Radna evidencija
Time clock kiosk: one tablet at the entrance instead of a pile of paper
A time clock kiosk solves the problem every field company hits sooner or later: workers who cannot or will not use their own phones for clocking in. One tablet at the site entrance, one PIN per worker, and attendance records itself. I have set up kiosks on construction sites, in workshops and in cleaning companies — this guide covers the hardware, the setup, the failure points, and what it costs.
The searches differ — tablet time clock, punch clock app, shared device clock-in — but the need is the same: a fixed point where workers register arrival and departure without personal devices. A kiosk is not a rival to phone clock-in; in practice the two run together. Most of the crew punches on their own phones, and the kiosk covers the rest: older workers, borrowed crews, anyone whose phone stays in the car.
- Kiosk mode: a tablet locked to the punch screen at the site entrance
- One PIN per worker — arrival and departure in about four seconds
- Works offline — punches queue on the tablet and send when the network returns
- Same records as phone and QR punches: one attendance list, no merging
- Automatic split into regular, overtime and weekend hours
- Excel and PDF exports for the accountant
- No app store and no accounts on the tablet — the app runs as a PWA
- Works alongside QR stickers and phone clock-in on the same site
When a kiosk beats personal phones
Three situations, in my experience. First: crews where half the people carry phones that barely make calls — you cannot build attendance on hardware you do not control. Second: companies where the owner simply does not want work apps on private devices, either as policy or because workers pushed back. Third: fixed locations with steady traffic — a workshop, a warehouse, a large site with one entrance — where a single device at the door is faster than twenty individual punches. If your people are scattered across small sites that change weekly, phones with QR stickers fit better; the kiosk earns its place where the entrance is one and the crew is many.
The setup: a tablet, a stand, a PIN per worker
The kiosk is an ordinary tablet running the same app in kiosk mode — locked to the punch screen, nothing else on it. Each worker gets their own PIN; arrival is type PIN, confirm, done — about four seconds. Mount the tablet at the actual entrance, at chest height, on permanent power: a cheap wall mount or a stand on the foreman's container desk both work. Do not overthink the hardware — a mid-range tablet survives a container office or a workshop wall without trouble. The punches land in the same records as phone clock-ins and QR scans, so the office sees one attendance list regardless of how each worker punched.
Offline, power cuts and other boring details
A site kiosk lives in worse conditions than an office terminal, and the boring details decide whether it survives. Network: the kiosk works offline — punches queue on the device and send themselves when the connection returns, so a dead router at 7 a.m. does not mean a lost morning. Power: keep the tablet on a charger permanently and check the cable weekly; a dead battery is the most common kiosk failure I see, and it is always discovered at the worst time. Position: under a roof, out of direct rain and sun. None of this is complicated, but skip one item and you will hear the site has gone back to the notebook within a month.
Buddy punching: what a PIN can and cannot stop
Honest answer: a PIN alone does not stop a worker from giving a colleague their code. What works is not more technology but placement and cross-checking. Put the kiosk where punches are visible — next to the foreman's container, at a watched entrance, not behind the warehouse. Compare attendance against the daily report: if the log says eight people and the foreman's photos show six, you have your answer within a day. In practice buddy punching is a marginal problem blown out of proportion by vendors selling face recognition. The loss that actually shows up in the numbers is sloppy paper records, rounded-up hours and lost timesheets — and a kiosk kills those on day one.
One system: kiosk, phone and QR feed the same records
The kiosk should never be an island with its own export. It is one of three ways into the same attendance record: personal phone with one-button punch and a logged location, QR sticker scanned at the site, and the kiosk PIN. A worker can punch on the kiosk in the morning at the yard and scan a QR at a client site after lunch — the office still sees one clean timeline. That matters for payroll: regular, overtime and weekend hours are split automatically from the same records, exports for the accountant come out in Excel or PDF, and nobody merges two attendance sources by hand at month end.
What a kiosk setup takes
The hardware you probably already own, or buy for under €200 — a tablet and a mount. We do not publish a price here, because it depends on how much of the work we automate and how many people use the system. After a short conversation and a look at your workflow you get a concrete quote for your company, with no obligation. You buy a package of modules — say work hours, kiosk mode, payroll calculation and exports — and add more later. You can see everything that exists at /moduli, how it looks at real companies at /rezultati, and request a process analysis for your own company at /kontakt.
Your process is different. That is fine.
None of these systems is a template. Show us how the work runs at your place and we will tell you what can realistically be connected.
Request a process analysisFrequently asked questions
What hardware do I need for a time clock kiosk?+
An ordinary tablet, a mount or stand, and permanent power. No dedicated punch-clock hardware, no card readers, no hardware vendor subscriptions. A mid-range Android tablet handles a container office or a workshop wall without trouble. The app runs on it in kiosk mode, locked to the punch screen, so the tablet does nothing else. If the location is rough — dust, rain — spend money on a case and a roof over the mount before spending it on a better tablet.
How do workers clock in on a kiosk?+
They type their personal PIN and confirm — arrival on the way in, departure on the way out. Four or five seconds per punch. There is nothing to install, no card to lose, no account to remember; the PIN is assigned once and the worker keeps it. New workers are added in a minute and get a PIN immediately, which makes the kiosk convenient for borrowed crews and subcontractor workers who are on site for two weeks and then gone.
Does a time clock kiosk work without internet?+
Yes, and on real sites it regularly has to. Punches are stored on the tablet and sent automatically when the connection comes back — workers keep punching normally during the outage and nobody repeats anything. What you must provide is power: unlike a phone, the kiosk has no owner charging it every night, so it lives on a permanent charger. A dead battery, not a dead network, is the most common reason a kiosk goes quiet.
Can the kiosk stop workers punching for each other?+
A PIN cannot physically stop it, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something. What works: place the tablet where punches are seen — by the foreman's container, at a watched entrance — and cross-check attendance against the daily site report with photos. Discrepancies surface within a day. In my rollouts, buddy punching turned out to be rare and short-lived once people knew the records were compared; the losses that actually moved the numbers came from paper — rounding, memory, lost sheets — and those end the day the kiosk goes up.
Can we mix the kiosk with phone clock-in?+
That is the normal setup, not the exception. Most of the crew punches on personal phones with one button and a logged location; the QR sticker covers weak GPS and old phones; the kiosk covers everyone who does not use a personal phone at all. All three feed one attendance record, so payroll and exports see a single list. Start with phones, then add the kiosk once you see who actually cannot or will not punch on their own device — usually you know within the first two weeks.