Manufacturing
Shop floor attendance across two and three shifts
Your shift in-charge is the only person who knows who stayed back on Tuesday, and by the third of next month nobody can check him. This page is for a unit running two or three shifts with a mixed roll of monthly-wage operators and day-rate hands.
Last reviewed: September 2026
What the team looks like
A unit of forty to three hundred people runs three pay shapes at once. The office side is salaried: works manager, production in-charge, quality, stores, accounts. The floor is mostly monthly wages with loss of pay for days missed, which is where the operators, helpers, packers and the maintenance fitters and electricians sit. Then the hands who come and go with the order book, taken on at a day rate for a dispatch week or a season. In many units a further gang arrives through a labour contractor and is paid by him.
What a day looks like
First shift takes the machines at six. By seven the line is running to the day's plan, tea goes at nine and lunch is taken by rotation so no machine stands idle. The shift in-charge writes his production report at half past one for a shift that closes at two.
Second shift walks in through the same gate the first shift is walking out of. If a dispatch has to leave that night, four operators and a fitter are asked to stay past ten, and the asking happens on the floor, in person, an hour before it happens. The night crew is thinner: one supervisor who is also the storekeeper and the first-aid man.
Where attendance goes wrong
Extra hours are settled on a chit signed at the machine
Four men stay till half past ten to clear a dispatch. The shift in-charge writes their names on a slip and drops it with accounts sometime that week. If the slip goes missing, or a name is read wrong, the argument happens on payday with nothing on the table.
A power cut sends half the shift home at eleven
The line stops, the men are told to go, and nobody decides on the spot whether that is a full day, a half day or an unpaid one. The call gets made at month end by whoever is preparing the sheet, differently each time it happens.
The contractor's gang is counted by the contractor
Twenty hands arrive through a labour supplier for the packing line. Your supervisor counts heads at shift start, or forgets to. The bill at month end carries the supplier's count, four of whom walked out after lunch, and you hold no figure of your own to set against it.
The fitter is called in at midnight on his weekly off
The moulding machine goes down on Sunday night. The fitter is phoned at home, is on the floor within the hour, works until three and is back on his own shift by Monday morning. That Sunday sits outside every roster, so it gets squared up verbally weeks later, if at all.
The canteen coupon count is the only headcount anyone trusts
Ask how many people were on the floor last Tuesday and somebody counts how many lunch coupons went out of the canteen window. That figure was never an attendance record. It quietly carries the contractor's gang, a visiting service engineer, and two men who took a coupon and went home at noon.
Which modules to switch on first
01 Attendance
One geofence around the plant covers the machine shop, the stores and the maintenance bay. Check-in and check-out times land on the admin desk with a location pin, so a stay-back has a punch behind it.
02 Salary
Most of the floor is on monthly wages with loss of pay for days missed. That monthly figure builds from the attendance record itself, with holidays and approved leave already counted into it.
03 Daily wages
The hands you take on for a dispatch week or a season are paid per day worked, straight from their own check-ins, so the order book can move without a second wage sheet appearing.
04 Salary slips
Print the month for every operator and helper: the earnings line, the days behind the wage, and whatever came off for a festival advance. The seventh stops being a queue at the accounts window.
05 Leave
Leave stops being a request shouted at a supervisor on the floor. It arrives with dates and a type, is approved or marked loss of pay, and the wage figure follows the decision.
Rolling it out
Set the plant boundary first, wide enough to hold the shop floor, the stores and the maintenance bay, then check that a man standing at the far end of the shed is inside it. Load the shifts next, including the one that crosses midnight, with the grace you genuinely allow at the gate. Office staff go on last; they are the easy part and they teach you nothing. In week one expect missed check-outs from the shift that leaves in a hurry and stay-backs nobody punched for. Correct those from the admin desk, and say at the shift briefing that a stay-back with no check-out is a stay-back you cannot pay for.
A worked example
Suppose an operator is on INR 19,800 a month against a twenty-six day wage month. His day figure is INR 19,800 / 26 = INR 761.54, rounded to two decimals. He missed two days beyond his leave: 2 x INR 761.54 = INR 1,523.08 off, so INR 18,276.92 is payable. A helper taken on for the dispatch week at INR 620 a day worked nine days: 9 x INR 620 = INR 5,580. The two hours he stayed on Thursday show in his check-out time, and the overtime rate applied to them is worked out by you. What you owe is set by your own wage agreement and by what your state notifies for this category of work.
