Tracking part-time and shift staff hours

A small restaurant's labor mix is usually a few full-time managers and a much larger pool of part-time shift staff, servers, line cooks, dishwashers, hosts. The shift staff is where most time-tracking systems get awkward: high turnover, mixed hourly rates, and a strong allergy to anything that requires an account.

The counter-tablet pattern

Put a tablet on a flat surface at the front-of-house station or in the back office. Staff tap their name to clock in on arrival, tap again to clock out at end of shift. Optional PIN if you want a verification step, workers set their own PINs the first time they tap their name.

New staff get added in one minute: open the workers page, type a name, save. They can clock in for their first shift five seconds later. No onboarding flow, no account email, no app install.

What ends up in payroll

At the end of each pay period, open Reports, set the date range, hit Export CSV. Each row is one shift: name, email, station tag (kitchen/front-of-house/bar/prep), start time, end time, duration in hours and seconds. Feed the file into Gusto, ADP, or whoever runs your payroll.

The CSV schema is locked. Once your payroll provider accepts the file, it won't break on you because of a Kangaroo Clock update. Column adds happen at the end so existing pivots keep working.

Handling tipped staff

KC tracks hours, the wage calculation runs in your payroll provider. For tip-pool math specifically, the station tags give you per-station hours, which most tip-pool methods need as inputs. We deliberately don't compute wages or tips ourselves because the rules vary by state and ordinance.

Back to the restaurants hub, station-level hours, or the free time card calculator.