Set Up Auto-Close for Forgotten Clock-Outs

A volunteer taps their name to clock in at 9 a.m., works a three-hour shift, and walks out the door without clocking out. If nothing catches that open entry, your report shows them on the clock for 9 hours, or 30, or until you notice. One forgotten tap turns a clean shift into a number you have to hunt down and fix by hand.

Auto-close fixes this before it reaches your report. It watches for entries that stay open too long and closes them at a fixed point you decide, not at the moment you happen to look. Here is how to set it up from start to finish.

What auto-close actually does with a stale entry

The key detail: an auto-closed entry is closed at its start time plus your cutoff, never at the current time. If someone clocks in at 9:00 a.m. and your cutoff is 8 hours, the entry closes at 5:00 p.m. and logs 8 hours flat. It does not matter whether you review the report that evening or three days later. The number stays the same.

That is the whole point. A forgotten clock-out can never keep counting hours that nobody worked. Compare that to closing an entry "now," which would balloon a missed tap into days of phantom time. If you want the mechanics spelled out with examples, the guide to setting up auto-close covers the edge cases too.

Turn it on and pick a cutoff

Only admins touch these settings. Sign in with your magic link, open your workspace settings, and find the auto-close control. Turn it on, then set the cutoff. That is the number of hours an entry can stay open before the system steps in.

Choosing the cutoff is the one real decision here. Set it a bit longer than your longest realistic shift. A few starting points:

• Restaurant or cafe: your longest single shift might run 9 hours with a slow close. A 10-hour cutoff gives room without letting an overnight forget rack up 20 hours.
• Event crew: a load-in-to-teardown day can hit 12 hours. Set 13 or 14 so a genuine long day is never truncated.
• Tutoring center: sessions are short. A 4-hour or 5-hour cutoff catches a forgotten tap fast and keeps totals honest.
• Volunteer shift: most run 3 to 4 hours. A 6-hour cutoff leaves margin for the person who stays late to help stack chairs.

The trade-off is simple. Too short and you clip real long shifts, forcing manual fixes. Too long and a forgotten tap logs more hours than someone worked before auto-close catches it. Err slightly long, because a truncated real shift is a bigger correction headache than a small overcount you can trim.

Decide what the auto-closed card should show

Once a cutoff fires, the entry is closed at start plus cutoff, and it should be marked so you can tell it apart from a normal one. Do not treat an auto-closed card as gospel. Treat it as a flag that says "someone forgot, check this."

For each auto-closed entry, decide one of two things before it hits payroll or a grant report:

1. The cutoff time is close enough. If the worker really did leave around then, accept it and move on.
2. You know the real end time. If the shift lead remembers the volunteer left at 12:30, correct the entry to the true clock-out. Auto-close gives you a safe default, not a locked value.

Either way, the number in your export is bounded and predictable. If you are new to what belongs on one of these records, the auto-close glossary entry and its neighbors explain the terms in plain language.

Check your work before payroll week

Do not wait for the pay period to discover a bad cutoff. After you turn auto-close on, run a small test. Clock a name in, leave it open past the cutoff, and confirm the entry closes at the right time and gets flagged. You can practice the clock-in step yourself in the live kiosk demo without setting anything up.

When it is time to pull numbers, export your CSV. The column schema is stable and never breaks, so the same script or spreadsheet works every period. Scan for auto-closed rows first, correct any you have better information on, then process the rest. If you need to sanity-check totals, drop the raw hours into the time card calculator and confirm the math before it goes anywhere.

Build habits that make auto-close a backstop, not a crutch

Auto-close is a safety net, not a substitute for clocking out. A few things reduce how often it fires:

Post a clear reminder at the exit or by the kiosk. "Tap your name to clock out" at eye level does more than any setting. Put the clock-out step in your shift-lead's closing routine, right next to counting the cash drawer or locking the supply closet. And glance at your dashboard during the day. It shows who is on the clock right now, so a name still showing at 8 p.m. when the event ended at 6 is your cue to fix it before it ever needs auto-closing.

Set the cutoff once, test it once, and the phantom-hours problem stops being something you manage. To get a workspace running, start a free workspace, turn on auto-close, and run a test clock-in the same afternoon.