How to set up work schedules and track late arrivals

You have a barista who's supposed to start at 7 AM. She clocks in at 7:14. Fourteen minutes late. Every day you mentally note it, but payroll time comes and you can't remember exactly how many times it happened or how many minutes each time.

Then there's the manual version. You check the biometrics log, find her records for the cutoff period, calculate the late minutes one by one, and add them up. You do this for every person on your team. By the time you're done, you've spent an hour on something that should be automatic.

Timekeep computes late minutes at the moment someone clocks in. By the time you run payroll, the number is already there.

What a shift is in Timekeep

A shift in Timekeep is a template that defines when a workday starts, when it ends, and how long the break is. For example: 8 AM to 5 PM, 60-minute break. You create a shift once and assign it to anyone who works that schedule.

You can have as many shifts as your business needs. A morning shift, an afternoon shift, an overnight shift. Each shift has its own start and end time, and Timekeep uses those times to determine whether someone was on time, late, or had undertime.

Step 1: Create your shifts

Go to Shifts in the dashboard. Click to add a new shift. Give it a name (Morning Shift, Night Shift, etc.) and set the start time, end time, and break duration.

Create one shift per schedule type. If all your staff work 8 AM to 5 PM, you only need one shift. If you have rotating schedules or different positions with different hours, create one shift for each.

Step 2: Assign shifts to your team

Go to Schedules in the dashboard. This is where you assign shifts to specific employees on specific dates. You can view the schedule by day, week, or month.

Click on an employee's row for a date and assign them to a shift. You can assign the same shift to the same employee every day, or vary it by day if their schedule changes. Mark days off as rest days.

Employees can see their schedule in the employee portal. Your team opens the portal on their phone and sees their upcoming shifts without having to ask you.

Step 3: Watch late arrivals get tracked automatically

Once schedules are assigned, Timekeep starts computing attendance against the schedule. When an employee clocks in, the system compares the clock-in time to their scheduled start time.

If they clock in after the grace period, they are marked as late. The late minutes are recorded on the attendance record. You do not need to calculate anything.

When you open the attendance dashboard, you can see who was late, how many minutes, and on which day.

The Late column shows the exact number of minutes. This number flows into payroll. When you generate payslips, late deductions are already computed based on the actual minutes and the employee's daily or hourly rate.

Grace period

By default, small delays don't count as late. You can configure a grace period in your business settings. If your grace period is 5 minutes and someone clocks in at 8:04, they are not marked as late. If they clock in at 8:06, they are marked as 6 minutes late.

The grace period gives you flexibility without forcing you to be rigid about every small delay.

Undertime

Undertime is when someone clocks out before their scheduled end time. Timekeep tracks this the same way it tracks late arrivals. If a staff member is scheduled to end at 5 PM and clocks out at 4:45, that's 15 minutes of undertime.

Undertime deductions are separate from late deductions on the payslip, so you can see both clearly.

Rest days and holidays

Days marked as rest days in the schedule are treated accordingly in payroll. If someone works on their rest day, the rest day premium is applied to their pay. If they work on a public holiday, the holiday multiplier is applied.

You don't need to manually flag these. Timekeep checks the schedule against the holiday calendar and applies the correct rules.

Overnight shifts

If your business runs a night shift (for example, 10 PM to 6 AM), Timekeep handles the overnight correctly. Create a shift with those hours. When an employee clocks in at 10 PM and clocks out at 6 AM the next day, the system treats it as one complete shift and records 8 hours worked.

Night differential (10% premium for hours between 10 PM and 6 AM) is also computed automatically for overnight workers.

What you save every cutoff

Tracking late arrivals manually takes time, and it's easy to miss days or miscalculate minutes. When you set up schedules in Timekeep, the late tracking is built into every clock-in. By payroll time, the numbers are already computed. You review them, check that everything looks right, and finalize.

You didn't start a business to count minutes. Timekeep handles that part.

Try it free for 30 days at timekeep.ph.