Card check-in is in beta: we're opening it to shops one at a time while we finish how kiosks are set up. Ask us for access
Card check-in
Some of your staff don't carry a phone on shift. Give them a card to tap at the door — no app, no account, no sign-in — and their check-in lands in the same attendance log as everyone else's.
Why this exists
Every other way to clock in assumes the employee has a smartphone and an account.
QR check-in works out who you are from the session you're signed into. NFC check-in is the same thing with the link on a sticker instead of a poster. Both need a phone in a pocket and a login already set up — which quietly leaves out the kitchen porter with no smartphone, the seasonal hire who never finished signing up, and anyone whose phone lives in a locker during service.
DailyBrew has always let you add those people as staff — a staff record doesn't need an account behind it. What they had no way to do was clock in. A card is that missing door.
How it works
You give a card to someone
In Settings → Card check-in, pick the person, give the card a name you'll recognise later — "Blue card", "Card #4" — and give it out. The card belongs to them, at your shop, and nowhere else.
The card is written once
Giving out a card produces a short piece of card data — 98 bytes — that you write onto a plain contactless card. DailyBrew shows it exactly once and never keeps it, so a card you didn't get round to writing is given out again rather than recovered. That's deliberate: what's on the card should exist in exactly one place, which is the card.
They tap it at the door
A reader by the entrance reads the card and sends the punch to DailyBrew. Two things travel together: the reader proves it's your reader, through a signed request tied to an API key you made, and the card proves who tapped. Neither one is enough on its own.
DailyBrew writes down the day
A tap goes through the same check-in path as a QR scan. The first tap of the day opens the day, the next one closes it, closed days and approved leave apply as usual, and coming in late or slipping out early is worked out against their shift. Same record, different door.
What's available today
The DailyBrew side is built: giving out cards, revoking them, the piece that turns a tap into a day's attendance, and the record behind it. It's an Espresso feature, off by default, and we're switching it on shop by shop while the rest catches up.
The reader that sits by the door is a separate piece we're still working through. It hasn't been proven on real hardware yet, and we haven't settled on the box it runs on. If card check-in is what your shop needs, talk to us before you buy anything.
What you get
Works with no phone and no account
Nothing to install, nothing to sign into, no password to reset at 6am. They carry a card and tap it. That's the whole thing.
A lost card is a thirty-second problem
Revoke it from the card list and it stops working. Revoking is the only way to take a card back — and a card the system doesn't recognise counts as revoked, so nothing unknown gets waved through.
Every tap is on the record
Every tap is written down with the card it came from and the reader it happened at, and the same tap sent twice is absorbed rather than counted twice. Two taps ninety seconds apart at the same door is something you can look at, not something you have to wonder about.
Each shop signs its own cards
Every shop has its own signing key, so a card made for one restaurant is refused at another. Keys can be rotated without killing the cards already in people's pockets.
What a card is — and what it isn't
Be clear about this before you order a stack of cards: a card is a key. Whoever holds it can tap it. That's the accepted trade for "works with no app" — check-in can't ask for anything the holder is or knows, because the whole point is that there's nothing to install and nobody to sign in as. We don't claim a card can't be copied, and it can. What we do instead is make misuse hard to repeat and easy to see:
A 60-second wait between taps
The same card tapped again within a minute at the same reader is ignored. Nobody can stand there and run four cards through in eight seconds.
A reader somewhere people can see
This is the control that carries the most weight, and it isn't software. A reader at a staffed entrance, in view of a manager or a camera, makes a card being passed around a visible act rather than an invisible one.
A tap log you can actually read
Card, reader, time, person — for every tap. A suspicion about people clocking in for each other becomes a search instead of an argument.
If that trade isn't right for a particular person, they don't need a card. Staff who do carry a phone are better off with QR or NFC check-in, where the punch can be tied to their own phone and to your network.
Setting it up
Card check-in stays off until you turn it on. If you don't see the section yet, we haven't opened it up for your shop — get in touch.
Open Shop settings
From Today, click "Shop settings" in the menu and scroll to "Card check-in". It's an Espresso feature, so on the free plan you'll be asked to move up first.
Turn on card check-in
Flip "Let staff check in by tapping a card". It's off by default — a shop with no cards and no reader has no reason to leave that door open.
Give out a card
Pick the person, name the card so you can tell two of them apart later, and hand it over. Staff with no account are fine here — they're exactly who this is for.
Write it to a card, once
The card data appears once, when you hand the card out. Write it straight away with any app that writes a contactless tag. Close the screen first and there's nothing to go back to — revoke that card and give out a new one.
Revoke a card that goes missing
Card lost, someone left, card handed to the wrong person — open the card list and revoke it. It stays in the list as a record that it existed, and stops working straight away.
Common questions
Does the person need a DailyBrew account?
No, and that's the point. A staff record doesn't need an account behind it, and card check-in is how those people clock in. They never install anything and never sign in.
What happens if a card is lost?
Revoke it in Settings → Card check-in and give out a replacement. Revoking takes effect straight away, and the revoked card stays visible in the list so you keep the record. The replacement is a different card with a different identity, so the two are never mixed up in the log.
Can someone copy a card?
A card carries a signature that can't be altered — you can't change whose card it is or stretch how long it lasts. But it can be read, and whoever holds it can tap it. We'd rather say that plainly than sell you a card that can't be copied. What answers it is the wait between taps, a reader somewhere visible, and the tap log.
Why is the card shown only once?
Because we never keep it. The card data is worked out when you hand the card over, from the card record and your shop's signing key, given to you, and not stored. So there's nothing on our side to steal — and a card you never wrote has to be given out again rather than recovered. Closed the screen too early? Revoke and give out another.
What do we need at the door?
Something that reads a contactless card and sends the tap to DailyBrew over a connection it can prove is its own. The DailyBrew side of that — the endpoint, an API key scoped to taps, the record — exists today. The reader itself is a separate piece we haven't finished, and it hasn't run on real hardware yet, so we're not going to tell you which one to buy. Get in touch and we'll tell you exactly where it stands.
Does this replace QR and NFC check-in?
No, it sits beside them. Most shops will run both: staff with phones scan the QR or tap the sticker on the wall, staff without carry a card. Every punch lands in the same place either way, and the reports don't care which door it came through.
Which checks apply at a shared reader
A reader by the door is one device everybody uses, and two of DailyBrew's check-in rules assume the opposite. Here's what runs and what doesn't for card taps — deliberately, not by oversight:
Comes with Espresso
Card check-in comes with Espresso ($19.99/month or $199/year), alongside IP restriction, device verification, geofencing, leave management, manager roles, and more.
Other check-in controls
Ready to give everyone a way to clock in?
Start free. Move up to Espresso when you're ready.