Clocking in and out

Half past eight, coat still on, someone already waiting. The tablet at the desk is showing one card: Clock in / out. Type four digits, press Next, go.

The PIN does both

There is no green button and no red button. When you enter your PIN, RewireBox asks one question — does this person have a shift open right now?

• No open shift, so you must be arriving: it clocks you in.
• A shift already open, so you must be leaving: it clocks you out, and tells you how long you worked.

The confirmation clears itself after a few seconds so the next person walks up to an empty PIN box, and there's a Done button if you'd rather not wait.

This is one button on purpose. At a busy desk, a stylist squeezing past shouldn't have to work out whether they're coming or going — and half the mistakes a punch clock collects come from someone hitting the wrong one of two buttons.

You cannot end up clocked in twice. RewireBox allows exactly one open shift per person, so a double-tap, or two people using two tablets, still leaves one shift.

The Task box, and unpaid time

Task labels what kind of time this is, and — the part that matters — whether it counts as paid. Your salon decides the list; the usual shape is Lunch unpaid, Training and Admin paid. Anything marked unpaid shows Unpaid beside its name in the picker.

Leave it alone and the shift is paid. That's the default, and it's the right answer nearly every time.

Unpaid time is recorded, then contributes zero to what you're paid. Nine hours in the building with an hour of unpaid lunch is eight paid hours, and both numbers stay visible — one for the honest record of the day, one for pay.

Where the PIN comes from

Four to six digits, set by a manager on your staff record, and no two people in the salon can have the same one.

It's stored scrambled, which has one consequence worth knowing: nobody can look yours up. Not your manager, not us. If you forget it, they clear it and set a new one — the same as a bank never being able to read your old PIN back to you.

That's also why the card shows Set PIN and Clear PIN whether or not you already have one: the screen genuinely can't tell. If clocking in isn't working and you're not sure you were ever given a PIN, ask for a fresh one rather than trying to remember.