How to Clock Someone In or Out Manually After the Fact

A volunteer worked the 9 a.m. shift but never tapped their name on the tablet. A line cook clocked out at noon when he actually left at 11:40. An event lead texts you two days later saying the whole setup crew was there by 7 but the kiosk was still in the van. None of this is unusual, and none of it has to end up as a wrong number on payroll. As the admin, you can add a missing entry or fix a bad one directly, and you can do it so the time card stays clear about what happened.

Here is the full process, in the order you would actually do it.

Find the manual entry screen

Only admins can add or edit punches, and only admins sign in (workers never have accounts, so they can never edit their own time). Sign in with your magic link, then open the worker's time card. That is where every entry for one person lives, sorted by date, and it is where you add a punch after the fact. The exact buttons and field names are laid out in the FAQ on how to clock someone in or out manually, so keep that open in a second tab if you want the reference alongside the real thing.

You are looking for two actions on the time card: add a new entry, and edit an existing entry. Adding covers the volunteer who never tapped in at all. Editing covers the punch that exists but has the wrong time on it.

Add a punch that never happened

Use this when there is no entry at all for a shift the person actually worked.

1. Pick the worker. Open the right person's time card. If you have people organized into worker groups, filter to the program or role first so you are not scrolling past 40 names.
2. Set the clock-in date and time. Enter when they actually started, not when you noticed the gap. A clock in is the start of the entry, and everything downstream (total hours, the CSV, any grant report) is built from this timestamp.
3. Set the clock-out date and time. Enter when they actually left. If the shift crossed midnight, set the clock-out date to the next day so the entry does not read as a 23-hour marathon.
4. Confirm the time zone reads right. Kangaroo Clock stores every time in UTC and shows it in your local time, so as long as you are entering times as you experienced them locally, they will display correctly for you and anyone else viewing in the same zone.
5. Add a tag if you use them. Tag the entry by event or program so it lands in the right filtered report later. This is the difference between a five-minute grant pull and an afternoon of guessing.
6. Write the note (see below), then save.

Once saved, the entry appears on the time card exactly like a kiosk punch would, with a start, an end, and a total. It counts toward that person's hours and toward the distinct-worker count in your export.

Correct a punch that has the wrong time

Use this when an entry exists but a timestamp is off. Common cases: someone forgot to tap out and the auto-close cutoff stepped in, or a person tapped out later than they actually left.

Open the entry on the time card and edit the specific field that is wrong. If a forgotten clock-out was auto-closed, you will see an entry that ends at its start time plus your cutoff, never at the current time, so the reported hours were never inflated in the first place. Your job is just to replace that estimate with the real clock out time. Change only what needs changing, leave the correct field alone, add a note, and save. The total recalculates on its own.

If you are unsure what the corrected total should be before you commit it, run the two timestamps through the time card calculator to check the math against what you expect to pay.

Leave a note payroll can actually use

Every manual add or edit should carry a short note. This is what separates a defensible record from a number someone changed for reasons nobody remembers three weeks later. A good note answers three questions in one line: what you changed, why, and on whose word.

Concrete examples that work:

• Added 9:00-13:00, kiosk was in the van, confirmed by shift lead Maria.
• Corrected clock-out 12:00 to 11:40, cook left early, per manager.
• Auto-close replaced, actual out 15:15 per volunteer text 6/12.

Notes like these mean that when payroll or a grant auditor asks why one entry was hand-entered, the answer is right there on the record. Vague notes ("fixed") create the exact questions you were trying to avoid.

Check the result before you close the book

After you add or correct entries, do a quick pass on the affected time cards for the pay period. Filter by worker group or tag, glance at the daily totals, and make sure nothing reads as an overnight shift by accident. Then run your CSV export. The column schema is stable and never breaks, so the file you hand off looks the same every period, and the distinct-worker count reflects the people you actually added.

If payroll wants decimal hours rather than HH:MM, convert the totals rather than eyeballing them; a 40-minute shift is 0.67 hours, not 0.40, and that gap adds up across a crew. Fix the entries, write the notes, export, and the after-the-fact correction is done. If you have not set up a workspace yet, you can start a free workspace and try the manual entry flow on a test person before your next shift.