Logistics and storage
Warehouse attendance, from the gate to the far dock
Pickers, loaders and forklift operators come through one gate on shifts that overlap by an hour, and half of them are paid by the day. This page is for the person who signs that payroll every month.
Last reviewed: September 2026
What the team looks like
A warehouse runs on a thin salaried layer sitting on a thick daily-wage one. Salaried: the warehouse manager, two or three shift in-charges, an inventory controller who walks the racking with a cycle-count sheet, a dispatch supervisor and a clerk who keys in inbound entries. Paid by the day: pickers who work the aisles, packers at the tables, loaders and unloaders, a couple of forklift operators and a housekeeping hand. Headcount swings hard with the season. A site that runs thirty-five people through June runs seventy in the week before a big sale, and the extra thirty-five come in for eight days through a supervisor who knows them from last year.
What a day looks like
Inbound trucks are queued at the dock before six. The unloading crew works the first two hours flat out, breaking down pallets while the clerk keys in what came off each vehicle, and the morning shift starts picking against the day's list at eight. Put-away runs in whatever gaps the docks leave, and the forklift moves between the racking and the staging lane all morning.
The second shift walks in at two, and for an hour both shifts are on the floor together. Outbound cut-off is the hard line of the day: any carton not packed and staged by eight in the evening misses the line-haul vehicle. On a bad evening the in-charge asks four loaders to hold on until the last truck is sealed and the manifest is signed, somewhere near midnight.
Where attendance goes wrong
The sale-week hands exist only in a supervisor's notebook
You take on thirty extra pickers for the eight days before a big sale, hired through a supervisor who knows them from last season. Their names live in a notebook in his shirt pocket. Three weeks later somebody asks who worked the Thursday night, and the notebook has already been through a wash.
The overlap hour at shift change belongs to nobody
Both shifts are on the floor between two and three, and the pick faces are crowded. The register takes one signature at the top of each shift, so a second-shift packer who strolled in at two thirty looks the same on paper as the one who came in early to help clear the backlog. The in-charge saw it and said nothing.
The register sits at the main gate and the loaders use the dock
One book, one gatekeeper, one entry point at the front. Loaders and unloaders walk in through the dock apron at the back because that is where the trucks are, so the book never sees them at all. Come month end their days get rebuilt out of what the dispatch supervisor thinks he remembers.
Stay-back after the outbound cut-off is agreed on the floor
Four loaders are asked to hold on until the last line-haul vehicle is sealed and the seal number is written on the manifest. Nobody notes down when they finally walked out. On payday one of them says he stayed past midnight three times, the in-charge remembers twice, and the argument eats an afternoon.
A day off gets cleared on WhatsApp and never reaches accounts
A picker messages his in-charge late on Saturday asking for Monday off because of a function at home, and gets a one-word reply back. Nobody carries that reply to accounts, so Monday is marked absent, the deduction lands on his slip, and he is standing at the office door on the second.
Which modules to switch on first
01 Attendance
One compound, one geofence, and a punch that registers only inside it. Shift grace and the late allowance are set per shift, so the overlap hour stops hiding a second shift that came in late.
02 Daily wages
Pickers, loaders and the sale-week hands are paid per day worked. The day count comes off the attendance record itself, so the supervisor's notebook stops deciding what accounts pays out at the end of a peak week.
03 Leave
A picker applies for Monday with a date and a reason instead of messaging his in-charge. You approve it or you mark it loss of pay, and accounts sees the same decision you made.
04 Salary
Managers, shift in-charges and the inbound clerk draw a monthly figure that still has to move with holidays, weekly offs and approved leave. It builds off the same record the floor punches into.
05 Salary slips
A loader who can read his own slip argues less. Earnings, the day count for the month and any advance being recovered sit on one printable page, in the figures the office is holding.
Rolling it out
Add the warehouse as one office and draw the radius first. A compound with a dock apron, a truck parking yard and an office block at the front is larger than it looks on a map, and a tight radius blocks honest punches at the far dock. Then set your shifts with their grace, the weekly off pattern and the holiday list. Tell the floor at the shift briefing that the phone comes out before the pick list. Week one brings wrong-shift punches; correct those from the admin desk.
