Site Clock (GPS Timesheets)

The site clock lets people clock on and off a job from their phone. At that moment, and only at that moment, the phone shares its location, and ORCA checks it against the job's site. The result goes straight onto the timesheet: start, finish, hours, and whether they were on site when they did it. Switch on travel and overtime and it also works out paid travel, overtime bands and labour cost.

Engineers can use a personal link with no login at all, or sign in by text and use their own Today page. Either way, they add it to their phone's home screen once and from then on it behaves like an app.

Switching It On

Site Clock is a module with its own entry in the main navigation. The ORCA team switches it on for your account. If you can't see Site clock in the menu, ask for it.

Once it's on, an admin opens Site clock and clicks Setup. It's one page with five parts, and ORCA finds most of the fields by name if you let it.

Where the jobs are. Pick your Jobs section (jobs, projects, installs, whatever you call them). Then say which field is a job's site address, or leave it on find-by-name, or choose none and let a supervisor pin each site from their phone. You can also pick a number field on the job to Add the hours to a total on the job, usually Hours Actual, so costing keeps itself current.
Where the timesheets go. Either Make a new section for them (with Operative, Date, Job, Start, Finish and Hours, linked to your jobs) or use a section you already have that links to the jobs. An existing one needs a Date field and Start and Finish time fields. If you use an existing section, you also choose the picklist that records who clocked on (Operative, Employee or Staff are found automatically), or choose to name links only.
People and distance. Tick to list everyone on Staff when making links, as well as the people in the picklist. Contractors without an ORCA login can still be added by name. On site means within sets the fence around each job's site, 150 metres unless you change it.
Travel. See Travel below.
Overtime and labour cost. See Overtime below.

Click Switch on Site clock (or Save, once it's running). You can come back to Setup any time.

If something it needs is missing, ORCA says what, and doesn't switch on until it's there. Setup also adds a Site Check tab to the timesheet section, with these fields:

Shift: On the clock or Clocked off
Site Check: On site, Off site, Site not pinned or No location
Clock On Location and Clock Off Location: a line in plain words for each end of the shift

Pause

At the bottom of Setup, Pause stops phone links working and stops the night-before texts. The timesheet section and its records stay as they are. Switch the clock back on from Setup and it carries on where it left off, links included.

If the ORCA team switches the module off for your account, everything stops in the same way and your timesheets stay.

Job Sites

ORCA needs to know where each job is before it can say whether someone is on site. It works that out in this order:

Pinned on site: a supervisor stands at the job and taps Pin this job's site where I'm standing on their phone. This always wins.
From the address: if the job's site address is an address field, ORCA uses its pin, including one you've dragged to the gate.
From the postcode: if the site address is plain text with a postcode in it, ORCA looks the postcode up once and keeps the result.

A postcode's point is the middle of the postcode, which on an industrial estate or a rural site can be a few hundred metres from where people actually work. Pin those, or use an address field and drag its pin.

Jobs with no site can still be clocked on to. The timesheet just says Site not pinned.

People

The People list on the Site clock page is where you give people their way in. It lists everyone with the Operative role (set under Settings > Users), and shows each person's mobile, whether they have a link and when it was last used, and today's job if they're on one.

Next to each name, depending on what they have:

Text sign-in: texts them a link that signs them in on their phone. See Signing in by Text.
Text clock link (or Text link, Text a link if they have no link yet): texts their personal clock-on link on its own. If they are on a job in today's calendar, today's job goes with it.
Make link: makes a link for someone who has none, when your account can't text.
Copy link: copies their link so you can send it yourself.
Switch off: stops their link working on their phone straight away.
Sign out phone: ends a text sign-in on a lost or handed-on phone. They sign in again by text.

Texting needs a mobile on the person's profile (add it in Settings > Users) and the account's own texting number. If texting isn't set up for your account, people still get links, you just copy them across yourself.

For a contractor, or anyone not on that list, open Add someone else, or a contractor by name. Choose them from the list or type a new name, tick Can pin job sites for supervisors who should be able to set a job's site from their phone, then click Text them a link or Show the link here. The link is shown once with a QR code. There's no password: the link is the key, so treat it like one.

Each person has one live link. Making them a new one switches the old one off, and a shift started on the old link can be finished on the new one.

Clocking On and Off

On the phone, they pick the job and tap Clock on. Jobs they're planned on today come first (from the calendar), and the rest are searchable underneath.

The phone takes up to eight seconds to get a good location, then shows the result:

On site, with how far they are from the site pin and how accurate the phone's GPS was
Off site, with the distance
Site not pinned, when the job has no site yet
No location, when the phone couldn't get a fix. They can still clock on, and the timesheet says why there's no location.

While they're on the clock, the phone shows the job, a running timer and a Clock off button. Clocking off works the same way, fills in Finish and Hours, adds the hours to the job's total, and turns Shift to Clocked off.

Site Check describes the whole shift, so it shows the worse of the two ends: a shift that started on site and finished somewhere else reads Off site.

A shift left on

If someone forgets to clock off, the shift doesn't count once it has been open for more than 18 hours. The next time they open the clock, a note tells them that shift wasn't clocked off and hasn't counted, and that the office will put the finish time in. They can clock on as normal. The shift turns up in the review queue (see below) with a Finished at box for you.

