Track remote attendance by recording when each person starts and stops work each day, either with a manual check-in or automatically from their work activity. Automatic tracking is more reliable, because nobody has to remember to clock in. Combine it with clear working hours, a grace period for lateness and a simple leave process.
Key takeaways
- Attendance answers "who worked today, and when". It does not measure productivity.
- Manual check-ins fail quietly. People forget, and nobody notices.
- A grace period makes lateness rules fair.
- Daily hours for non-exempt staff are a legal record in the US.
What does attendance mean for a remote team?
In an office, attendance is visible. Remotely, it has to be recorded. A useful record gives each person a status for each day:
- present
- late
- absent
- on leave
- on a public holiday
- weekend or non-working day
It also keeps the start time, end time and total hours behind the status.
What are the ways to track remote attendance?
| Method | How it works | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat check-in | A "good morning" message | Free | No real record, easy to forget |
| Shared spreadsheet or form | People enter their own times | Simple | Easy to alter, tedious to compile |
| Clock-in button | A click in a web or mobile app | A clear record | Still manual, and someone else can click it |
| Status in chat tools | Presence inferred from a status light | No effort | A green light is not work |
| Automatic, from activity | Derived from tracked working time | No effort and hard to fake | Needs clear monitoring rules |
What should you record?
- start and end time each day
- breaks, where your rules or the law require them
- total hours
- daily status
- leave type and who approved it
- any correction, with the reason
For non-exempt employees in the US, the Department of Labor requires records of hours worked each day and total hours each workweek. In the EU, the Court of Justice ruled in 2019 that member states must require employers to have an objective, reliable and accessible system for recording daily working time.
How do you handle lateness, leave and holidays?
Lateness
Set a grace period, such as 10 or 15 minutes after the start time, and apply it to everyone. Without one, a two-minute delay becomes a recorded offense.
Leave
Use one route for requests and approvals, and keep a record of who decided and when.
Holidays
Keep a holiday calendar for each country you employ people in, so a public holiday is never marked as an absence.
Corrections
Things go wrong: a laptop fails, a connection drops. Allow a manager to correct a day and require a note.
What should a remote attendance policy say?
- core hours, and each team's time zone
- how to report sickness or an unplanned absence
- break rules
- how lateness is defined
- what the tracking software records
Which mistakes should you avoid?
- Treating presence as performance. Attendance says someone worked. It says nothing about what they achieved.
- No grace period.
- Ignoring time zones. A start time has to be local to the team.
- Silent corrections. Edits without a note undermine the record.
- Tracking outside working hours.
How does BirdsEye track remote attendance?
In BirdsEye, attendance is derived from tracked activity, so there is no separate clock-in system.
- Daily status. Each person is marked present, absent, late, on leave, on holiday or on a weekend, every day.
- Late detection. Someone counts as late once they pass a grace period after their start time.
- Not-started alerts. A push notification to a manager's Android phone when someone has not begun work.
- Manual correction. Override a day's status and add a note explaining why.
- Leave requests. Vacation, sick, personal or other leave for a date range, with a record of who approved or denied it.
- Holiday calendar. Defined once and reflected in attendance.
- Per-team hours. Teams can have their own start and end times.
- History. A calendar and recent-attendance view for each person.
See the attendance features.
Frequently asked questions
How do you track attendance for remote employees?
Record each person's start and end time every day. The most reliable way is to derive it automatically from their tracked work activity.
What is the best attendance tracking method for remote teams?
Automatic tracking from work activity, because it needs no action from the employee and is hard to fake. Small teams can begin with a clock-in button.
How do you handle time zones?
Set working hours for each team in its local time, and measure lateness against that schedule.
Is attendance tracking the same as time tracking?
No. Attendance records whether and when someone worked each day. Time tracking records how long, and usually on what. Good tools produce both from the same data.