A worked example
Suppose a shift in-charge draws INR 24,000 a month and your cycle counts 26 payable days. INR 24,000 / 26 = INR 923.08 a day, rounded to two decimals. He takes two days of loss of pay in the sale week: 2 x INR 923.08 = INR 1,846.16 off, leaving INR 22,153.84. A loader on the same floor is on INR 610 a day and worked 24 of them: 24 x INR 610 = INR 14,640, off the same record. The rates are illustrative; your own daily rate sits against the schedule notified for your state and category of work.
Not for you if
- Your pickers come from a manpower contractor who pays them himself. You would be recording attendance for people whose wages his invoice already decides.
- You want cases picked per man-hour or lines closed per shift. This records who was on the floor and for how long, and nothing at all about output.
- Your staff shuttle between two of your own warehouses in the same week. Each person is assigned to one office, so every cross-site day needs an admin correction.
Frequently asked questions
We take on twenty extra hands for the sale week. Do they have to be set up like permanent staff?
They have to exist as employees before their days can be counted, which means a name, a login code, an assigned office and a wage per day. That is a few minutes each. Once the week is over, their record keeps the days they actually worked and the wage you paid, so nobody has to reconstruct any of it from a notebook in December.
Our compound is large and the far dock is a long walk from the office block. How wide should the radius be?
Wide enough that a loader standing at the far dock can check in without walking to the front. Draw it against the boundary of the compound including the truck parking yard. The radius is configured per business rather than fixed, and the 200 m circle on the homepage picture is an example. Draw it too tight and you will spend week one correcting honest punches.
Our shifts rotate every week. Can a picker move from morning to second shift without redoing his record?
Yes. The shift is a setting on the employee record, so an admin changes it and the next day's check-in is judged against the new timings, including the grace and the late allowance you configured. Overnight shifts are handled as one stretch rather than split across two dates, which matters if you keep a night crew on inbound.
A loader's phone dies at the far dock before he punches out. What happens to that day?
The punch has to happen while the phone is working and connected, because there is no offline check-in that syncs later. A missed check-out does not fill itself in overnight. An admin corrects that day from the console and the wage builds from the corrected day. Keeping a charging point in the in-charge's cabin takes most of this problem off your desk in week two.
Half my floor comes through a labour contractor. Does this cover the registers a principal employer has to keep?
No. VTClock keeps your own record of who checked in and builds pay from it. It does not produce or maintain any register required of a principal employer under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, and it does not compute, deduct or file EPF, ESI, professional tax or TDS on salary. Your consultant handles that side and will tell you what your state expects this year.
Can my night shift in-charge approve leave himself while I am asleep?
Only if you make him an admin. There are two kinds of access here, staff and admin, with no separate manager role and no approval chain that routes a request through a shift in-charge and then to you. An admin gets the full console, including the salary side, so think about that before you hand the access over.
Similar businesses
- Transport fleetsThe first thing a fleet owner wants to know is whether an attendance app can follow a driver on the highway.
- Manufacturing unitsYour 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.
- ContractorsFifteen men on the slab this week and nine of them were somewhere else last week.
- Retail shopsThere is one of you and there are two shops.
- Facility services companiesA facility management company sells deployed headcount, then spends the last week of every month proving it.
Modules to look at
- AttendanceGeofenced check-in and check-out near assigned offices, with shift grace, late marks and overnight shifts handled for you.
- Daily wagesPay wage-based staff per day worked, straight from the attendance record. Built for crews and site work.
- LeaveStaff apply with dates, type and attachments. Approve, reject or mark loss of pay without chasing WhatsApp threads.
- SalaryMonthly pay builds from attendance fractions, holidays, weekly offs and approved leave, so there are no side calculations.
- Salary slipsBranded, printable slips with earnings, an attendance summary and advance recovery. Staff see the same figures you print.
Terms worth knowing
- GeofencingGeofencing is drawing a circle of a chosen radius around a work location and accepting an attendance punch only when the employee's phone reports a position inside that circle.
- 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.
- Daily wageA daily wage is an amount fixed for one day of work and paid for each day the worker actually attends.
- 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 warehouses
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.