Travel

Tick Pay travel to and from site in Setup (part 4) if you pay engineers for the journey. On a site day, the phone then offers two buttons side by side: Set off (leaving home now) and Clock on (at the job now). After clocking off, a Home button appears: tap it when you get in. A workshop day is just clock on and off. Someone who taps Set off by mistake can cancel it, which removes that timesheet.

Set the number of minutes at the start of each journey, there and back, that are not paid (30 unless you change it). The timesheet gets Set Off, Home and Paid Travel fields. Where people set off from and get home to is kept with the tap, never shown on the board's map.

Paid travel is worked out from the timesheet's own times, so a time put right in the office counts the same as a tap. On a day with more than one job, Set Off sits on the first timesheet and Home on the last, so each journey is counted once. The drive between two jobs in a day is paid in full.

Overtime and Labour Cost

Tick Work out overtime and each timesheet's labour cost from the clock in Setup (part 5). A table appears with a row for each day of the week:

Paid hours before overtime
Unpaid lunch (minutes)
Overtime at: time and a half or double time
Double time after: an optional time of day, such as Saturday from 13:00

A new setup starts with Saturday at time and a half until 13:00, then double time, and a 30-minute unpaid lunch on Saturday and Sunday. Change any day to suit you. Days you have changed are left alone if setup is run again.

Below the table, set the hours a day must run past before lunch comes off, and the cost per hour for normal time, time and a half, double time and travel.

Each person's whole day is worked out together. Lunch comes off a day worked longer than your limit, normal time runs up to that weekday's paid hours, then overtime. Travel never counts towards the day, and is costed at its own rate. Each timesheet gets Normal Hours, OT 1.5 Hours, OT 2 Hours and Labour Cost, and they are worked out again whenever a time on that day is put right.

The drive between two jobs in a day is paid in full as travel. If the same job and the same place appear twice (clocked off for lunch, back on again), that gap is a break, and unpaid.

After changing the rules

Timesheets made before you switched overtime on, or before you changed its hours or rates, keep their old figures until they're worked out again. The ORCA team can do that for your whole account with one command (orca:clock-recompute), so ask if you change your rules.

What the Office Sees

Clocking on or off shows up in the office as it happens. A note pops up on whatever ORCA page you're on, and the timesheet list refreshes in place with the row highlighted.

The Site clock board shows:

a map of the job sites, each with its fence, and a pin for everyone on the clock. It opens on your account's own city until there are sites to show.
On the clock now: who, which job, the result, and how long they've been on
Today: every clock on and off so far
People, for admins
Job sites: every open job and where its site came from
Night-before texts and Replies: see Night-Before Texts

Click a job name to open the job, or a person's name to open that shift's timesheet. Along the top are buttons to the jobs and timesheets sections, the planner (if your account has it), and for admins, Review and Setup.

On the timesheet itself, a Site check panel shows a map of where the phone was at clock on and clock off, the coordinates (each a link to Google Maps), and the GPS accuracy. The server's clock is what counts; if the phone's own clock was more than two minutes out, the panel says so.

The Review Queue

Admins can click Review on the board to open Timesheets to look at. It lists timesheets from the last 30 days that need a person before the hours are trusted. Each row shows the date, who, the shift and the reasons it's here:

No job: nothing is linked, so its hours reach no job. Pick the job and click Put on job.
Away from the site: clocked on or off away from the site, or with no location. Click Checked, fine once you've looked.
Still on the clock: a clock off was missed on an earlier day. Type the time in Finished at and click Save, or click Checked, leave it.
Set off, never clocked on: someone set off from home on an earlier day and never clocked on. Click Checked, leave it if that's right.
No Home tap: a day that began with Set off has no Home tap, so no evening travel is paid. Type the time in Home at and click Save, or click No evening travel.
Over 14 hours: usually a clock off charged to a shift left on days before. Fix the Finished at, or click Checked, hours are right.
Over 90 minutes between jobs: a long gap between one job's clock off and the next clock on, paid in full as travel. Worth a look in case it included lunch or a stop. If your timesheets have a Drive From Last Job (min) field, a box called The drive took appears: put in the real drive time and click Save. Otherwise click Checked, the drive was that long.

A row leaves the queue once it's fixed or marked as checked. The "no Home tap" and "Set off, never clocked on" reasons only appear if travel is switched on.

Location and Privacy

Location is read when someone clocks on and when they clock off, and when they tap Set off or Home. Nothing in between, and nothing when the link isn't open. That's deliberate: it's the version a site team is happy to use.

A few things worth knowing:

Staff location is personal data. Tell your team what is recorded and why before you start. The ICO has guidance on monitoring workers, and a data protection impact assessment is worth doing. This isn't legal advice.
No signal means nothing is sent, and the phone says so. They can try again once they have signal.
It's a record, not proof. It shows where the phone said it was. Someone determined enough can fake a phone's location.

The Engineer's Today Page : job cards, scope ticklist and Clock on in one place
Night-Before Texts : texting engineers tomorrow's job, and handling replies
Signing in by Text : how engineers sign in without a password
Accounts & Users : the Operative role and each person's mobile
Address Fields : giving a job a site address with an exact pin
Working with Records : timesheets are ordinary records, and link to their job