Clocking in and out is the easy part of time and attendance. The hard part is everything around it: overtime rules from your contracts, rotas across several sites, Working Time Regulations checks, leave accrual for part-time staff, and a payroll run that has to start from numbers you trust. That’s where SaaS attendance tools tend to give way to CSV exports and spreadsheets.
I build custom time and attendance systems for UK businesses. You pay once, you own the code, and the system follows your pay rules and approval chain rather than asking you to change them.
Where off-the-shelf attendance software falls short
Per-employee pricing. Most SaaS products charge per employee per month, often with extra charges for setup, add-on modules or more sites. The bill grows with every hire, and moving to another vendor is hard once your history sits in their format.
Weak payroll integration. This is the most common complaint about these tools. Many promise payroll integration and deliver a CSV that someone imports into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks by hand. Timesheet cut-off dates don’t line up with payroll, field mappings break and custom leave types don’t carry across.
Pay rules the settings screen can’t express. Time and a half after 40 hours but double time on Sundays, banked hours, night premiums, different overtime for different grades: most tools handle the common cases and leave the rest to a manual adjustment before payroll.
Rigid approvals. If overtime above a threshold needs a director after the team lead and manager have signed, most tools can’t follow it. Exceptions go by email and the record of who approved what is lost.
UK compliance as an afterthought. Global vendors design for many markets. The 17-week rolling average, rest period checks, break logging and pro-rata leave for part-time staff are often missing or partial, so you still check them by hand.
Limited clocking methods and no offline mode. You might need web, mobile, kiosk, PIN, RFID badge or biometric terminals. Most products support two or three, the vendor decides which hardware works, and cloud-only apps miss clocks on construction sites, in warehouses and anywhere else the signal drops.
What I build instead
Your rules, built in. Your shift patterns, overtime tiers, rounding rules, approval chains and break policies drive the design.
Payroll first. Approved timesheets flow into Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or BrightPay through their APIs, with your pay codes already mapped. Attendance data arrives all day and payroll runs in a batch, so the system queues changes and locks each period at your cut-off.
UK compliance in the core. Working Time Regulations checks, statutory leave accrual, an audit trail on every clock edit, and biometric consent management.
Fixed cost, full ownership. No per-user or per-site fees. Adding a second site or a hundred more employees costs nothing in licences.
Any clocking method you need. Web, mobile, kiosk, PIN, RFID badge, fingerprint or face, with offline capture for sites with poor signal.
Approvals that match your organisation. Single sign-off for simple teams. Multi-level, conditional and delegated approvals with escalation where you need them, and timesheets that match the rota are approved automatically so managers deal only with exceptions.
When something needs fixing, you talk to me, the person who built it.
Features I typically build
Clocking
- Web, mobile, kiosk or PIN clocking with configurable rounding
- GPS capture at clock-in and clock-out for mobile staff, and geofencing to confirm people are on site
- Optional photo at clock-in to stop buddy punching on shared terminals
- Manual corrections with a required reason and a full audit trail
- A live view of who is in, labour cost so far today, and exceptions
Overtime and pay rules
- Premium rates, double time, night and weekend differentials, and shift penalties
- Banked hours and time off in lieu, with balances staff can see
- Different rules by grade, contract, site or company
- Pay codes mapped to your payroll provider so nothing is recalculated by hand
Shifts
- Shift creation, publishing and swap requests
- Coverage gap alerts and notifications for last-minute changes
- Planned against actual hours across all your sites
Leave and absence
- Leave requests with single or multi-level approval
- Statutory annual leave of 5.6 weeks, pro rata for part-time staff
- Custom leave types alongside statutory entitlements, with carry-over rules
- Outlook and Google Calendar sync
Timesheets and payroll
- Timesheets generated from clock data, weekly or by pay period
- Overtime calculated daily, weekly or by period against your thresholds
- API push or formatted export to your payroll system
Compliance
- 48-hour weekly average over a 17-week reference period, with opt-out records
- 11 consecutive hours’ rest between shifts and a weekly rest day
- Alerts and logging for the 20-minute break on shifts over 6 hours
- Encrypted storage, role-based access, retention rules and right-to-erasure workflows
- Explicit consent for biometrics and a non-biometric option on every terminal
Biometric clocking needs particular care. Fingerprints and face scans are special category data under UK GDPR, and in February 2024 the ICO ordered Serco Leisure and seven associated leisure trusts to stop using facial recognition and fingerprint scanning to clock staff in and out at 38 leisure centres, partly because staff weren’t offered an alternative such as a card or fob. If a PIN or badge does the job, I’ll suggest that first.
Reporting
- Labour cost by team, department, site or project
- Overtime trends and people working chronic overtime
- Absence patterns, late arrivals and missed clocks
How the build works
First Gear. For £495 I build a working prototype of one core workflow, usually clocking through to an approved timesheet, with your own data on a private link, plus a one-page build plan with a fixed price. It takes 5 days, you keep both either way, and the £495 is credited against the build.