Not for you if
- Your packing bay is paid by the carton or by the piece. VTClock pays per day worked or per month, and it does not count output of any kind.
- You want the overtime amount calculated and added to the wage. The record holds check-in and check-out times; the rate and the multiplication stay with your accountant.
- Hands paid by a labour supplier do not belong on this roll. You would be keeping attendance for wages somebody else settles, against a bill that stays his count.
Frequently asked questions
Our operators stay two hours extra when a dispatch has to go. Does the app work out the overtime amount?
No. VTClock records the check-in and the check-out, so the day shows that a man left at half past ten instead of two, and that record is there when the amount is questioned. Applying an overtime rate to those hours and adding the money to the wage is done by whoever prepares your wage sheet, outside the product.
A power failure sends the second shift home at four. Is that a half day or a full day?
That is your call, and the record will hold whichever way you call it. The check-in and the check-out are both there, so the day is visibly short. An admin marks it as a half day, a full day or loss of pay from the console, and the monthly figure follows the mark instead of following an argument at the counter.
Half our floor is a gang supplied by a labour contractor. Should they be on this?
Only if you pay them directly. Where the contractor pays them and bills you per head, the wages are his, and the thing you actually want is an independent headcount to check his bill against, which VTClock is not built to produce. Hands you pay yourself, on a day rate or a monthly wage, go on the roll like anyone else.
Our maintenance fitter gets called in at midnight when a machine goes down. How does that day get counted?
He checks in when he reaches the plant and checks out when he leaves, the same as on any other day, and the record then shows a punch on a day that was his weekly off. Whether that becomes a paid extra day or a day off later is your policy. VTClock does not decide it and does not compute a rate for it.
We give the whole floor an advance before the festival. How does it come back?
Each advance is recorded against that person and the recovery spreads across the months that follow, at an amount you set. Every printed slip until it clears shows the advance, the instalment taken this month and what is still outstanding, so a man who has forgotten taking money in October can read it on his own slip in January.
Two of my older operators do not carry a smartphone. What happens to them?
Check-in happens on the worker's own phone inside the geofence, so a man without one cannot punch for himself. An admin can enter his attendance from the console and his wage builds from that, which is workable for two or three people. If a large part of your floor is in that position, the record stops being something the floor creates and becomes typing.
Similar businesses
- WarehousesPickers, loaders and forklift operators come through one gate on shifts that overlap by an hour, and half of them are paid by the day.
- ContractorsFifteen men on the slab this week and nine of them were somewhere else last week.
- Security agenciesYou deploy guards at client gates you do not own, on day and night reliefs, and the muster sits in thirty registers.
- Facility services companiesA facility management company sells deployed headcount, then spends the last week of every month proving it.
- Transport fleetsThe first thing a fleet owner wants to know is whether an attendance app can follow a driver on the highway.
Modules to look at
- AttendanceGeofenced check-in and check-out near assigned offices, with shift grace, late marks and overnight shifts handled for you.
- SalaryMonthly pay builds from attendance fractions, holidays, weekly offs and approved leave, so there are no side calculations.
- Daily wagesPay wage-based staff per day worked, straight from the attendance record. Built for crews and site work.
- Salary slipsBranded, printable slips with earnings, an attendance summary and advance recovery. Staff see the same figures you print.
- LeaveStaff apply with dates, type and attachments. Approve, reject or mark loss of pay without chasing WhatsApp threads.
Terms worth knowing
- Overtime payOvertime pay is the extra amount an employer pays for hours worked beyond the normal daily or weekly hours fixed for a job.
- Loss of payLoss of pay, usually written LOP, is a day an employee is absent with no leave balance or approval to cover it, so the employer pays nothing for that day.
- Daily wageA daily wage is an amount fixed for one day of work and paid for each day the worker actually attends.
- Shift grace periodA shift grace period is a fixed window after the shift start time in which a check-in is still treated as on time.
- Overnight shiftAn overnight shift is a shift that begins on one calendar date and ends on the next, such as 9:00 pm to 6:00 am.
- Payable daysPayable days are the number of days a monthly salary is spread across, and the number of days in a given month the employee is actually paid for.
See VTClock set up for manufacturing units
Tell us your headcount, your shifts and how you pay people today. We will walk through the modules that fit and the ones you can leave off.