Clock in from anywhere
Phone, laptop, or a shared kiosk with a PIN for people who have no work email. Server time is authoritative; the device time is recorded next to it, never instead of it.
Features
Everything It Does, and Why Each Part Exists
This is a payroll instrument, not a productivity tracker. Every feature below is here because a number on a payslip has to be defensible months after the week it came from.
Free from day one · No card · No sales call
Illustration with fictional sample data — Northwind Depot is not a real company.
Recording time
Time Recorded Where the Work Happens
A punch is an event, not a field somebody edits later. It is recorded once, by the server, from whichever device the person actually has.
Breaks that count correctly
Paid and unpaid breaks are separate. Unpaid time comes off the payable total before anyone approves it, so the figure a manager signs is the figure payroll uses.
Schedules with a memory
Fixed, flexible and weekly-flexible patterns, assigned per person, per team or organisation-wide. Editing a pattern never rewrites a week that already closed.
Every punch says where it came from
Web, kiosk or a manual correction — the source stays in the entry’s history for good.
The schedule decides what late means
Each day is judged against the pattern and grace period that were in force on that date.
Catching what deviated
Only the Days That Need a Decision
Late, left early, absent, forgotten clock-outs, corrections and time off all land in one place, for the right manager, with the rule they broke attached.
One queue, not a spreadsheet
Each exception arrives with the schedule it broke, and clears in one of two ways: accept it with a reason, or correct the record.
A live board that tells the truth
Who is in, who is flagged, who is on leave or a public holiday. Nobody is marked absent on a day they were never scheduled to work.
Corrections with an author
A member proposes the fix; a manager approves, rejects or edits and approves it. The original punch is never overwritten — the correction is a new row that refers to it.
A queue a manager can clear before lunch
Scoped to their own teams, and only to the days that are actually unresolved.
Both numbers survive
The record shows what the clock said and what was agreed, side by side.
Leave and holidays
Time Off That Never Reads as Absence
Approved leave and public holidays cover the day, so nobody is reported absent on them — and paid leave reaches payroll as its own line.
Requests against a visible balance
People ask for a day, a half day or a range against a balance they can see first. Every adjustment records who made it and why.
One calendar for everyone
Import your country’s public holidays for a year in one action, add your own days, and mark fixed dates to repeat. Every person inherits them.
A holiday is not a lock
Someone who works a public holiday clocks in as normal. The day is recorded as worked holiday — payable, and counted separately in reports.
Balances before the request
Nobody has to ask how many days they have left.
Holidays set once
Importing the same year twice changes nothing, so the button is always safe to press.
Closing the week
Approve, Lock and Hand Payroll the Numbers
Each week ends with a signature, a lock and an export. Every step is deliberate, and every exception to it is on the record.
Approve in one pass
Bulk approval covers everyone with a clean week and refuses anyone with an unresolved exception, so it is always safe to press.
Lock, and reopen on the record
A locked period stops accepting edits. An owner can reopen it, but only with a reason, and the reopening is itself an audit event.
Export payroll-ready numbers
A CSV that separates payable minutes, unpaid break and paid leave — the columns a payroll run needs, not one lump sum.
A week you can sign in one pass
Breaks already deducted, paid leave already separated, corrections already visible.
The same figures on screen and in the file
Attendance, payroll summary and raw time entries all export as CSV for any date range.
Underneath
The Parts We Refuse to Make Configurable
Most of the product adapts to how you work. These six do not — they are the reason the numbers are worth anything.
A locked period stays locked
Nothing inside it can move. Reopening is owner-only, records a reason and notifies everyone whose numbers are back in play.
History is never rewritten
Corrections add a row and keep the original visible. You can always answer “what did this look like before, and who changed it?”
Accepting is not deleting
An accepted late arrival leaves the queue but stays on the record, attributed to whoever accepted it — and it can be revoked.
It reports, it does not score
No productivity ratings, no rankings, no league tables. It records what happened against what was expected, and stops there.
Worked time is never suppressed
A punch on a holiday or a leave day is still recorded. It surfaces as something to look at, never as nothing.
Scope is enforced, not decorated
The boundary between teams lives in the database. A guessed link returns “not found”, not a page with the buttons greyed out.
People and teams
Scope That Lives in the Database
Teams connect people to the manager who runs them, and decide exactly what that manager can see — enforced by the server, not by greyed-out buttons.
Teams decide who approves
Putting someone on a team gives them an approver. The People page counts anyone who has nobody to approve their hours.
Managers see their own people
A manager asking for someone outside their teams gets “not found”, not a permission error that would confirm the person exists.
Dated pay rates, admins only
A raise in June leaves May paid at the old rate, permanently. Managers never see what their team is paid.
An org chart drawn from the real structure
Owner, admins, teams and members — so a gap in who approves whom is visible before payday.
Built for CheesyHire
The Hire Arrives by API
CheesyHire sends each new hire to Daybook with an organisation key. The connection is designed so a retry can never create the same person twice.
Keys with scopes
Each key carries only the scopes it needs — reading the organisation, reading or writing people, and acting as a person when that is allowed.
Idempotent by design
Every write made with a key carries an Idempotency-Key. Replaying it returns the original answer and writes nothing new.
A sandbox to rehearse in
Test keys only ever reach a linked sandbox organisation that can be seeded with demo data and reset. Nothing leaves it — not even an email.
One request per hire
Created the first time, updated after that — addressed by the CheesyHire reference, not a Daybook id.
Your company’s look
Your Name on Every Screen
Each organisation sees its own name and logo throughout the product — applied by the server, with no flash of the wrong colours.
Your name and logo
In the sidebar and in emails. A PNG, SVG or WebP up to 2 MB, squared and resized for you; without one, your initials stand in.
An accent that stays readable
Pick an accent colour and it is accepted only when white text on it still meets the 4.5:1 contrast ratio. Light, dark or match the device.
Mail from your own domain
Publish two DNS records and invitations and password resets go out from your address, signed with a key generated for you.
A short list, on purpose
Logo, accent and appearance. Free-form themes are not offered, because they would break accessibility and speed.
Common Questions
Short answers about the parts people ask about most.
01How does Daybook work with CheesyHire?
CheesyHire stays the place you hire. When someone is hired, CheesyHire sends the person to Daybook through its API, using their CheesyHire reference, so a retried request never creates the same person twice. From then on their working week lives in Daybook. A sandbox with test keys lets the connection be rehearsed without touching live data.
02Is it really free?
Yes. There are no plans and no per-person prices. Create an organisation and every feature described on this site is available from the first punch.
03What can a manager actually see?
Only the people on their teams: their queue, board, timesheets, schedules, PINs and leave balances. Pay rates stay with admins and owners.
04Can we get the numbers out?
Every report exports as CSV — attendance, payroll summary and raw time entries — with the same figures you see on screen for the same date range.