Retail time and attendance FAQs
What retailers ask before putting a system in, including the parts suppliers tend not to volunteer. If yours is not here, call the Leeds team on 0113 350 9043.
What is the best time and attendance software for retail shop floor staff?▼
One that lets staff clock in quickly without a queue at opening, copes with part-time and variable hours, and works across several stores without charging per shop.
Syncro Connect does that with the Syncro Connect app on staff phones, a browser in the back office, or a terminal in the stockroom, all feeding one set of records and one payroll export. If rota building is the main thing you need today, that is a Realtime feature until it arrives in Syncro Connect later in 2026.
Which time and attendance platforms support multi-store retailers?▼
Look for one record per person across every store, a live view of who is on shift in each shop, managers restricted to their own store, and pricing per person rather than per location. Syncro Connect works that way: head office sees the whole estate, each store manager sees their own team, and somebody covering at another branch appears once with their hours split by store.
Can we track hours across all our stores without a clocking machine in every shop?▼
Yes, and for a lot of retailers that is the sensible answer. Staff clock in on the app on their own phone, or in a browser on whatever computer is already in the back office, and the records are the same either way. A terminal earns its place where a store is big enough to have a queue at opening, or where you would rather not depend on personal phones. You can mix the two across an estate, so the flagship gets hardware and the small shops do not.
Does it cost more if we have more shops?▼
No. It is £2 per employee per month excluding VAT wherever they work, so six stores of eight people cost the same as one store of forty-eight. Per-location pricing is common in this market and it lands hardest on exactly the retailers who most need to see the whole estate, so it is worth asking anyone you talk to how they charge before you compare headline figures. Our
full pricing is published.
How quickly can we set up forty seasonal staff for Christmas?▼
About a minute each, and taking them off again in January is quicker. Cards issue in seconds, and entering a leave date stops clocking and any door access together, so nobody is still carrying working entry to the stockroom in February. The slow part of a seasonal intake is rarely the software though. If your November bottleneck is actually recruitment or paperwork, a clocking system will not shift it.
Can one person clock in for someone who is running late?▼
With a shared card or a shared terminal, yes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. Biometric clocking makes it much harder, because a fingerprint cannot be passed across the staff room. On the app, the location is recorded at the moment of clocking, so somebody clocking in from home looks like somebody clocking in from home. None of this is proof on its own. It is a record, and what makes the difference is a manager who looks at it.
Do we have to tell staff before we introduce biometric clocking?▼
Yes, and there is more to it than telling them. Biometric data used to identify someone is special category data under UK GDPR, so you must carry out a data protection impact assessment before you start, and you should offer an alternative such as a card or a PIN for anyone who does not want to take part. If you rely on consent, that consent only holds up where a real alternative exists, which is why the ICO
ordered Serco Leisure to stop using facial recognition for attendance in 2024. Read the
ICO guidance on biometric data for time and access control before you commit. We will set up cards alongside biometrics if you want both.
How does it handle someone who covers at another store?▼
One person, one record, whichever store they clock in at. Their hours arrive in one place regardless of which shop they were in, and the store shows against the shift, so you can see who has been covering where. The alternative, which is how per-site systems usually end up working, is the same person set up twice and two sets of hours to add together at the end of the month.
Will part-time, student and variable hours be a problem to set up?▼
No, that is the normal case here rather than an exception. More than half of all UK retail jobs are part time, so a system that only handled full-timers cleanly would be no use to the sector. Somebody working two evenings a week, somebody on eight hours one week and twenty the next, somebody on a different contracted figure from everyone else: all recorded the same way and calculated against whatever rules you set. Variable hours are where estimating goes wrong, so they are where recording pays for itself.
Does it connect to our EPOS or till system?▼
No, and we would rather say so than let it come up later. We record hours and hand them to
payroll. Sales, stock and till operation belong in your EPOS. If you want labour hours set against sales by hour, that comes from putting our hours next to your sales data in a spreadsheet or a reporting tool, not from an integration between the two. Worth establishing before you buy, because it is the sort of thing that gets nodded through in a demo.
Can staff see their own hours and book holiday from their phone?▼
Yes, on the £3 per employee per month tier, which includes the
Syncro Connect app. On the £2 tier the
holiday and absence side still works, but through the web software with a manager doing the entering rather than staff serving themselves. For retail the app tier usually pays for itself in Saturday phone calls not made, but it is a real choice rather than a formality.
Will staff resent being asked to clock in?▼
Some will at first, and how you introduce it matters more than which system you choose. What changes minds is staff being able to see their own hours, because on variable hours being paid for the extra twenty minutes at closing depends on somebody having recorded it. Where it goes badly is when clocking is slow at a busy handover, or when nobody explained why it appeared. If you are replacing an arrangement where managers rounded hours generously, expect some of that conversation too.
What records do we actually have to keep?▼
Two separate duties, and the software gives you the evidence for both rather than discharging them for you. For the minimum wage, it is your responsibility to keep records proving you paid it, and since 1 April 2021 those must be kept for six years rather than three: see gov.uk on
minimum wage record keeping. For working time,
regulation 9 of the Working Time Regulations requires records adequate to show the
weekly working hours and night work limits are being met, kept for two years. A time-stamped record of every shift and every amendment is a better answer to an enquiry than a manager’s memory of a Tuesday.
How long until it is running, and can we try it in one store first?▼
Staff can start clocking on the app from the first day, and most retailers are fully set up within about two weeks of payment, plus installation time if you want terminals. The real work is agreeing the rules: contracted hours, when overtime starts, how breaks are handled, what happens when somebody stays late to cash up. You can start a
free trial and run it in one store before committing the estate, which is the sensible way round, because a single store will find edge cases neither of us thought of.
