Keep an attendance register

What the Attendance register is for

The law (the BCEA, section 31) makes an employer keep, for each employee, a record of the time they worked and what they were paid, for three years from the last entry. The Pay Run already keeps the pay side. The Attendance screen keeps the other half: each person's month, day by day. You do not type every day. Worklog fills the days in from the person's usual week, if the Staff Register has one, or otherwise from a guess based on how many days a week they work; leave comes from the Leave screen and public holidays from Worklog's calendar. You tap a day when it was different — then confirm the month.

⚠️The Pay Run reads the register once the owner turns on Pay from the attendance register in Business details, from a date. From then, each confirmed day is paid as it stands: a day marked Absent comes off their pay, overtime is paid at the rate recorded, and Sunday and public holiday hours are paid as the BCEA asks. A day a pay run has paid stays as it was paid: to change it, void that pay run, or correct the day (below) and the next pay run pays or takes back the difference. Until it is on, record unpaid leave and overtime in the Pay Run exactly as you do today.

Attendance is not the Time Log. The Time Log records hours against a customer's job, so you can bill them. The register records whether each employee was there, for the Labour Department. Contractors are not employees, so they are not on it.

Before you start

The person must be an employee in your Staff Register, with their days a week and hours a day filled in. The register splits a day into normal hours and overtime at their hours a day — or, where the Staff Register has their usual week, at that day's hours.
Attendance is one of the payroll tools, so it is on the Team and Complete plans. It is not available on the Solo plan.
It has its own row under Team, in Payroll, so you choose who may look at it, who may change it and who may confirm a month (Approve).
Someone you have removed from the Staff Register, or made a contractor, stays in the Person list, marked, for as long as they have days in the month you are looking at. You can look at and print those days, but not add more or change, confirm or remove the ones there.

Fill in a month

Open Attendance, then pick the person and the month at the top.
Read the calendar. Each day shows the hours it will count as. Worked days show their hours, a public holiday shows Holiday, leave from the Leave screen shows Leave, days off show a dash, and a day Worklog can't guess shows a dashed ?.
Tap a day that was different. Choose Worked, Absent or Day off.
For a worked day, type the start, the finish and the meal break, or just the hours. Worklog works out the hours and says how it split them, for example 11 hours worked: 9 normal and 2 overtime.
If there is overtime, choose what it is paid at: × 1.5, × 2 or × 1 for an extra shift. Add a note if you want one, then tap Save.

💡Times are optional. Some sectors require more: in retail and wholesale (Sectoral Determination 9), the register must show the start, finish and meal times of each day worked, and the employee's signature for each day. Type the times if yours does. The PDF has one signature line for the employee for the whole month, not one per day, so have each day signed as well if that applies to you.

