Skip to main content
A running timer at two hours and forty minutes, with the note, position and clock-out control beside it A running timer at two hours and forty minutes, with the note, position and clock-out control beside it Hours reach a timesheet five ways: somebody clocks in here or in the app, they start from a shift on their own schedule, a wall-mounted terminal records them by fingerprint, face, card or PIN, their phone clocks them in as it reaches a workplace under automatic clocking, or you type the entry in yourself. Whichever it was, the entry’s Clocking mode column says so, and the Source filter finds all of one kind.
Adding or changing time on somebody else’s row needs Edit others’ time entries. That permission replaces your own-row one rather than adding to it, so a role without it can record its own hours and nobody else’s. If Add time never lets you pick a person, that is why.

Clock in, pause, clock out

The tracking bar sits above the table. Write a note in the Add note field if the work needs one, pick a position and a location, then press Start. The timer runs in place, and the entry appears in the table straight away as In progress. Clock out asks you to confirm before it saves, because there is no undoing a clock-out into a running timer. Breaks exist only where a break policy covers the person; until an administrator creates one, there is nothing to press. Pause starts a break and Resume ends it. A paid break counts as worked time; an unpaid one comes off the paid hours.
The tracking bar above the table, carrying a note, the position, the location, the time clocked in at, a running timer, and the pause and clock-out controlsThe tracking bar above the table, carrying a note, the position, the location, the time clocked in at, a running timer, and the pause and clock-out controls

The bar runs above the table it is writing into

Add time for somebody who forgot

1

Open the period the work happened in

Move to the right day or week first. A new entry is created against what you are looking at.
2

Add time

The button sits at the top right of the page.
3

Pick the person

Select member is the first field. On your own row it is already filled in.
4

Set the start and the end

An end earlier than the start is refused. If the times overlap another entry for that person, the dialog warns you and saves anyway. If a break policy applies, the dialog previews the breaks it is about to add before you commit to them.
5

Save

The entry lands in the table as Pending, with Manual as its source, and attaches itself to a nearby shift where your workspace is set up to do that.

What a clocking policy stops, and what it flags

A decides what happens to a punch made outside the allowed area. Record position only is what a new policy starts on: the position is kept and the punch goes through untouched. On Pro you can pick Block clock-in, which stops the person where they stand, or Allow and flag for review, which records the entry and sets it to Needs review for you to look at. A policy can also limit which surfaces count, so somebody restricted to a terminal cannot clock in from a browser. One refusal catches people out and is not about where they are standing. Where a policy both requires a position or a location and restricts people to the ones assigned to them, somebody with neither assigned cannot clock in at all. Assign one to them under People and the clock works.

A timer nobody stopped

Somebody who forgets to clock out does not run a timer for a week. Begin closes it, marks the entry as stopped automatically for passing the maximum duration, and puts it in Needs review. Nothing tells you: filter the period by status to find them, or build a workflow. What it writes into the hours is a workspace choice; out of the box it records nothing, because a guess would be paid. Settings and policies covers the four behaviours and how long a timer may run.
Your edits never overwrite the clock. Original reported time on an entry is the punch as it was recorded and cannot be changed, and an entry you have corrected carries Adjusted from original beside it. Both numbers stay on the record.
Times and breaks open for editing once the person has clocked out. Until then the entry has no end to measure against, so the fields stay read-only and the tracking bar is the only control.
Position, location and labels are editable in the row itself, so correct them where they sit. Moving the entry to a different person is a different matter: it needs Edit others’ time entries even when the entry started on your own row.

Next

Reading the timesheet

Periods, grouping, and what the totals at the top count.

Settings and policies

Auto-stop, shift linking, and the policies that change an entry.

Still need help?

Contact support

Email the Begin team and we’ll get back to you.

Ask Begin AI

Open the AI assistant and get instant answers based on these docs.