Connecteam’s Time Clock is designed to allow you to easily track your employees’ work hours and make payroll a breeze. To contribute to the accuracy of timesheets and prevent unauthorized overtime you can clock employees out automatically after a certain amount of hours worked. Daily hour limits follow your Overnight Shifts setting, so the clock-out time for shifts that cross midnight depends on whether overnight shifts are enabled.
In this article, we will go over:
How to Activate Auto Clock Out
To activate auto clock, follow these steps:
Access the Time Clock feature from the left sidebar, and enter the relevant Time Clock.
Access the settings found on the top right, and navigate to the General Tab
Tick the Auto Clock Out option.
Set after how many hours the employee will be clocked out
Save changes.
You also have the option to set the Auto Clock Out time as a decimal value (for example, 12.6 hours). To do so, simply enter the relevant number and decimal value in the box.
How Auto Clock Out Works with Overnight Shifts
Daily hour limits follow your Overnight Shifts setting. This setting decides which day the hours worked after midnight count toward, and that decides when an employee is automatically clocked out.
Overnight Shifts enabled: Hours worked after midnight count toward the day the shift started. The clock-out happens once the employee reaches the limit counted from clock-in, even if that moment falls after midnight.
Overnight Shifts disabled: Hours worked after midnight count toward the new day. The hours before midnight count toward the day the shift started, and a fresh daily limit begins at 00:00. The shift stays open at midnight.
The daily limit applies to each day, not to each shift. The hours an employee still has left on a given day equal the limit minus the hours already counted toward that day.
Example: 19:00 Clock-In with a 6-Hour Limit
An employee clocks in at 19:00 and the limit is 6 hours.
Overnight Shifts enabled: The employee is automatically clocked out at 01:00, 6 hours after clocking in.
Overnight Shifts disabled: The hours from 19:00 to 00:00 (5 hours) count toward the first day and stay under the limit. A new 6-hour limit starts at 00:00, so the employee is automatically clocked out at 06:00.
What Follows the Overnight Shifts Setting
The same day attribution applies to:
Auto clock out after the set number of hours
The daily limit exceeded notification sent to admins
The daily limit reminder sent to employees
The Daily limit exceeded trigger in Automations
To learn more about the Overnight Shifts setting and the other Time Clock options, make sure to check out Time Clock General Settings.
How Auto Clock Appears on Timesheets
When an employee is auto-clocked out their shift will appear with a red exclamation point indicating that they were automatically clocked out.
From here the admin might want to take various follow-up actions to ensure the hours are hours are correct.
Follow-Up Actions For Admins and Employees
Chat with the Employee
Using the chat icon next to the employee's name you can always use the chat feature to send the employee a message and verify their hours.
Editing the Hours
If you have spoken to the employee and found that the hours are incorrect, you can request the employee to edit their timesheets, or you can edit them on your own. To do so simply click on the end time and enter the time the employee stopped working.
Receiving a Report of Auto Clock Outs
If you would like to generate a report of auto clock out for record-keeping you can do so with the Time Clocks auto reports capability.
Navigate to the Time Clock settings, and enter the Auto Reports Tab.
Select Add Another Report.
Then select user report and choose the auto clock out option.
Add the days and times it should be sent and the recipient.
Select the file type, filter for any additional information you want, and save changes.
*Auto-clock out is available from our Operations Hub Advanced Plan*
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