How the hours are split

Up to the person's hours a day is normal. Anything over that is overtime, at × 1.5 unless you choose otherwise. With a usual week, it is that day's hours: a 7-hour Saturday on a week with a 5-hour Saturday is 5 normal and 2 overtime.
A day they do not ordinarily work, such as a Saturday on a Monday-to-Friday week, is all overtime, unless you tick One of their normal working days on that day.
A Sunday is paid × 2, or × 1.5 when Sundays are one of their ordinary workdays: a seven-day week, or — at any days a week — tick Sundays are one of their ordinary workdays on that Sunday.
A public holiday worked is paid × 2 when it is one of their normal days — or, where it is more, their normal day's wage plus what the hours earned, the hours past their day as overtime at × 1.5 (BCEA sections 18(2)(b) and 10). When it is not one of their days, they are paid their normal day's wage plus the hours worked, earned as an extra day's are, at × 1.5 (BCEA section 18(3)), not × 2. Above the BCEA earnings threshold, section 10's overtime rate doesn't apply and the hours count as worked. Tick They would ordinarily have worked this day when it was one of theirs. The screen and the PDF say which way each holiday is paid.
A public holiday that falls on a day they would ordinarily work is paid as a normal day even when they do not work it. It shows under Paid, not worked.
Someone below the BCEA earnings threshold who works less than four hours on a day is paid for four hours' work on that day (BCEA section 9A). The pay run adds the hours short of four the way that day's hours are paid: normal hours on one of their days (overtime past a day shorter than four hours), overtime on a day that isn't theirs, and Sunday or public holiday hours on a Sunday or public holiday — so two hours on a public holiday that isn't theirs are paid their normal day's wage plus four hours at × 1.5. Where the day already pays more — a daily wage or a salary for one of their days, or the Sunday and public holiday minimums — nothing is added. A shift through midnight is one day's work, not two short days. Paid leave on the same day counts toward the four hours; a day with no work, such as Absent, a day off or short time with no hours, is not one. Above the threshold it doesn't apply. Nor does it for someone set to Never on the Staff Register's BCEA overtime and Sunday rates — below the threshold, Never is only for someone the BCEA's working-time chapter doesn't cover (section 6(1): a senior manager, sales staff who travel and set their own hours, or someone who works under 24 hours a month for you). The calendar, the register and the payslip still show the hours worked; the confirm note and the payslip say which days were paid as four hours.
A shift through midnight is paid as the day most of it fell on (BCEA sections 16(5) and 18(5)). A Saturday 22:00 to Sunday 06:00 shift is all Sunday work, a Saturday 18:00 to Sunday 02:00 shift is all Saturday's, and an equal split goes to the Sunday or public holiday — between a Sunday and a public holiday, to the holiday. The row stays on the day the shift began, and the box under the times says which day it was paid as.
The day a shift through midnight is paid as is linked to it. A public holiday it lands on was worked through that shift, so it shows Hol ← and is not paid again as not worked (BCEA section 18(5)). A holiday recorded as paid, not worked beside such a shift, or recorded as worked through a shift that no longer lands on it, holds up confirming until you save it again. On any other day of theirs, Confirm waits until you say what the day itself was: their own shift, or a day off. The law's day is the 24 hours from when the person starts work (BCEA section 1), so a shift that day which began within 24 hours of the night shift shares the day's normal hours with it, the earlier one first, and the rest is overtime (sections 9 and 10) — 8 hours overnight from 22:00 and 3 more from 08:00 are 8 normal and 3 overtime. A night worker's next night, from 22:00 again, is a day of its own. So on a day a night shift is paid as, the day's own shift needs its start and finish: hours alone can't say which it is. Saving the night shift brings the next day in step for you: its own shift split again, or its holiday recorded as worked through it, or paid again if the shift no longer lands on it.
Work after 18:00 or before 06:00 is night work (BCEA section 17). The day sheet says how many hours of a shift were night work, counted from its start, finish and meal: the meal comes off the daytime part first. Night work needs the person's agreement, with an allowance or shorter working hours, and transport to and from work (section 17(2)): record it on the Staff Register. Worklog warns when someone works at night with no agreement recorded, and never blocks. For someone paid a night-work allowance, each worked day needs its start and finish before the month can be confirmed. Someone who works more than an hour after 23:00 at least five times a month, or 50 times a year, works at night on a regular basis (section 17(4)), and the screen says what the employer then owes them.

The tiles under the calendar add up the month: Normal hours, Overtime, and Sunday or holiday hours. Below them, Paid, not worked lists the public holidays and paid leave, and Unpaid lists absences and unpaid leave.

Which days they work

The best answer is the person's usual week: which days they work and the hours on each. Set it with Set their usual week, beside their hours under the person and the month (you need edit access to the Staff Register), on the Staff Register form, or from Fill the ? days. Worklog then fills their days in from it, says so, and guesses nothing: a day of leave, a public holiday or a pay run's leave on their 5-hour Saturday is 5 hours, not their 8-hour day. The days it fills in are still suggestions — you tick that they are right before confirming. Days nobody has recorded follow a changed week at once; days already recorded or confirmed keep what they say until you save one again: a worked day is then split at the new week's hours, and a public holiday is paid what it was recorded at, or the new week's hours for that day if those are fewer (its sheet says so before you save).

Without a usual week, the Staff Register says how many days a week a person works, not which days. On exactly 5, 6 or 7 days a week, Worklog guesses Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday or every day, and the screen says it is a guess. Someone who works Wednesday to Sunday is guessed wrong, so tap the days that were different. Any other number, such as 3 or 5.5, gets no guess: every day that Leave and the calendar do not explain shows a dashed ?, weekends and public holidays included, and you tap each one and say what happened.

A public holiday that is not one of their days — in their usual week, or on Worklog's guess — or any public holiday where there is neither, is not marked paid. Tap it and tick They would normally have worked this day if it was one of theirs.
A Saturday worked can be ticked as One of their normal working days, so it is not overtime. A Sunday worked has its own tick, Sundays are one of their ordinary workdays, which pays it × 1.5 instead of × 2.
It works the other way too. On a day of their usual week, or a day Worklog guessed is one of theirs, the same tick starts ticked: untick it when that day is not one of their days. A public holiday is then not paid (worked, they get their normal day's wage plus the hours, BCEA section 18(3), not × 2), Absent takes nothing off their pay, and hours worked on it are all overtime. So a Wednesday-to-Sunday worker guessed Monday to Friday can have a Monday holiday recorded as it was.
The month cannot be confirmed while a day that is over still shows ?. Tap each one first, or use Fill the ? days in one go, below.
Days filled in from their usual week or Worklog's guess are confirmed only once you tick that the days nobody has tapped are right as shown.

