A fair, simple approach to recording hours when your team works from home or on the road.
In an office, a manager sees who arrives and leaves. With remote work that visibility disappears, and some leaders respond with heavy monitoring. That usually backfires. Employees feel watched, trust drops and the data is no more accurate. A better approach is to make recording hours easy, explain why it matters and keep the rules short.
With the EZTime time clock app, employees clock in from their phone with GPS and managers approve hours from anywhere.
There are real reasons to track time even for remote staff. Hourly employees need accurate pay. Salaried employees may still need records for projects or client billing. Managers need to know whether workloads are realistic. Tracking hours is not the same as measuring output, and the best programs treat them separately.
Write down, in plain words, what is paid time. Does it include a short team call before the official start? Time spent answering urgent messages in the evening? Travel between client sites? Rules differ by location and role, so confirm with a qualified professional, then put the answer in your policy.
Pick one method and use it for everybody in the same role.
| Method | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Clock in from a phone or browser | Quick, real-time | Employee must remember |
| Daily timesheet entry | Flexible | Easy to guess or forget details |
| Project timers | Good for billing | Can feel heavy for simple roles |
| Manager-entered hours | Low effort for staff | Less accurate |
For hourly staff, a real-time clock-in is usually the most accurate. For project work, timers or short daily notes may be enough.
Be clear about what you collect and what you do not. If you use location features, explain when they are used and why. If you do not collect screenshots or keystrokes, say so. Employees tend to accept tracking they understand and reject tracking they discover by accident. Privacy rules vary, so ask a qualified professional before adding location or monitoring features.
Remote employees often split their day: a morning block, a school pickup, an evening block. Decide whether that is allowed and how it is recorded. If you allow split shifts, make sure the system can capture several segments in a day and total them correctly.
Remind people to take their breaks. It is easy for remote staff to skip lunch or work late, which can lead to overtime you did not plan for and burnout you did not want.
A weekly routine keeps small problems small. Ask employees to submit hours by a set time. Managers review them, check for missing days and approve. Compare the numbers with the work completed, but avoid treating every hour as a debate. If something looks off, ask a question first.
If you notice any of these in your own process, fix one at a time. Small changes are easier to adopt.
A time and attendance tool such as EZTime lets employees clock in from a phone or browser, records breaks and sends hours to managers for approval. That gives remote teams one consistent method without extra spreadsheets, and gives managers a clean view of who worked when.
Priya works remotely as a customer support agent. She clocks in at 9:00 from her laptop, takes a 30 minute unpaid lunch recorded with one tap, and clocks out at 5:30. Because her manager approves timesheets every Friday, a missed clock-out on Wednesday was caught within two days and fixed with a correction request. Nobody had to guess, and payroll received clean numbers.
Compare that with a team that collects hours by email at month end. By then, nobody remembers Wednesday, and the manager must chase eight people for details. The difference is not technology; it is a regular rhythm and an easy way to record time.
If you can answer yes to most of these, your remote tracking is in good shape. For every no, pick one improvement for the coming month.
Look for fewer disputes about hours, fewer last-minute corrections, steadier overtime and employees who say recording time is easy. If you find yourself chasing people every pay period, simplify the method rather than adding more reminders.
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor issued Field Assistance Bulletin 2023-1 on telework. It confirms that the usual FLSA rules apply at home: short breaks of about 20 minutes or less are paid working time, while longer breaks in which the employee is completely relieved of duty can be unpaid. The bulletin also covers break time and a private space for nursing employees who work remotely, and it explains that for FMLA eligibility a remote employee’s worksite is the office they report to or are assigned to.
Some states require employers to reimburse necessary business expenses that employees pay themselves. California is the clearest example: courts there have held that employers must reimburse a reasonable share of a personal phone used for work. Illinois has a similar reimbursement law. If remote employees use their own phone, internet or equipment for work, check the rules in the state where each employee works, which is usually the state whose wage law applies.
Sometimes. It depends on classification, project needs and local rules, so check with a qualified professional.
No. Many remote teams simply use a clock-in without location.
Record time in each employee’s local zone and agree on one cut-off for payroll.
Use a correction request that a manager approves, so the fix is documented.
Under DOL guidance, yes. Breaks of about 20 minutes or less are generally paid working time, at home or in the office.
Usually the state where the employee physically works, not where the company is based. Check with an employment professional for multi-state teams.
See how EZTime records start, stop and breaks so your reports are ready for payroll.