The time clock is configured, locations are set, and you have a dozen employees to onboard before Monday’s shift. Inviting employees to a time clock app is supposed to be the easy part, yet it’s where most rollouts stall. An invite email sits unread, one person can’t find the right app, the weekend part-timer doesn’t know there’s a new system. This guide walks through every way to add people in ClockOut, what each employee sees on their end, and the follow-up moves when someone doesn’t activate within a day or two.
Why time clock invite rollouts stall
Adoption on workforce apps rarely fails at the technology level. It fails at the expectation level: the invite lands on a day off, nobody connected it to “this is how you punch in Monday,” and one employee who didn’t set up their account keeps using the paper sheet. Within a week you have two systems running in parallel, the worst outcome.
Three things consistently close the gap between “invited” and “active”:
- Timing the invite to a shift day. “Set up your account before your next shift” is a concrete deadline. “At your convenience” means next month.
- A 60-second in-person mention. At the pre-shift huddle: “I sent everyone a ClockOut invite by email. Open it, set a password, and get the app. Takes five minutes.” Verbal plus link is a 95% activation combo.
- A visible fallback. If one employee can’t use the app, they’ll feel left out, or revert the whole team to paper. Kiosk mode removes this blocker entirely.
What to have ready before the first invite
Two minutes of prep prevents the most common support calls:
- Each employee’s email address. Every ClockOut account needs one, and it’s where the setup link goes. Use the address the person actually checks, not a shared inbox. If you don’t have everyone’s email, the invite link method (below) lets people enter their own.
- Roles decided in advance. ClockOut has three roles you can give: Employee (clock in, see their schedule, request time off), Manager (approve timesheets and handle the team day to day; on Pro you can limit a manager to one location or department), and Admin (full access). Only the owner or an admin can add another admin. Setting this before you invite avoids a second visit to each profile.
- Your work location set up. Set the address and geofence under Settings, Geofence and locations, so clock-ins are checked from day one. On Pro with more than one site, add each site on the Locations page, then pick where each person works when you add them. See How to Draw a Geofence if you haven’t configured location boundaries yet.
- A tablet if using kiosk mode. Any iPad or Android tablet with a web browser works. There’s no separate hardware to buy and nothing to install, but an admin signs in on the tablet once to set it up (details below).
How to invite employees to a time clock app by email
Adding people one at a time is the cleanest path when you know everyone’s email address and have fewer than 20 people to add.
- 01
Open People, then Team
In the ClockOut dashboard on the web, select People in the sidebar. The Team tab lists everyone, with an Add employee button at the top of the page.
- 02
Enter name and email
Type the employee’s name and email address. A phone number is optional and is kept as contact info only. Add an hourly rate or salary now if you have it, so the first payroll export is right.
- 03
Pick a role and location
Select a role before saving:
- Employee: clock in and out, view their schedule, request time off, swap shifts.
- Manager: everything in Employee, plus timesheet approval and the exception inbox. On Pro, a manager limited to a location or department only sees their own people.
- Admin: full access to all locations, team, and settings.
For employees you can also pick a location and a department. Both are optional.
- 04
Employee gets an email to set a password
Click Add employee. ClockOut emails them a “Set your password” link right away, and the link works for 7 days. They choose a password, and from then on they sign in with their email and password on the web or in the ClockOut Time Clock app. Until they do, the Team list shows a Setup pending badge next to their name.
How to import your whole team from a spreadsheet
If your team already lives in a spreadsheet or a payroll system, importing a CSV file is faster than typing each person in. It works on every plan, including Free, and still respects your plan’s limit on people.
- 01
Download the template
On People, Team, click Import CSV, then Download template. The columns are name (required), email, phone, role, hourly_rate, department, location, birthday, and geofence_exempt.
- 02
Fill in one row per person
Every row needs an email address. Role is employee, manager, or admin. A location has to match a location name in your settings exactly. Set geofence_exempt to yes for field staff who have no fixed site. Header names are matched loosely, so a column called “Full name” or “Wage” works too.
- 03
Upload and check the preview
Drop the file in, check the preview, and click Import. You can bring in up to 200 rows per file. Rows with a problem are skipped and listed so you can fix them, and people already on the team are skipped rather than duplicated, so running the same file again is safe.
- 04
Everyone gets a setup link
Each person created with an email gets the same one-time link to set their password, exactly as if you had added them one by one.
How to use a shared invite link for bulk onboarding
The shared link is faster for hiring events, full-team rollouts, and situations where you don’t have every email address on file, because people type in their own details. One link, distributed however you like: group chat, printed QR code, break-room bulletin board.
- 01
Copy the link
Go to Settings, General. Under Employee invite code you’ll see your 8-character company code and a Copy button that copies the full invite link. The same code works for everyone on your team. If it ever gets shared too widely, Regenerate invite code under Danger zone makes the old one stop working.
