Employee self-service
Staff get their own workspace — their record, their payslips, their leave — and managers get a view of their team. Nobody sees the whole business unless you gave them that.
The staff app
Staff open smartbusinessbook.io/employee on their phone (it installs like an app). It has five tabs along the bottom.
Today
- One clock button that knows where you are: Clock in before a shift, then a running timer — On duty 3h 12m, since 18:04 (with 12 min late if so) — and Clock out. A handover note is optional.
- A night shift is clocked out the morning after without trouble, and times follow the business's timezone, not the phone's.
- Clocking in twice in one day is refused rather than overwriting the first time; a mistake goes through a correction.
- At a site with a location, the app asks for the phone's location when they clock in and says whether they are at the site or how far away. A site set to must be at the site refuses a clock-in from elsewhere.
- No signal? The clock-in is saved on the phone with the time the button was pressed (and the location), shown as saved on phone, and sent automatically when the signal returns. HR sees it marked sent later. It is accepted up to 12 hours after; one sent later is never refused for being away, only flagged. Open the app once with signal so the phone keeps a copy of it.
- Your next shift: the post and site, its address, the times, armed post if it is one, and the post orders.
- Needs you: documents to read and sign (signed with their name), joining tasks to tick off, a licence that has expired or runs out within 30 days, and leave answers from the last week.
- Leave left, next pay day, and hours worked in the last 30 days.
Shifts — the next two weeks, day by day, with post orders. Can't make it? asks to swap, optionally naming a teammate. Below, the last 30 days of attendance; Wrong? sends HR a correction with the right times and a reason.
Leave — what is left of each kind this year, with a bar of what is used; a request form that counts the days; and every request with its answer and HR's note.
Pay — the next pay day and where pay goes (masked), then every payslip from an approved run (drafts are never shown): basic pay, allowances, gross, PAYE, NSSF, Local Service Tax and other deductions, take home, and what the employer paid on top. Save as PDF / print gives a proper payslip.
Me — job details and a button to call their supervisor; contact details, emergency contact and next of kin, which they can update themselves (HR is told); NIN, NSSF and TIN (partly hidden); licences and kit they hold; their documents; and Sign out.
Where pay goes cannot be changed from the app. A changed payout number is how payroll fraud is done, so that goes through HR.
Email reminders (switched on in People → Access → Reminders): an email before each shift — where, when and the post orders, 60 minutes ahead unless you change it — and one when a document needs reading and signing, with one reminder three days later if it is still unsigned.
Supervisors also get My team, and anybody you allowed the till, products or stock sees those under Also yours.
What a manager sees
Staff marked as managers also get My Team: their own reports, their leave requests, and approvals waiting on them. Still no access to the wider business.
Hybrid workspace
Some people are both. A supervisor who also serves customers can be given POS, Products or Inventory alongside their employee workspace — a hybrid setup where they run the till during a shift and check their own payslip afterwards, without owner-level access to anything.
Turning access on
Under Employee Access, create employee access for a person. They need an email for login on their employee record, or a phone number if access should match their mobile login.
Access is per person and revocable. Removing it leaves their employment record and history untouched — it only stops them signing in.
Why bother
It removes you from the middle. Payslip questions and leave balances stop arriving as WhatsApp messages on a Sunday.
Requests get a record. Leave asked for in a corridor is forgotten; leave requested in the system has dates, an approver and a decision.
People check their own details. Wrong phone numbers and out-of-date next-of-kin get fixed by the person who actually knows.
What to be careful about
Only give access to staff who need it. Every account is a way into your business, even a limited one — and an employee who has left should have access removed the same day.