Fill the ? days in one go saves about thirty taps. It appears under the note about days that are not recorded yet, when you can record days, and it fills only the days still showing ? that are over. Say which days of the week the person works (Works or Off) and how many hours each day. The hours start from the Staff Register's hours a day. The sheet then says exactly what it will write, for example 20 weekdays worked (8h), 4 Saturdays worked (5h), 4 Sundays off, and what it will not touch: days you already recorded, leave, a pay run's leave you placed, days before they started or after they left, and days still to come. It leaves alone a day a night shift from the day before is paid as, too: whether the two are one day needs that day's own start and finish, so the sheet names it and you tap it. It also leaves alone days the Leave screen may cover but Worklog cannot place (leave whose dates hold more weekdays than days, or that has no end date): the sheet names them, and you tap each one, or change that leave entry's dates and days on the Leave screen to just the days away. Do not record the leave again as a new entry: the Leave screen already holds it, so it would come off the balance twice. Tick that you have checked it against what happened in the month, then tap Fill. The tick goes again if you change anything, including the person's hours or days a week in the Staff Register. If you can edit the Staff Register, you can also tick Also keep these as their usual week: once the days are filled, the choices are saved as the person's usual week, so next month is filled in from it and shows no ?. Hours past their hours a day are kept at their hours a day, because the fill counts those as overtime.

Each filled day is built the way tapping it would build it: a day marked Works is one of their ordinary days, so hours up to their day are normal and the rest is overtime at × 1.5. A Sunday marked Works means they ordinarily work Sundays, so it is paid × 1.5 (BCEA section 16), and the sheet says so.
A public holiday that shows ? is named on the sheet. On a weekday they work it becomes Public holiday, paid, not worked (BCEA section 18), for that weekday's hours — up to their normal day, so a Saturday worked at 5 hours is paid 5 hours. On a weekday they are off it becomes Public holiday, not paid — still the holiday, by name, just as tapping the day and choosing Public holiday would record it.
Filled days are saved as Entered, the same as days you tapped, never as Suggested. You can still change any of them, and the month still needs its own Confirm, which needs Approve access.
Nothing is remembered for next month: you choose the days again, which keeps the register to what you said about that month.

Leave

Leave is recorded in one place, the Leave screen, and is never typed twice. A day that Leave covers shows here by itself. If you tap a day and choose Leave, Worklog opens the Leave form with the person filled in and that day as both the start and the end, so the leave lands on that day and no other. Half a day of leave shows as a half day, with the rest of the day counted as worked on one of their usual days. Leave whose dates leave no choice is shown on those days, a Saturday or Sunday included: annual leave dated Saturday 19 September, start and end, shows on that Saturday, for someone on 5.5 days a week or anyone Worklog guesses does not work Saturdays. Record leave is not offered on a day the Leave screen already covers — if that day was recorded here as something else, Back to the leave shows it — or on a day Leave holds leave around but cannot place, or anywhere inside the dates of a Leave entry that is shown on other days (a 1-day entry with no end date starting on a Saturday, shown on the Monday, still holds that Saturday). Change that entry instead: a second entry over the same days would come off the balance twice. Inside the dates of a pay run's leave it is offered with a warning: if the day was part of the pay run's leave, don't record it again; sick or family leave there is recorded as usual. The Leave form also refuses more days than its dates hold.

