Help

Getting started

Adding workers. Open the Workers tab, fill in a worker number (e.g. W001) and the worker's full name, then click Add & enrol face. The next screen takes a photo with your device camera (or upload one) — we store only a numeric template, never the photo itself.

Setting hours. Open Hours and pick your normal start + end times and the grace minutes. Per-day overrides (e.g. Saturday 06:00–14:00) sit below.

Live board. The Who's in tab updates as workers clock in/out. A worker shows as off site if their last clock-in is older than 30 hours — long enough for a 24-hour shift to count, short enough to flag a forgotten clock-out.

Clock-in methods

• Face scan at a kiosk (a tablet or phone running the kiosk page) — workers look at the camera and they're clocked in. A live blink/turn check defeats printed photos.
• PIN alternative — workers who don't want to use the face scan can set a PIN instead. No penalty, no questions.
• Manual verify — if the face won't scan, the worker sends a selfie + their worker number; you accept/reject in the Verify tab.
• Chat-based — workers paired to Telegram can send a selfie or share their location to clock in. Inside a work zone, sharing location automatically signs them in.

Telegram

Connecting your bot. Open Connect. Tap the Open @WerkTydBot in Telegram link and press Start.

Binding a worker's chat. On the Workers tab, hit + Bind Telegram next to the worker. We give you a 6-digit code and a forwardable link. The worker either taps the link (easy) or opens @WerkTydBot manually and sends /start 123456. Once paired, sharing live location inside a work zone signs them in automatically.

What workers can do over chat. Bound workers can clock in/out (selfie or text IN/OUT/klok uit siek), share location for presence/patrol, and ask about their own hours. They can't add other workers, change schedules, or see other people's data — that's all on the owner's side.

Patrol & sites (security)

Drawing a work zone. Open Sites and click + New site, then draw a polygon or a circle on the map. Workers' clock-ins outside any zone are flagged for your review.

Patrol routes. Open Patrol, click + New route (give it a name + cycle time + colour), then click the map to drop checkpoints. Use the Order # field to set the patrol sequence — the dashboard draws a polyline between them in order. Each checkpoint gets a QR poster you can print and stick at the post; workers scan it on a real round and you see fresh visits on the map.

What if the signal is down?

Signal cuts are a fact of life in SA — load-shedding, fibre cuts, weak rural towers. Werktyd has multiple independent clock-in paths, so a single dead link doesn't strand workers:

1. Kiosk in offline mode. The kiosk page detects when the server is unreachable and shows a red NO SIGNAL banner. Workers can still tap IN/OUT/Tea/Lunch — the kiosk takes a selfie and queues the event locally. When the network returns, every queued event is replayed to the server as flagged + pending. You review each one on Verify with the kiosk photo as proof, then accept or reject it. This is the anti-fraud safety net — no offline clock counts toward payroll until a human looks at the photo.
2. Workers clock from their own phone. If the kiosk's network is down but the worker has any signal, they can:
   • Send a selfie to your Telegram bot (@WerkTydBot) with caption in / out / tea / lunch.
   • If the worker is bound to a chat (set up on Workers → Bind Telegram), they can also share their live location from inside the zone to clock in automatically.
3. You clock workers manually. If your phone is the only thing with signal, send IN W001 / OUT W001 sick over Telegram to the bot. Owner-side commands always work.
4. Reconstruct after the fact. If everything was dark for a few hours, Timesheet → click Fix on the affected rows and enter the OUT time + reason. The change is audited.

Hardware tip: for sites with frequent outages, fit the kiosk's router with an LTE/4G failover SIM (most Mikrotik / TP-Link routers under R1500 support this). Auto-fails over to cellular when fibre dies. Catches 90 %+ of outages before anyone notices.

PIN-only offline. We deliberately don't allow PIN bypass when offline. PIN sharing between workers is the #1 SA fraud pattern, so every offline event gets a face photo and goes to your Verify queue. If you'd rather not use the offline queue at all on a particular kiosk, contact us and we'll disable it for that device.

Privacy & POPIA

We store a numeric face template, never the photo. Workers can choose a PIN instead of the face with no penalty. Data is processed on EU servers and deleted when a worker leaves (the time records stay 3 years per BCEA). Full detail: worker privacy notice, privacy policy, operator agreement. Workers can ask to see / correct / delete their personal data via the data request form.

Billing

Pick a plan on the Billing tab and click Subscribe — we use Paystack for card payments (ZAR). You can cancel any time from the same tab; access stays until your current billing period ends. Need a custom quote for 30+ workers? Use the contact form.