- 02
Distribute it
Proven distribution methods:
- A message in your team’s group chat: “Tap this link before your next shift.”
- A printed QR code of the link posted at the time-clock station or break-room wall.
- Read the 8-character code aloud at orientation; employees type it at useclockout.com/join.
- Pinned post in Slack, Teams, or your scheduling channel.
- 03
Employees join on their own
Each employee opens the link (the code is filled in for them), enters their name, email, and a password, and taps Join team. They’re signed in right away and show up in People, Team as an employee. People who join this way start with no pay rate or location, so open Edit on each new name to fill those in.
Getting the ClockOut app on iPhone and Android
Once someone has a password, they can sign in to ClockOut Time Clock by Ophy Labs on the App Store or Google Play with the same email and password. The app is built for staff: clocking in and out, schedules, time off, and shift swaps. Owners and admins run the business from the web at useclockout.com.
Anyone who would rather not install anything can sign in at useclockout.com in their phone’s browser and tap Add to Home Screen. The web app opens like an app and works the same way.
Setting up kiosk mode for employees without smartphones
Kiosk mode (Starter and up) is ClockOut on a shared tablet, mounted near the entrance. Employees punch in with a 4 to 6 digit PIN: no phone, no sign-in, no install. Any iPad or Android tablet runs it in the browser, and setup takes under five minutes.
Who kiosk mode is for
- Restaurant back-of-house and kitchen staff who don’t keep phones on the floor.
- Manufacturing and warehouse lines where personal phones aren’t permitted.
- Any team member who doesn’t own a smartphone or has an older device that struggles with apps.
- Construction crews sharing a site tablet rather than installing on every personal phone.
Setup steps
- Select Kiosks in the sidebar, turn on kiosk mode, and copy the Kiosk URL.
- On the tablet, sign in to ClockOut as an admin, open the kiosk URL, and tap Set up this device as a kiosk. ClockOut signs you out right after, so the tablet never stays signed in as you. Staff can’t punch on a device that hasn’t been set up this way.
- Lock the tablet to the kiosk page using Guided Access (iOS) or Screen Pinning (Android) so employees can’t navigate away.
- Under Employee PINs on the Kiosks page, give each person a 4 to 6 digit PIN. Kiosk-only staff still need an account with an email address, but they never have to open the setup email or sign in.
- If geofencing is on, allow location when the tablet asks. The kiosk then refuses punches from outside the fence and flags any punch with no location for your review.
- Test: enter a PIN on the kiosk and confirm the punch shows up in the Punch log.
For the full hardware and mounting walkthrough, see How to Set Up a Tablet Kiosk for Employee Time Tracking.
What employees see on their first clock-in
After activating, employees land on the ClockOut home screen. It’s intentionally simple:
- A large Clock in button. One tap, GPS recorded, shift started.
- Their upcoming schedule for the week: shifts, open shifts they can pick up, PTO balance.
- Any unread notifications (shift reminders, schedule changes, approval outcomes).
For push notifications to work (shift reminders, late clock-out nudges, schedule alerts) the employee needs to install the app (or add the web app to their home screen) and grant notification permission once. It takes about 10 seconds. Worth telling your team in the same message as the invite: “Allow notifications so you get shift reminders.”
For geofencing to work, the employee also needs to grant location permission on first clock-in. The app prompts them automatically. If someone is told they must be at the workplace to clock in while they’re standing at a legitimate location, check that the geofence radius and pin cover the parking lot and the entrance. Phone clock-ins already get 50 meters of slack past the radius, plus the phone’s reported GPS accuracy (up to 250 meters in total), so a blocked punch at the door usually means the pin is in the wrong spot.
What to do when someone doesn’t activate
Non-activations almost always fall into three patterns, each has a quick fix.
They missed the invite
Look for the Setup pending badge in People, Team, open the row menu, and choose Resend setup link. That sends a fresh link to the same email, good for another 7 days. Ask them to check their spam folder too. If they’re on the schedule today, mention it before the shift. Verbal plus link converts almost everyone.
The install confused them
Several unrelated apps from other developers also use the word “ClockOut,” so an employee who searches the App Store or Google Play can install the wrong one. The right app is ClockOut Time Clock by Ophy Labs on the App Store or Google Play (both links are on the app page). If they would rather not download anything, have them sign in at useclockout.com in their phone’s browser and tap Add to Home Screen.
They don’t have a reliable smartphone
Give them a kiosk PIN: on the Kiosks page, add a 4 to 6 digit PIN for them under Employee PINs, and they punch in from the shared tablet starting with their next shift. They don’t need to finish the setup email to use the kiosk.