A pay run records leave as a number of days and not always the dates, so leave booked that way is not put on the calendar, and it cannot be given dates on the Leave screen, where a pay run's leave cannot be changed. A note on the screen says how many days and which pay run. Tap each day it covered, choose Leave, then From the pay run, for a whole day or half a day. Any day up to a month after the pay run's date (and the days its booked leave takes, for a long stretch from a start date) is offered, so leave taken weeks before a catch-up run goes on the days it was really taken. Each day you place remembers which pay run it came from, so every pay run is counted on its own, in any order, and never more than it booked is offered: a leftover of less than half a day, which the register cannot place, is said on the screen and does not hold anything up. Do not record it again on the Leave screen: the pay run already counted it, so it would come off the balance twice. The month the pay run was paid in cannot be confirmed until all of it is placed. Public holidays are never offered. If that pay run is later voided, the days you placed from it stay, marked, and their month cannot be confirmed until you place each one again from the pay run that replaced it (the day offers it) or take it back. A day you placed that the Leave screen later covers too is marked as well: take it back with the day's button (it says what the day goes back to), then place the pay run's leave on the day it was really taken. A pay run can also book leave with dates that Worklog still cannot turn into days — for someone whose days are not known, or whose dates hold fewer of the days Worklog guesses are theirs than the pay run booked: the note names it by its dates, only those days offer it, and you place it the same way — it cannot be changed on the Leave screen, where a pay run's leave is read-only. Once all of it is placed, its other days are ordinary days again.

Two leave entries on the same day are flagged for you to check on the Leave screen. Worklog does not move one of them to another day.

Confirm the month

When the month is right, tap the Confirm button. It names what it confirms: Confirm September for Sipho once the month is over, and Confirm September to Tue 15 Sep for Sipho while it is still running.
Only days that are over are confirmed. A day to come cannot be recorded or confirmed, and today is confirmed only once you have entered it: until then it is Worklog's guess, not what happened. So a month still running is confirmed up to yesterday (or today, once entered) and the rest on a later day. A month that has not started cannot be confirmed.
Worklog writes each of those days down as it is. A confirmed month is the record. It keeps each day as it was confirmed, even if the person's work pattern or their leave changes later.
You can still change a confirmed day. Worklog keeps a note of who changed it and when, and the month shows as changed until you confirm it again.

Confirm waits while anything would be written that nobody said: a day that is over and still shows ?, or leave a pay run booked without dates that is not placed yet (or more of it placed than the pay run booked, or a day placed from a pay run that has since been voided). The screen lists what is left. Where days were filled in from their usual week or Worklog's guess, tick The days nobody has tapped are right as shown first. It also waits for a day of theirs a night shift is paid as, until you say what the day itself was, and for a public holiday recorded as paid, not worked beside such a shift (or worked through a shift that no longer lands on it). So does a day's own shift beside such a night shift that has no times, and two shifts in one day saved before Worklog split them together: tap the day and save it again. None of these holds up a day a pay run has paid — that is corrected instead. For someone a pay run reads the register for, the screen says above the button what confirming says the month pays, in days and hours.

⚠️Confirming needs Approve access to Attendance on the Team screen. Edit access lets someone record days, and change a confirmed day, but not confirm a month. Confirm, PDF and CSV are also switched off, with the reason shown, when your login cannot open the Leave screen, or when Leave, the Staff Register, the list of people, or the person's days (including the days that place a pay run's leave) did not load: the screen then shows the error, not a month, because a month built without them would show Worklog's guess as if it were the record.

💡Tap a day with a small dot in its corner to see what changed. A navy dot is a day you have changed and not yet confirmed. An amber dot is a day that changed after confirming, or one the Leave screen now disagrees with. Back to what Worklog suggests undoes your change.

Correct a day a pay run has paid

Sometimes a mistake turns up after the pay has gone out — overtime that wasn't recorded, or a day marked worked that was a day off. Voiding the pay run puts it right, but once that month is filed or paid out, correct the day instead. Whoever may confirm a month (Approve on Attendance) can do it.

Open Attendance, pick the person and the month, and tap the paid day.
Tap Correct this paid day. The day opens for changing.
Change it to what it should have been, and say why — the reason stays with the correction.
Tap Save the correction. The day is confirmed again as corrected, and Worklog keeps both: the day as it was paid and as it is now. Where the correction changes the next day too — a night shift moved onto or off a public holiday, or a morning shift that shares its day — and that day is paid as well, it is corrected with it, in the same save: both are corrected, or neither is, and the sheet says so. The pay run counts the two as one correction: money moved from one day to the other isn't taken back, so it asks for the person's written agreement only for what the two take back together (BCEA section 34).
A paid day that was really leave — they were off sick, say — is corrected to the leave too. Record the leave on the Leave screen first, for that day alone (the day sheet's Record leave does it), then open the day, tap Correct this paid day, choose Leave and save: the day becomes that leave, and the next pay run pays or takes back the difference (unpaid leave takes the day's pay back, with their written agreement).

