For café owners
Attendance app for cafés
Your barista's phone is enough. Staff scan a QR to clock in, every punch bound to their verified device and your café's network — so the morning rush starts with honest timesheets, not a manager hovering over a tablet.
The 6am rush
When you're pulling shots you can't watch the clock-in screen. Verified device + network means you don't have to — a punch from the wrong phone or off your WiFi just won't count.
Closing-shift trust
Late-night solo shifts are where time theft creeps in. Each clock-out is bound to the same device that clocked in, so 'my friend punched me out' stops working.
Part-timers and students
High-churn teams mean constant new faces. Free for up to 10 active staff, set up in minutes — add a barista and they're scanning the same day.
Verified clock-ins, made for cafés
Every clock-in is tied to one phone and your shop's network — the same three checks behind stopping buddy punching. No biometrics, no face scans. Add shifts, leave and notifications when you need them.
Seven in the morning is the wrong time to run a clock-in queue
When the queue is out the door, nobody is free to supervise anyone's arrival. A QR code by the pass or on the back of the till does that job on its own: your barista scans it, the check-in screen opens, one tap records the punch, and the same square handles the clock-out at the end of the shift. There is no terminal to mount and nothing to unlock. If somebody's hands are covered in milk, a shift lead can be given the right to clock a colleague in or out (Espresso) — the network and location checks then run against the lead, and the record notes who pressed it, so it never passes for a self check-in.
Part-timers, students and the summer crew
Café teams turn over faster than most. Adding someone takes a name and a shift and they are scanning the same day; no contract, no hardware to issue, no code to teach them. When they move on, deactivate rather than delete: their hours stay in the record, their last working day is kept with them, and the months they worked still read the way they happened. An inactive employee stops counting against your plan, so a leaver hands the seat straight back. The free plan holds ten active people, which covers most single-site cafés without anyone reaching for a card.
What you actually look at the next morning
Today — the screen you open first — lays the morning out: how many people are present, how many arrived late, who is on leave, who has not shown up, and how many leave requests are sitting with you. Behind it is a month-by-month grid, one row per person and one column per day, which is the view most owners end up living in. Every punch keeps what it was made with — the device and its name, the network address, the coordinates if geofencing is on — so a disputed morning has something behind it rather than a memory. On Espresso the same grid comes out as XLSX, PDF or CSV.
Time off in a four-person team
With four people on the rota, one unrecorded day off throws the whole week. Leave requests (Espresso) put it in writing: your staff pick the dates, add a reason, and it lands on Today, waiting for you. Approve it and those days stop being counted as absences; reject it with a note and the reason is there for both of you. A request that overlaps a closed day, or one that's already been approved, is refused before it reaches you. Closed days need no upgrade at all — mark the week you shut for a refit on any plan and attendance stops expecting anyone.
What it costs, and what it will not do
Ten active employees, free, with no time limit and no card asked for. Espresso is $19.99 a month or $199 a year for up to twenty, and brings leave management, device verification, network restriction, geofencing, different hours each day, and exports. Double Espresso is $39.99 a month or $399 a year, drops the employee ceiling and allows a separate QR per station. No plan does payroll: there are no wage rates, no payslips and no filing. None of them do split shifts either, which is the café pattern that catches people out — one start and one end per day, and one shift per person, means an 07:00 to 12:00 barista who returns for a 17:00 event cannot have both blocks written down. Record the whole span and live with the gap inside it, or keep the evening outside DailyBrew.
Frequently asked
Is it really free?+
Yes — free forever for up to 10 active staff, and we don't ask for a card. Paid plans add one phone per person (device verification), shop WiFi only (IP restriction), leave and more.
Do staff need to install an app?+
On the free plan, yes: staff scan the QR code in the free DailyBrew app. On Espresso, no: they point their phone camera at the code and check in from the page that opens, with nothing to download, and an NFC tag works the same way because it holds the same web link. The app keeps them signed in and remembers the phone, which is why we still suggest it.
How does it stop buddy punching?+
Each clock-in is tied to a verified device and your shop's network. A punch from somebody else's phone, or from off your network, won't count — and nothing biometric is collected.
What if someone forgets their phone?+
A manager clocks them in from Today. It's saved with the manager's name, the time and the reason, so the day still adds up and nothing changes quietly.
Can staff check their own hours without asking me?+
Yes. Each person signs in and sees their own attendance — the days they worked, their check-in and check-out times, any late flag — along with their own leave. They cannot see anybody else's. It removes most of the how-many-hours-did-I-do-last-week conversations from your morning.
What happens if the café WiFi goes down?+
If you have network restriction switched on, a punch from a phone on mobile data is refused, and the message says which check rejected it. Two ways out: add the hotspot address to the allowed list for the evening, or leave it and enter the affected day by hand afterwards, which records the correction with your name and a reason.
Does DailyBrew track where my staff are?+
Only at the moment of a punch, and only if you switch geofencing on. The browser reads the location once, the server compares it against the radius you drew round the café, and the coordinates are kept on that one day's record. Nothing runs in the background, nothing is read between punches, and with geofencing off no location is collected at all.
Is there anything to buy?+
No hardware. The check-in QR is made for your shop and shown in your console, and your staff use the phones they already carry. There is no terminal to mount, no fingerprint reader and no contract — the free plan has no time limit and asks for no card details.
Honest hours for cafés
Free for up to 10 active staff. No hardware, no biometrics, no contract.
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