Staff attendance, commission and payroll in one place

In a small shop or restaurant, the monthly staff work is spread over four places: a paper sheet (or a WhatsApp group) for who came when, a calculator for commission, a notebook for the advances, and a spreadsheet for salaries. At the end of the month the owner sits down for an evening to put them together, and every number can be argued about.

Keeping it in the same system as your sales removes most of that evening.

Attendance at the till

The till is already where everyone starts the day. Each person taps their name on the clock screen and types their own PIN (or swipes a card): clock in, start a break, end the break, clock out. It does not change who is signed in as the cashier. Five wrong PINs lock that name for a few minutes, so nobody clocks in for a friend by guessing.

If the internet is down, the till keeps the punches and sends them later.

A schedule to compare against

Give each person a weekly schedule: Saturday to Thursday 7:00–15:00, Friday off, or split shifts. The timesheet then marks each day: on time, late, left early, no clock-out, absent. Overtime is worked out from the schedule and your daily limit.

When a punch is wrong ("forgot to clock out"), a manager fixes it with a reason. The original stays on record, so a correction is never invisible.

Commission that pays itself

If your staff earn commission, write the rule once: a base percentage, whether discounts are counted, a higher percentage on some categories, a bonus above a monthly target. The cashier picks the salesperson on each sale (or it is the cashier), and the commission report adds it up per person and per period.

Advances and deductions

"Can I take AED 500 until salary day?" Record the advance against the person, and if it came from the drawer, as cash out of the drawer, so the shift still balances. Deductions (a broken item, an agreed penalty) and payouts go in the same ledger. At payroll time, advances are taken back automatically.

Payroll as a review

With hours, overtime, commission and advances already recorded, monthly payroll becomes:

1. Basic salary and allowances from each person's file.
2. Overtime from the timesheets, commission from the sales, bonuses and deductions.
3. Advances taken back.
4. Review: change any figure with a reason.
5. Finalise, then print or e-mail payslips and download the bank file.

In the UAE, pay through your bank with the WPS salary file (SIF). Test the file with your bank once before your first live payroll. End-of-service and leave-encashment figures from any system are estimates; confirm them with your accountant.

Documents that expire

Passports, visas, Emirates IDs, labour cards, health cards for food handlers, and the shop's own trade licence all expire, usually at a bad moment. Keep their numbers and dates on each employee file, and get a reminder at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days.

Who sees what

Salaries are private. Only the owner, and the managers the owner chooses, should see pay, bank details and payroll. Attendance can be visible to shift managers without showing salaries.

Start small

You do not need everything on day one. Start with clock-ins for a month. When the timesheets look right, add commission. Run payroll in parallel with your current method once, compare, then switch.

In CreekPOS

Staff (clock in and out, timesheets, commission, the staff ledger) and HR (employee files, documents, leave, payroll, payslips and the WPS file) are in CreekPOS Online; some parts depend on the plan, see pricing. Switch Staff on in Settings → Staff settings and HR in Settings → HR. The staff and HR chapter of the manual has the details. The desktop program does not have HR yet.