Three businesses let their staff clock themselves in

Stop fixing your team's hours

The payslip arrives, and the hours don't add up. Payday, and someone's short. They picked up an extra Saturday night, overtime with a weekend surcharge on top, and none of it made it onto the timesheet. Or a clock-in got estimated because the paper sheet went missing. Now you're the detective, cross-checking a spreadsheet against your own memory of who did what three weeks ago.

That's not one bad month. Track worked hours by hand, on paper or in a spreadsheet, and you lose a little accuracy every week: a forgotten clock-out here, a rounded guess there. Nobody notices until the numbers get challenged, and then a manager loses an afternoon rebuilding them. That's usually the moment an owner decides to let the team clock themselves in, and win back the hours that used to disappear into payroll prep.

Managers who run time tracking in Shiftbase save up to 30% of the time they spend tracking worked hours. More than 8,500 businesses now run their schedules and timesheets on Shiftbase. The three teams below each took a different route to the same place: worked hours the team records itself, accurate and ready for payroll.

Anthony Hotel: hours you can check in half an hour, not a full day

Anthony Hotel, an independent hotel in Utrecht (50-100 employees), ran planning through a kitchen-manager system that was slow and open to error. Every month, Talent & Culture Manager Margot van Geldere faced a full day of checking worked hours before they could go to payroll.

Anthony Hotel moved time tracking into Shiftbase and connected it to Personio, so recorded hours flow straight through to their payroll records. The monthly worked-hours check dropped from a full day to half an hour, and weekly time tracking and control went from three hours to one. Accuracy reached 100%, and staff satisfaction rose from a 6 to an 8. "The integration of Shiftbase and Personio has not only improved our efficiency, but also the satisfaction of our team. It has been a real game changer," says Margot van Geldere, Talent & Culture Manager.

Tomingroep: from six planners to four foremen who just approve

At Tomingroep's Cleaning Department 449 (facility services), ninety people worked a mix of fixed and variable shifts, and checking worked hours in Excel was slow and easy to get wrong. Scheduling and hours sat with one person, which made the process fragile.

Now every employee has the app, sees their own schedule, and their worked hours sit against the shift. The foremen approve against the overview instead of rebuilding worked hours from scratch. Tomingroep saves 30% of the time it spent on time tracking, and where six people once handled planning and hours, four foremen now only need to approve. "The use of Shiftbase encourages employees to check their hours. If there are questions, the system can be directly consulted, and a solution offered," says operational planner Django Stoutenburg.

Bomenbezorgd: drivers clock in on their own phones, on location

Bomenbezorgd.nl (retail, 50-100 employees) sends drivers out from 6am, and hours used to come in at the end of the day and get typed into Excel. As the company grew, Operational Manager Liset Schiphorst lost track of who returned when and how many hours they had worked. Everything ran on trust, and nobody had a real grip on the worked hours.

Drivers now clock in on their own phones, and Bomenbezorgd sets where that clock-in is allowed to happen, so a shift only starts once someone reaches the office or the logistics centre. They also saved over 20% of the time they spent making schedules, and through the AFAS link they can see worked hours and wage costs. "It's very convenient to clock in on your own phone, location-based. Now I have insight into whether everyone is starting on time," says Liset Schiphorst.

Three routes, one outcome

Three teams, three routes. One connects clocking to payroll and checks the month in half an hour, one hands the foremen an approve-only view, one has drivers clock in on their own phones on location. You don't get one setup dropped on every business. You pick the route that fits yours. What they share is the outcome: the team records its own worked hours, and the numbers are right by the time they reach payroll.