The person's next pay run shows the correction on their Earnings card: the day, the reason, and what it adds or takes back, priced as the pay run that paid the day priced it — its rate, their pay type then, and whether the BCEA's overtime and Sunday rates applied to them then. It is part of their gross, so UIF and PAYE are worked out on it, and any overtime in it counts as overtime on their IRP5 (code 3607). You can leave it for a later pay run. Until a pay run pays it, it is listed at the top of Attendance with the pay run that paid the day, for anyone whose login can see the Pay Run. Someone who has left has no next pay run: tick them on a new pay run to pay what is waiting. A pay run can only take pay back out of pay it makes, so if their corrections take back more than is owed, ask your accountant how to settle them. Pay owed to someone who has left goes on a new pay run for them, so PAYE, UIF and their IRP5 include it. What no pay run can settle — a correction that takes back more than is owed to them, or one for someone no longer on the Staff Register — is settled outside the Pay Run as your accountant advises, then cleared from the list on the Attendance screen by whoever can approve pay runs, with a note of how it was settled. While a correction is cleared, the pay run that paid that day can't be voided or turned down. A clear made by mistake can be reopened from the cleared list under it, by whoever can approve pay runs, saying why: the correction waits for a pay run again, and once nothing else holds that pay run it can be voided again. Reopening doesn't undo what was settled outside the Pay Run — a pay run would then pay or take the correction back again, on top of it — so reopen only a clear made by mistake, or once that settlement is undone.

⚠️Taking money back off someone's pay needs their written agreement (BCEA section 34). Whenever a correction takes pay back, the pay run asks you to tick that they agreed in writing to that amount, or to leave the corrections for later. The tick names the debt: the days they were overpaid for and the amount of each. An employer may not deduct from pay unless the employee in writing agrees to the deduction in respect of a debt specified in the agreement (BCEA section 34(1)(a)). Without that agreement the run may not take it back, so leave the corrections for a later pay run. The Act also says an employer may not require or permit an employee to repay remuneration except overpayments the employer made by an error in calculating it (section 34(5)(a)); that limits what can be asked back and does not let you deduct it. The amount they agreed to is kept with the pay run and printed on the payslip. If the pay run that paid the day is voided or turned down instead, the correction falls away: the day is paid again in full, as corrected.

Short time

Short time is an agreed, temporary cut in someone's hours — a three-day week in a slow season, say. Tap Put them on short time next to their usual week, give the first and last day, the hours they work on each day while it lasts, and why. While it lasts, Worklog fills their days in as short time: the hours worked, and the rest of the day not worked and unpaid by agreement. A pay run that reads the register pays the hours worked. You can also mark a single day Short time on its day sheet.

Short time needs the employees' agreement, or a consultation where the law asks for one. Keep the agreement — the reason you type points to it.
Short time is on their own days only. On a Sunday it is a day not worked at all.
Short time doesn't take away the four-hour minimum. Below the BCEA earnings threshold, a short-time day worked for less than four hours is paid for four hours' work on that day (BCEA section 9A), out of the hours the arrangement leaves unpaid: an agreement between an employer and an employee can't vary it (section 49(3)). A short-time day with no hours worked isn't paid.
A public holiday inside short time is still a public holiday, paid as the day would have been under the arrangement: the hours the arrangement has on that day, and the rest of the day unpaid by the same agreement (BCEA section 18(2)(a) pays the wage they would ordinarily have received for that day). A holiday on a day the arrangement has no hours on is not paid.
One arrangement at a time per person. To end one early, open Short time and tap End it today.
Days already recorded keep what they say: short time only changes the days Worklog fills in.
Their UIF may pay a reduced-work-time benefit for the hours lost. Your accountant declares it.

Print it for signing

Under the calendar, tap PDF for the person's month on one A4 page, with a line for the employee and one for the employer to sign the month (one signature each for the whole month, not one per day), or CSV / Excel for the same rows in a spreadsheet. A month with many long notes can run onto a second page; no row, and not the signing lines, is ever split across two. The page lists the days up to today, and each row says whether it is Confirmed, Entered (typed in, not yet confirmed), Changed (edited after confirming), Suggested (filled in from their usual week or Worklog's guess, nobody entered it — the note under the table says which) or Not recorded, so a guess is never passed off as a fact. Keep the signed page with your wage records for three years.

Good to know

⚠️The BCEA lets an employer ask for at most 3 hours of overtime a day and 10 a week, by agreement. Worklog warns when a day or a week goes past that, but never stops you saving, because an agreement or a sector can allow more.

Worklog works from the general rules of the BCEA. For a specific question about an employee's hours or pay, speak to a registered labour or payroll practitioner.

Still stuck? Open the in-app help assistant, or email us at hello@worklogsolutions.co.za.

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