Attendance
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What the Attendance module records, how it differs from Time tracking, and when a workspace needs it
Attendance records presence - clock-in, breaks, and clock-out - as timestamped punches. Time tracking records what a person worked on. The two modules are independent: either runs without the other, and turning one off never touches the other's data.
Attendance or Time tracking
| Attendance | Time tracking | |
|---|---|---|
| Records | Presence: in, break, out | Hours against a project work item |
| Primary screen | Clock | My week |
| Typical user | Hourly, on-site, shift-based staff | Project teams billing or costing work |
| Projects | Never asked for | Required for every entry |
Turn Attendance on under Workspace settings → Workspace → Modules. Kiosk sits below it and cannot be switched on until Attendance is. Hiding a module keeps its data; re-enabling restores everything exactly as it was.
What gets recorded
Every clock action writes an immutable punch. Punches are never edited or deleted, even by an admin. A correction adds new records that explain the change and leaves the originals in place, so the history shows both what was recorded and what was later decided. Erasing a departed person is the single exception, and it scrubs the free text on their punches rather than the instants.
Alongside the punch ledger, SquadBear keeps a shift for each work session with the worked and break totals already calculated. That is what the screens and the API read, so opening a history does not replay months of raw punches.
Expected time
A day's expected time comes from the person's work schedule, minus any approved leave for that date. A public holiday sets expected time to zero for everyone, schedule or not.
Without a work schedule, expected time reads as a dash and no short-day or over-schedule exception is raised. Set a schedule under Work schedules.
Work schedules define daily durations and working days, not start and end times, so exceptions compare worked hours against expected hours rather than flagging lateness.
Reconciling with project time
When both modules are on, Time tracking → My week shows an Attendance strip for today. A difference raises no exception - presence covers non-project work. The strip writes no time entry itself, and clocking out never creates, overwrites, or approves project time.
Worked example
Northlake runs both modules. Bartek clocks 8h 15m today and logs 6h 30m against projects, so his strip reads:
1h 45m not allocated
8h 15m attendance recorded · 6h 30m described by project time. These records stay independent.
Allocate remaining opens the log-time modal with 1h 45m pre-filled; nothing is written until he saves.
Scope
Attendance stores worked, break and expected minutes per shift. Pay, overtime entitlement and regulatory compliance sit outside its scope. Break mode is manual or none - an employee starts and ends their own break. The web clock records punches; with the Kiosk module on, so does a shared tablet reading a card (NFC) or a rotating QR badge.
Related
- Using the clock - the day-to-day employee flow.
- Attendance review - the manager queue and corrections.
- Kiosk - clocking in from a shared tablet.