Blog
Honest timesheets for cafés and small shops — buddy punching, NFC and QR clock-in, and verification done without biometrics or GPS.
Asking your Telegram bot who's here today
The 6pm summary is retrospective and the live pings can be noisy. /attendance is the third shape — type it in the workspace group or your DM and the bot hands you today's list with a keyboard of the last week to page through. Espresso+, owner and manage_attendance managers.
Exporting a month of attendance without opening a laptop
A download button on the attendance screen hands the month on screen to your phone's share sheet as Excel, PDF or CSV. Here's what's in the grid, why the status filter doesn't reach it, and what the +1 in a cell means.
The restaurant that moves every Saturday
Catering is a restaurant with the building taken away. Everything attendance leans on — the network, the geofence, the roster — is pinned to an address, and a caterer's address changes every weekend. Here is how the pieces actually fit.
NFC attendance: what a tap actually proves
An NFC tag is a coin-sized sticker by the till that clocks somebody in with one movement. It is a faster gesture than scanning a QR code — and that is all it is. Here is what the tag holds, what a tap proves, and what still has to be true before the punch counts.
What a shift actually decides
A shift looks like two times on a form. It is really the answer to three different questions — who is expected today, whether a punch was late, and how the day gets drawn. Here is the whole model.
Nobody is absent from a day they don't work
The absent count isn't headcount minus present. It's a question about your schedule — and the shift is what answers it. Here's exactly who gets counted, and what changes when you add a per-day rule.
The person the geofence was never written for
Location, network and device checks are written for the crew who work in one building. Some staff don't. Check-in exemptions excuse one named person from one named check — without unlocking the door for everyone else.
Clocking in a colleague, without rebuilding buddy punching
Half a kitchen doesn't carry a phone. Proxy check-in lets a named person punch a colleague in — with the location check moved onto whoever taps the button, and the row recording who did.
The clock is whichever phone is already at the pass
Check-in exemptions and proxy check-in are now in the DailyBrew app. One of them only makes sense there — nobody opens a laptop during service.
The shift widget: your check-in state without opening the app
A Home Screen widget, a Lock Screen accessory and a Live Activity that ticks in the Dynamic Island. Tap the card and the scanner opens. Here's what the widget knows, and what it can't.
Shifts that run past midnight: one night, one row
A bar shift that starts at 18:00 and ends at 02:00 is one night's work, not two broken days. Here's how DailyBrew files it, why a 02:00 scan still closes last night, and what the +1 marker means.
The buddy punching tax: what time theft really costs a small café
Nucleus Research pegs buddy punching at 2.2% of payroll, and 75% of businesses are affected. Here's what that looks like on a 5-person café budget — and why face recognition and GPS aren't the right fix.
The new-device alert: when a check-in looks fine but isn't
DailyBrew pings the owner the moment a staff member clocks in from a phone they've never used before. Here's why first-time-on-this-device is the right trigger — and what to do when an alert lands.
Live check-in alerts: a Telegram toggle for owners who want every clock-in
Turn on a single setting and DailyBrew sends a Telegram ping the moment any staff member clocks in or out. Espresso+ feature, off by default — the noise profile is intentional.
Three-factor attendance: how modern login security came to the time clock
Your email doesn't trust your password alone. Here's why device, network, and a physical tap make buddy punching mechanically impossible — without a single biometric.