An hour in the office, an hour on a client site, an hour of overtime and an hour worked from home are rarely treated the same — not for payroll, not for planning and not for the team’s wellbeing. Yet most attendance systems record them all as “time at work”. Here’s how to track office, field, overtime and remote hours separately without making clocking in complicated.
Why separate working times?
- Payroll: overtime, night or field work is often paid at a different rate or with an allowance.
- Labour rules: many companies must report overtime and night work separately.
- Planning: knowing how much work happens remotely or on site helps you plan desks, travel and staffing.
- Fairness: people see that extra hours are recorded as extra hours.
Step 1: Name your working times
In Clocknico an admin names the working times in HR settings. Three are used with the QR code at the entrance — for example Office, Field and Overtime, or Day, Night and Weekend. A fourth, Online, is for remote work. Each gets its own colour, so they’re easy to tell apart everywhere.
Step 2: At the office — pick, then scan
On the phone, My QR code shows three coloured buttons. The employee taps the right one and holds the phone up to the tablet or USB scanner at the entrance. The kiosk greets them in that colour: “Welcome, Anna! Clocked in at 08:02 · Field”. The working time is part of the signed, rotating QR code, so it can’t be changed afterwards. The next scan clocks them out.
Read more about QR code attendance.
Step 3: Working from home — clock in online
Remote work doesn’t happen at the door, so it doesn’t need the QR code. In the Clocknico menu, the Clock in button records Online time — and only Online time. Office working times can only be clocked with the QR code at the entrance, so nobody can “clock out of the office” from their sofa.
Step 4: See every working time separately
- Attendance report — a column for each working time, per person, for any period.
- Monthly hours — the whole year month by month, filtered by working time.
- Team calendar — a column per working time next to who was away when.
- My calendar — each person sees “At work: Office 6h · Overtime 2h” on their own days.
- Payroll CSV — a row per person per working time, in decimal hours, plus a total.
Step 5: Fix mistakes in one place
Forgot to pick “Overtime”? A manager corrects the session in HR → Attendance → Corrections — including its working time. The same screen lets HR enter annual leave for anyone, which then shows in the team calendar and the person’s own calendar.
Checklist
- Up to three office working times named in HR settings, plus Online for remote work
- A kiosk at the entrance (tablet or USB QR scanner)
- The team knows: pick, then scan — or Clock in online when working from home
- Monthly CSV per working time to payroll
Working times, the QR kiosk and remote clock-in are included in every Clocknico plan — free for teams of up to 5 users. Start for free.