Shift DiaryThe tag does the work
Each employee carries their own NFC tag and holds it to the clock station. The app sits on a manager's, supervisor's or driver's phone — not on every employee's — so there is nothing for staff to install, learn or lose.
NFC time & attendance
Every shift on record.
Your staff tap a personal NFC tag. Shift Diary stamps the time, the place and the person — and keeps working when the signal doesn't. No timesheets, no buddy clocking, no arguments on payday.
Built for farms
iPhone · iPad · MacAndroid clock stationsWorks offlineGPS verifiedPDF & CSV export
The whole idea
Three seconds at the gate. A record that holds up.
Time, place and person
Every scan is stamped with the date, the time, the GPS location and the employee's name. The record is made by doing the job, not by writing it down afterwards.
The hours, added up
Pick a date range and get a timesheet: a page per employee with every day of the period, time in, time out and hours — and a summary page with days worked and total hours for the whole team.
Before Shift Diary
A group chat is a conversation, not a record.
Knowing who is at work is somebody's whole day. Who came in, who came in late, who didn't pitch at all — and somebody has to know it every morning, on every site.
Most companies solve it on a WhatsApp group. The managers post it as it happens, and in the moment it works fine. Then payday comes and you're scrolling — weeks back up a group that also has photos, voice notes, a broken bakkie and somebody's birthday — looking for the message that says who was late on the 14th, and hoping somebody remembered to send it at all.
And that's if you can find it at all. Somebody answers "Peter" — but which Peter, and at which site? You search for Peter and miss the message that says Pieter, because the two managers spell him differently. And half the answers are in voice notes, which nobody has ever been able to search.
"I used to do the payroll at a company that ran exactly like this. Every month I went back through the messages trying to work out what had happened, and when, and where. That is the reason I built Shift Diary."
Morné Heyns · Diary SANow you log in and it's already there — the day, the time, the place and the person, in one place and in order. Nothing to scroll for, nothing anyone has to remember to post, and nothing that only lives in one manager's phone.
Mon 14 Sep
Site managerMorning all05:38
Piet and Sipho only arrived now, both after 7. Gate was standing open again07:12
YouNoted, thanks07:20
PackhousePhoto09:41
SupervisorBakkie is at the workshop again, diesel pump10:02
Site managerAnyone got the key for the chemical store11:15
YouLerato has it11:31
Packhouse4 of us staying till the load is done tonight17:44
Tue 15 Sep
Site managerJohan is off sick, he says he'll bring a note05:52
SupervisorVoice note · 1:1206:30
PackhouseRain coming in, we pulled everyone under cover08:15
YouDid the 4 from last night get recorded somewhere?09:02
PackhouseI'll send it now now09:48
Site managerDelivery at the front gate, someone must sign13:20
SupervisorPhoto14:07
Wed 16 Sep
Site managerHappy birthday Willem!! 🎂06:04
PackhouseBaie geluk!06:11
SupervisorHappy birthday06:19
Site managerThabo not here again today, that's 2 days06:40
YouIs it 2 or 3? I thought Monday also07:55
Site managerLet me check08:30
PackhousePhoto12:55
SupervisorWater pump tripped again at the top camp15:10
Thu 17 Sep
SupervisorChris came in at 8, he had a lift problem08:06
Site managerBraai Saturday at my place, everyone welcome10:22
Packhouse👍10:24
Supervisor👍10:31
Site managerVoice note · 0:4411:48
Packhouse3 staying late again, big order16:52
YouNames please19:40
Fri 18 Sep
PackhouseSorry only seeing this now05:47
Site managerLerato leaving early today, family thing06:35
PackhousePieter stayed behind to finish the load08:05
SupervisorWho is fetching the spares in town09:12
YouI'll go09:20
PackhousePhoto13:41
Site managerRemember the gate code changed16:30
Mon 21 Sep
Site managerMorning05:40
SupervisorSipho off today06:08
PackhouseVoice note · 2:0307:30
YouDoing the payroll now — who was late on the 14th again?08:15
Site managerEish, it's on the group somewhere08:31
SupervisorScroll up, I think I sent it08:33
Scroll up and find the 14th.
Found it. Now do that for every day of the month.
Inside the app
Everything you need on the day, and after it.
One screen at the gate
The clocking phone shows one thing: ready to clock, with GPS and connection status in plain words. It lives with whoever runs the gang — a supervisor, a manager, the driver of the bakkie — not with the staff. On Android the app just listens, so you open it and they start scanning. On iPhone you tap NFC Clock first, then the tags go through.
- Android: open the app and scan, no buttons
- iPhone: tap NFC Clock, then scan
- GPS and connection status shown up front
- Today's records only — no history, no employee files, no account access
Know who's on site, right now
Today's board splits your whole team into three: no records yet, on duty, and clocked out. People move across it as the taps happen, so a missing person is obvious by mid-morning.
- No records, on duty and clocked out, counted
- Each clock-out with its station and time
- Today's records list with NFC or manual marked on every entry
- A daily red flag when somebody clocked in and never clocked out
Nobody queues at shift change
Shift Diary reads up to four tags a second. A gang of forty is through the gate in the time it takes them to walk past it — no line at the bakkie, no one clocking late because they were waiting.
- Up to four tags a second
- Every tap confirmed on screen as it lands
- The record is written before the next person taps
Any employee, any month
Open a person and get their month on a calendar — every day they were present, tap for the detail — plus a summary of total days, weekdays and weekends worked.
