From Kiosk Demo to Real Workspace in One Sitting

You have fifteen minutes to decide whether this works for your crew. Good. That is enough to run the whole thing: clock a few people in, pull an export, and stand up a real workspace that matches. You will not have to redo the setup once you commit, because the pieces you test in the demo are the same pieces you configure for real.

Open the demo and clock someone in

Start at the live kiosk demo. It opens as a shared-tablet kiosk with a list of names, exactly what a worker sees taped to a wall or propped on a front desk. Tap a name. That person is now on the clock. Tap the same name again and they clock out. No login, no app, no account. That is the entire interaction a volunteer or a line cook ever has to learn.

Do this two or three times with different names so you have a mix of open and closed entries. Leave one person clocked in on purpose. You will use that in a minute to see how forgotten clock-outs are handled.

If you want to see the QR path too, that is the second way in: a worker scans a posted code and lands on their own clock-in screen. Same result, no tablet required. The demo shows the kiosk; the QR and personal-link options behave the same way once you run your own.

Check the dashboard and the export

Switch to the admin view. The dashboard shows who is on the clock right now, which is the one question you actually ask during a shift or an event. The person you left clocked in is sitting there in the live list. That is expected.

Now pull a CSV export. Open it in whatever you use for payroll or grant reporting. Look at the columns: worker, start, end, duration, plus a distinct-worker count at the summary level. The schema is fixed and does not change between exports, so a formula or a template you build against it keeps working next month. If the numbers matter to you, run them through the time card calculator to confirm the totals match what you expect before you trust the file.

About that person still clocked in: a stale open entry does not sit open forever, and it does not close at the current time, which would inflate hours. It closes at its start time plus your cutoff. So a shift someone forgot to end reads as a normal-length shift, not a 14-hour one. The mechanics are spelled out under auto-close if you want the exact rule.

Note what you want to keep

The demo runs on sample names and generic settings. Before you build the real thing, jot down the handful of decisions you already made while poking at it:

• The list of worker names you actually need on the kiosk.
• Whether you want the tablet kiosk, a posted QR code, personal links, or a mix.
• Tags you will attach to entries (by event, shift, or task) and worker groups you will use to split people by role or program.
• The auto-close cutoff that matches your longest real shift.

This is the part that saves you the second setup. Everything you decide here maps one-to-one onto the real workspace, so you are copying answers, not reinventing them.

Build the real workspace

Go to start a free workspace. You sign in as an admin by magic link, so there is no password to invent. Workers still never sign in; that does not change when you go from demo to real.

Add your worker names, the ones you wrote down. Set up the kiosk on the tablet you will actually use, or generate a QR code to post. Create your tags and worker groups now, while the list is small, so your first export is already filtered the way you want. Set the auto-close cutoff to something a little past your longest shift.

Clock a couple of real people in as a smoke test. Pull one export. Confirm the columns look like the demo file did. If they match, you are done configuring, and you can hand the tablet to the front desk without a training session.

What it costs and where the limits are

The first 500 recorded hours are free, with unlimited people. After that it is $10 a month or $100 a year, flat. Not per seat, not per location. Clock-in never stops working, no matter the hour count; only the admin pages ask for a card once you cross the free tier. The flat pricing means adding a second event or a bigger volunteer roster does not change the bill.

Two things it deliberately does not do, so you are not surprised later. It does not move or hold money; it is not payroll, it produces the hours file you hand to whoever runs payroll. And it does not watch anyone: no screenshots, no GPS, no location tracking, no activity logging. That is permanent, not a missing feature. The tool records that someone was on the clock, and nothing about where they were or what they did.

Run the demo, write down your four decisions, and rebuild them in a workspace. Two files that match, one sitting, and you never touched a worker login.