift.
- Fixing a wrong time by overwriting it. Record a correction with a reason so the original is still there.
- Sharing one PIN between several people.
- Retyping the hours into a second spreadsheet before payroll. Export once and work from that.