- Attendance calendar per employee
- Monthly totals: days, weekdays, weekends
- Tap any day for that day's clocks
Every station, compared
See how each gate or site is actually being used: total records, unique employees, average records a day, the peak hour, each station's share of your clocking and who taps most.
- Records, employees and days active per station
- Busiest hour of the day
- All-stations comparison over 30 days
- Top employees by number of clocks
Payday on one page
Choose a start and end date and Shift Diary builds a timesheet: every employee with days worked and total hours, then a page each showing every date, time in, time out and hours. A day that doesn't add up is flagged rather than guessed at.
- Days worked and total hours per employee
- A page per person, every date in the period
- Missing clock-outs marked and left out of the total
- Or take the raw records as a CSV instead
Example export
See it on the map
Every clock station shows its last known location on the map, so you can see where your gates actually are. Open any employee and you get the same thing for them — every place that person has clocked, plotted.
- Last location of every clock station
- Every clock location for any employee, on one map
- A shift claimed at the wrong site is obvious
The tag
One fob. One person. One tap.
Each employee gets a keyring fob programmed to their name in the app. It costs almost nothing, it survives a work pocket, and it can't be texted to a friend who's running late. Go for a bright colour — red is worth it, because a tag dropped in a field is a lot easier to find.
- Goes on a keyring, a belt loop or a lanyard
- Programmed to one employee from inside the app
- Buy your own tags or order them from us — buying your own usually works out cheaper
- Make a replacement tag yourself, in the app, in under a minute
- Lost a tag? A manager clocks that person by hand until the new one is ready
- No batteries, no charging, nothing to break
Why it can't be gamed
A tag one person carries, in a place you can see.
Buddy clocking works because a code can be shared and a signature can be copied. A tag has to be there, and the app records where "there" was.
NFC, not a PIN
The tag has to physically touch the device. Codes get passed around a workshop in a morning — tags don't.
GPS on every scan
Each clock-in carries the coordinates it happened at, and they're plotted on a map — so a shift at the wrong gate shows up as one.
Nothing is quietly deleted
A lost tag or a forgotten scan can be fixed by hand, and the record shows it was a manual clock rather than a tap. A double tap can be voided by an admin — and brought back again, because nothing is ever really removed.
On the bigger screen
The whole operation, from the office.
On an iPad you get the wide view: today's activity, a thirty-day attendance graph, every station's status, where your stations are on the map, and the export buttons that turn it all into a timesheet.
Your records
Nothing is lost, and nothing lives on one phone.
The tap is written on the device the second it happens. From there it goes to our servers, encrypted — so a phone that gets dropped, stolen or replaced takes nothing with it, and nobody outside Diary SA can see a thing about your company or your staff.
It keeps clocking
If the connection drops, every record stays safely on the device. Staff carry on tapping and nobody at the gate notices anything.
It catches up on its own
The moment there's signal again, the waiting records are pushed up automatically. You don't have to press anything or remember anything.
Encrypted and private
Your history lives encrypted on secure cloud servers, backed up and there when you need it. It isn't shared, sold or shown to anyone outside Diary SA.
The difference
The same month, counted two ways.
Nothing here is a knock on paper. It works — right up until somebody asks you to prove a Tuesday from three weeks ago.
A book and a group chat
How it goes nowSomebody has to be standing there with a pen when the gang arrives
A name can be written in for a man who isn't there
Nothing says where the person actually was
A wet or lost page is a week of hours gone
Late nights and absences live in messages you have to scroll back for
Searching only finds a name if everyone spelt it the same way — and a voice note can't be searched at all
"Peter" doesn't say which Peter, or which site he was on
Hours get added up by hand every pay run
A disputed shift comes down to whose word it is
An afternoon, every payday
A tag and a phone
With Shift DiaryThey tap as they walk past — four a second, no queue
The tag has to be there, so it has to be them
Every scan carries its GPS location, plotted on a map
Records sit on the device until signal returns, then upload
Open a date and read it off one screen — nothing to scroll back for
Every record is tied to an employee number, so spelling never loses anybody
Each scan names the clock station it happened at, so you know which site
Pick a date range and the timesheet comes out totalled
Open the day and read the time, place and person off the screen
A few minutes, once
Pricing
Free to run. R500 a month to keep everything.
Clock your staff for nothing, pay R500 a month to keep every record and the exports — one price, however big you get — and add payroll when you want the payslips to come out of the same hours. Month to month, with no subscription that renews itself behind your back.
Free
R0forever
- Unlimited employees
- Unlimited clock stations
- NFC and manual clocking
- Live attendance board
- Last 14 days of records only
- No PDF or CSV export
Most farms
Records & Reports
R500per month · no VAT
- Everything in Free
- Your complete record history
- PDF timesheets with hours totalled
- Unlimited employees and stations
- Support Monday to Friday
Payroll
From R850per month · no VAT
- Everything in Records & Reports
- Payslips built from the clocks
- Leave, extras, deductions and loans
- Priced on your headcount, then fixed
From the field
People who clock in with it every day.
★★★★★"Baie dankie! Dit is ongelooflik eenvoudig en werk regtig uitstekend."
★★★★★"If it wasn't for Shift Diary, I wouldn't want to work on this farm. No more paperwork — everything is so easy now!"
★★★★★"Sedert Shift Diary my tydbywoning oorgeneem het, hoef ek nooit weer te wonder waar en wanneer my werknemers ingeklok het nie. Alles is duidelik en maklik toeganklik."
Get started
Download it today, clock your first shift tomorrow.
Free to download, free to set up, free to run. You only pay when you want the full history and the exports.
Questions first? WhatsApp 068 174 3083