Forgot to Clock In or Out
What happens when staff forget to clock in or out, and how managers fix it.
People will sometimes forget to clock in or out. Hopshift handles both situations without manual chasing — but the recovery flow depends on which one happened.
Forgot to Clock Out
A daily job runs each night and closes any clock-in sessions that were never clocked out. The auto-close:
- Sets the clock-out time to 23:59 of the day the employee clocked in (employee's timezone).
- Marks the record as Auto-closed and Pending review.
- Sends a notification to the employee ("Your session was auto-closed") and to their manager ("This needs review").
The manager then opens Approvals → Clock-in, sees the auto-closed record, and either approves it as-is or edits the time to the correct one before approving.
Auto-close uses end-of-day so payroll has a value to work with even if no one reviews the record. The review step is what makes the time accurate.
Forgot to Clock In (or Clocked in at the Wrong Time)
The employee submits an Attendance Correction Request from the app:
- Open the app and go to Attendance.
- Tap Request Correction.
- Pick the correction type:
- Missed clock-in — they were at work but didn't open the app.
- Missed clock-out — they left without clocking out.
- Late clock-in — they clocked in after they actually started.
- Wrong time — the recorded time doesn't match reality.
- Accidental — they clocked in by mistake.
- Enter the correct time and a short reason.
- Submit.
The manager reviews it in Approvals → Corrections:
- The card shows the employee, requested change, and (where available) the original clock-in photo as a thumbnail.
- Approving updates the underlying clock-in record. All changes keep a full audit trail (
originalTime,editedBy,editedAt). - Denying leaves the record untouched and sends the employee a reason note.
When the Admin Just Wants to Fix It Directly
An admin can edit any clock record without going through a correction request.
- Open Clock-in & Attendance at the group level.
- Find the row, click into the record.
- Adjust the time.
The original time is preserved on the record so the change history stays visible.
Direct edits skip the employee's input, so they're best for clear cases (e.g. you already spoke to the employee in person). For ambiguous cases, have the employee submit a correction so their reason is captured on the record.