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Attendance without buying a time clock or badge reader

Using a screen you already own instead of a terminal, what that saves across several sites, and when dedicated hardware is still the right answer.

The screen by the door can be any device with a browser: a spare tablet, an old phone, a smart TV, a laptop nobody uses. It shows a code that changes every thirty seconds, and people scan it with their own phone. There is no terminal to buy, no badge reader to wire in, and no per-device licence.

You still need a screen, and it still needs power and a network. What you avoid is buying, shipping, installing and maintaining one.

Where the cost actually sits

In one office, hardware is an expense you can absorb. Across several sites it stops being an expense and becomes a project:

• a purchase in each country, from vendors who may not operate where you do
• shipping or local buying, with customs and import paperwork
• an installer at each door, and power and a network drop where the reader goes
• somebody on the ground in every city on the day it stops working
• a support contract per site, indefinitely

None of that scales with how many people you have. It scales with how many doors, which is why the per-site cost gets worse the more offices you open while what you get back stays identical.

Ours is a link. Whoever is already in the Dubai office opens it on a screen already in the room, and the fourth office takes the same five minutes as the first.

What the screen needs

A browser from the last few years, a power socket, and a network connection. Point it at the display page, pair it once, and leave it. If it goes offline we say so rather than quietly showing a code that no longer works — a location whose screen is dark cannot accept check-ins, and the reports mark that so an empty day does not read as an empty building.

An old tablet is genuinely fine. The page renders a code and a clock; there is nothing to be slow at.

What you verify instead of a card

A badge verifies a card. We verify a code that changes every thirty seconds, an account the person actually owns, and — where you switch them on — the location and the office network the check-in came from.

That is more to go on than a card anybody can carry, and it costs four procurements and an installer in every city less.

Still stuck? Try the demo — most questions here are quicker to answer by pressing the thing than by reading about it.