Key takeaway
A cleaning attendance record should show each shift's planned times, the book-on and book-off times at each site, and the hours agreed for pay. Keep those three separate. ShiftTracker stores them that way and exports approved hours to a Sage 50 timesheet or hours CSV. Test one live week before you buy.
Mobile cleaning rotas tend to fail in the same way. A cleaner is planned at three sites in one morning, one site is covered late or not at all, and nobody can say from the records whether the planned cleaner was there. Pay then follows the rota rather than the work. This guide sets out where cleaning time and attendance usually goes wrong, what a usable record needs to show, and the questions to put to any system, including ShiftTracker. It is a checklist, not a benchmark. We have not published an attendance-gap rate, and this article does not quote one. The one worked example is arithmetic for you to replace with your own contract figures. ShiftTracker details come from its public documentation, checked on 31 October 2026, and points that need a live demo are marked as such in the text, and we say what we could not confirm.
What should a cleaning attendance record show?
A usable record shows, for each shift, the site, the planned times, the times the cleaner booked on and off, and the hours agreed for pay. These are three different things, and a system that blurs them makes disputes hard to settle. Ask whether the record can show a booking at each site, not only a daily total.
ShiftTracker keeps these values separate. Actual times come from book-on and book-off, and arbitrated times are what an Admin or Manager agrees for pay. A shift nobody has arbitrated shows its actual times, and a shift nobody booked on to shows its scheduled times.
The Timesheet Overview report: a read-only view of who worked when, for a chosen week.
Where does attendance break down on mobile cleaning?
Attendance usually breaks down at handovers. A cleaner moves on without booking off, a swap is agreed by phone and never reaches the rota, or a shift is paid from the plan because nobody booked on. Each gap is small. Across many sites and a month, they add up.
Swaps agreed verbally that never reach the roster.
A book-on or book-off missed at one site, so the shift falls back to its plan.
Supervisors who see the rota but not the site-level records.
Paper sheets keyed in later, with rounding applied by hand.
ShiftTracker's documentation covers one case directly. A shift pattern with automatic book-off switched on books off anyone still booked on at the scheduled end, and records the reason as No book-off received. Those times are the system's estimate rather than an observation, and arbitration treats them that way.
To find gaps, compare three lists each week: the roster, the book-on and book-off log, and the arbitrated hours. A shift on the roster with no book-on needs an explanation, and so does a book-on with no roster line. ShiftTracker's documentation says a shift is arbitrated automatically when both times fall within 15 minutes of the scheduled times. Other cases need an Admin or Manager to decide.
How do you confirm that a cleaner attended each site?
Use a book-on and book-off at each site, plus a location check where the site needs one. In ShiftTracker, booking on needs the employee's 4-digit PIN by default. Location is switched on only where the site is geofenced or the pattern asks for GPS, so check that setting per site.
An Admin sets the fence on the site's Settings tab. Turn on Enable Geofencing, set the site location and radius, then choose which actions it applies to. Warn logs a breach and lets the action go through. Block refuses the action, so a book-on outside the fence is refused on a site set to Block.
A shift panel on the roster shows the scheduled times that book-on is measured against.
How do you size a shortfall before acting on it?
Multiply the minutes unaccounted for at each site by the number of sites and working days, then by your cost per hour. The result is the exposure, not a finding. Use your own contract data for the inputs, and separate minutes missing from the record from minutes genuinely not worked.
Worked example, not a measured figure: 50 sites, 15 minutes per site per day and 250 working days give 187,500 minutes, or 3,125 hours a year. Your first step is to count how many of those minutes have a book-on and book-off on record, and how many do not.
When a gap is confirmed, record the cause as a note against the shift. Repeat gaps at one site usually point to a site-specific cause, such as access or a process that does not work for that building. A single missed book-off needs a different fix, so a pattern is worth more than a list of one-offs.
How should attendance records feed payroll?
Pay should come from approved hours, not the rota. The documented payroll export is a Sage 50 timesheet file or a generic hours CSV, built from approved arbitration records. The pricing page also lists a Xero push, which the documentation does not yet describe.
Payroll Export: preview the approved hours, check the warnings, then download the file your payroll imports.
Keep the raw book-on and book-off history alongside the arbitrated figures, as described in payroll arbitration. If a pay query arrives months later, the raw times are the evidence.
How long should attendance records be kept?
For minimum wage purposes, HMRC guidance says employers must keep pay records for at least six years. ShiftTracker keeps check-call, book-on and book-off records for 74 months in every organisation, then deletes them. Set your own retention against your contracts, and take advice from your payroll or legal adviser, because this is not legal advice.
Check the data retention settings for location data separately. ShiftTracker removes the GPS position recorded with each check call after three years, except on an emergency, so a claim that depends on location needs a copy taken earlier.
What should you test in a demo?
Test one real week on a live site, not a clean sample. Let cleaners book on and off on their own phones, then reconcile the arbitrated hours against the rota and the book-on times. A demo that shows only tidy data proves little.
Book on at site A, move to site B, book off, and check the two shifts keep separate times.
Set one site to Warn and another to Block, then check that both record the distance.
Leave one book-off out and check how the shift is reported.
Export a Payroll Export file and open it in the software your payroll team uses.
Ask in writing for the date the Xero push was released, and whether it is live for your account.
Run the same week twice in the demo: once with every cleaner booking on, and once with two deliberate no-shows. The difference in the reports is the test. If the two weeks look the same, ask why.
How we checked this
We read ShiftTracker's public documentation on time records, payroll export, retention and geofencing on 31 October 2026, plus HMRC's minimum wage record guidance. We have not tested the system on a live site, or verified the Xero push. The figures are a worked example, not a benchmark. Next step: run the one-week test on a single site.