First release. Web and mobile clocking, shift display, timesheet approval, leave requests and your payroll export or API link.
Later phases. Geofencing, multi-level approvals, biometric terminals, offline clocking or deeper reporting, each with its own fixed price.
Testing and rollout. The new system runs alongside your current one for a full payroll cycle so the two can be compared line by line, then goes live site by site, usually starting with your largest. Staff, managers and payroll each get training for what they do in the system.
What it costs
Most builds cost £2k to £10k and go live within a month, at a fixed price agreed at the end of First Gear. Bigger systems are split into monthly phases, each fixed-price. What moves the price: how many payroll links you need, the complexity of your approval and overtime rules, biometric hardware, offline mobile clocking and how much history has to be migrated.
What you stop paying: per-employee fees that grow with headcount, per-site charges, setup fees and add-on modules for reporting or scheduling.
When custom is the right call
A small team on standard contracts with a mainstream payroll provider will do fine with a SaaS tool. These are the triggers that change that:
- Complex pay rules. Several grades, union agreements, apprentices or overtime calculations that need a manual adjustment every pay run.
- Several companies or franchisees. Separate rules and data for each entity, with consolidated reporting for the group.
- Legacy payroll. An in-house payroll system or a heavily customised Sage setup without a standard API. A connector is cheaper than replacing payroll to suit an attendance vendor.
- Approval chains beyond one level. Sign-off that changes by department, grade or overtime amount.
- UK data residency. Your policy requires UK hosting or deployment on your own servers.
Industry applications
Construction
GPS geofencing so crews clock in on site rather than in the car park, project codes for labour cost tracking, offline clocking for remote sites, and subcontractor hours kept apart from employees’ so CIS payments are worked out from the right records.
Retail and hospitality
Shift swaps, overtime and premium rates for weekends and late nights, labour cost against sales per location, and mobile clocking for high-turnover teams. The trigger is usually a second or third location and payroll errors from paper timesheets.
Healthcare and care homes
Round-the-clock rotas, on-call staff, rest period tracking and coverage gap alerts, with staffing records ready for a CQC inspection.
Manufacturing and logistics
Shift-based production lines with occupancy dashboards, clocking terminals at each entrance, job costing against your ERP, and driver hours linked to fleet systems.
Public sector and education
Leave accrual per scheme rules, audit-ready records, Freedom of Information exports, and pay rules that differ across staff categories.
If you need to record time against client projects for billing rather than clock shift staff, that’s timesheet tracking software.
Common Questions About Custom Time and Attendance Management Systems
Is an off-the-shelf time and attendance system enough for a small business? ›
Usually, yes. If your staff are on standard contracts, overtime is paid at one rate, and your payroll provider takes the tool's export without editing, a SaaS clocking app will serve you well. Custom starts to make sense when your pay rules, approval chain or payroll system are what the tool can't handle, or when you run several sites or companies that need their own rules and one combined view.
What does a custom time and attendance system cost? ›
Most builds cost £2k to £10k and go live within a month, at a fixed price agreed after a £495 working prototype. Larger systems, such as several sites with biometric terminals and more than one payroll link, are split into monthly phases with their own fixed price. There are no per-employee or per-site fees.
Can it work with Xero payroll? ›
Yes. Approved hours go into Xero Payroll through its API as timesheet lines against the right pay items, so the pay run starts from data your managers have already signed off. I build the same kind of link for Sage, QuickBooks and BrightPay, and a file-based or database connector for older payroll systems without an API.
How do you handle the Working Time Regulations? ›
The system tracks the 48-hour weekly average over a 17-week reference period, checks the 11-hour rest between shifts and the weekly rest day, alerts on the 20-minute break for shifts over 6 hours, and accrues the 5.6 weeks of statutory leave pro rata for part-time staff. Signed opt-out agreements are stored with each employee's record.
Is biometric clocking GDPR compliant? ›
It can be, but fingerprints and face scans are special category data under UK GDPR, so you need a clear reason to use them and staff must be offered a real alternative such as a PIN, card or app. If you do want biometrics, I capture consent, keep templates encrypted and keep a non-biometric option on every terminal.
Can it handle several sites, companies or franchisees? ›
Yes. Each site or company can have its own shift patterns, overtime rules, approvers and payroll link, with data kept apart where it has to be and consolidated reports for head office. Franchise networks usually want franchisees to see only their own staff while the franchisor sees the totals.
What happens after launch? ›
You get a 30-day fix guarantee and the first month of hosting free. After that you can pick a monthly plan (Idle £79, Cruise £199 or Overdrive £449) or host it yourself. You own the code, so there are no forced updates and no features withdrawn without warning.