Without a phone

Clocking in without a company phone and without a private device

Not every business can or wants to hand out work phones, and nobody should have to give up their private device for it. A terminal on the wall and a card per person solve that: hold up the card, and clocking in and out alternate automatically. No sign-in, no app, no fingerprint.

  • No private device needed, the card is enough
  • No fingerprint, no face image
  • Keeps booking when the network goes down

Last checked on4. September 2026

Why the question comes up at all

In the employee posts we reviewed, being forced onto a private phone is one of the two most common objections to digital time tracking, right beside the fear of biometric recording. Both are fair: a private device is private property, and a fingerprint is biometric data under Article 9 GDPR.

For businesses the question is a practical one: anyone working in a kitchen, in a warehouse, on a ward or on a building site has no computer in front of them and often no free hand either.

How the terminal works

An Android device hangs on the wall and runs in kiosk mode, so with this one application only. Whoever arrives holds their card in front of it. Whether that is a clock-in or a clock-out is decided by the device from the last state, so that nobody presses the wrong button.

If the network goes down, the terminal buffers the entries and delivers them afterwards. Every entry carries a running number per device and the hash of its predecessor, so a gap shows up and the same entry cannot arrive twice.

  • The card carries only a number, no name and no photo.
  • What is stored of it is a check value, not the number in the clear.
  • The device holds the first name for the receipt, nothing more.
  • At the terminal only clocking is possible, no reports and no personnel data.

Three routes in the same business

The terminal is not an either-or. Anyone at a computer clocks in the browser, anyone out and about in the app, and anyone standing at a machine with the card. The three routes can be mixed, and all three write into the same time account.

That is also the answer for mixed teams: the office staff need no terminal, and production needs no phone.

Which route fits which working situation

  • Work at a computer

    Route
    Browser
    What is needed
    nothing extra, a login is enough

  • On the move, changing locations

    Route
    App for iOS and Android
    What is needed
    a device, voluntarily a private one too

  • A fixed site, no computer

    Route
    Terminal with a card
    What is needed
    an Android device on the wall, one card per person

Existing staff cards usually carry on working. We can only say for certain once we have seen one of your cards, and that is exactly what we do before you order.

Frequent questions

What we are asked most often about Without a phone.

No. The terminal with a card manages without any personal device. Anyone who still wants to use the app may do so voluntarily; it is not required.

No. Only the card is read. Whatever fingerprint or face recognition an Android device ships with is switched off in operation. That removes the whole Article 9 GDPR question and makes co-determination considerably simpler.

There is no surcharge for the software; the terminal belongs to the normal plan. What you need is an Android device with NFC and the cards. You can supply the device yourself; the terminal app reaches it through a setup code, with no cable and no installation media.

In a network outage the terminal buffers and delivers once it is reachable again. In a power cut nobody clocks; the entries buffered up to that point are kept and go out after the restart.

Yes, per entrance or per site for example. Each device gets a location name, and the administration shows when each device last connected.

Question not answered here? Every step is explained in the help centre.

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