Recording time

Everything on this page is on the Today tab.

What Today shows you

The strip under the header: this week against 48 hours. Blue up to your week's threshold (39 by default), overtime green from there to 48, and full only at 48. It turns amber when this week passes 48, and red when your average over the complete weeks held (up to 17, and at least four) passes 48. The week card then says which, in a line of its own.

Why 48, and why only red for the average. 48 hours is the Working Time limit, and it is an average over 17 weeks, which a person may opt out of. One long week is worth a look; only the average is the line itself.

The week card: the week as a shape rather than a number, a bar per day with marks at 0, 39 and 48 so the bars have something to be read against. While you are clocked in, the time so far is drawn after the recorded hours, lighter: blue short of the threshold, overtime green past it. It grows once a minute and turns solid at clock-out. The header's "h this week" stays what is recorded.

Self-employed (Settings › Pay), the week has no threshold: the header shows the week's hours, the bars show each day's, and nothing is marked as overtime or banked. There is no 39 and no 48 line, and nothing about the 48-hour limit, which is a worker's. If you have set your own overtime, it is charged on your invoices, client by client, and that is where it shows.

The running card, only while a timer is going: live clock, what it is against, and the buttons to pause or finish. While it runs, the pill in the header carries its clock in front of the week's hours on every tab, and tapping the pill brings you back here. A timer that has run longer than your working day plus three hours turns amber, on the card and in the pill, and says since when; a Travel timer is given 36 hours.

The hold card, only while a job is paused.

Clock in?, only if you have switched on Remind me to clock in at a site in Settings › Features. When you open Muster at a place you clocked in at in the last fortnight and nothing is running, it asks, with a button to Clock in at that site. It never clocks in by itself, and it can only ask when you open the app, never while it is closed.

Log time: the three ways to record something, below.

Journey, with GPS on: a drive or a trip recorded as it happens. See A travel day.

Where did you stay?: only when you have days worked with no stay recorded against them. See Travel.

Today's card, at the bottom: what today already holds, and the location line.

Clocking in

Clock in opens a short form.

Choosing Travel switches Onsite off, because travelling is not being on site.

The Allowance line updates as you go, so you can see what the overnight tick is worth before you commit to it.

Start timer shows you as clocked in at once, timed from the moment you pressed, and sends it to the server straight after. If the server is busy it says the station is busy, so it will be sent in a moment, and it is; with no signal it waits on the phone (see When it goes wrong).

Onsite is not decoration

Hours logged on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday are worked time at the weekend rate, ticked or not - that is how HR pays them. If you were kept on site without working, say so: book the day with Not worked today, or as a Rest Day when you were away from home. Either is plain rate and outside the weekly 39. On a Sunday that is the difference between eight hours of pay and sixteen, so it is yours to say, never guessed from a missing tick.

It is asked at both ends, on the clock-in form and again on the clock-out form, because by the end of a day nobody remembers a tick they did not make at the start of it.

Self-employed, none of this applies: an invoice charges the hours either way, so the tick changes nothing, and describing the day never asks about it.

Break and mileage are not asked here. They are asked when you clock out, because that is when you know them.

A phone on the wrong time zone

With GPS on, Muster compares where the phone is with the time zone the phone is set to. When they are three hours or more apart, the Clock in and Clock out forms open with a red box at the top: Set this phone's time zone to automatic. It says which zone the phone is on and roughly where you are.

It matters because Muster records your hours on the phone's clock. A phone left on UK time in Mexico splits the day at London's midnight, which is early evening in Mexico: a Saturday's hours after it go on Sunday, and are paid as Sunday. On the clock-out form it also says when a shift has already passed that midnight, and which day its later hours are going on.

It never stops you: you can still clock in or out, and then check the day in the Log. Better to fix the phone's setting first.

Pausing

Pause stops the timer and holds the job. You pick a reason (Lunch, Break, Travelling, Another job, Something else) and can add a note.

Paused time is not paid and nothing is running, so you are free to clock in on a different job and come back to this one afterwards. The held job sits on Today with Resume and Drop beside it.

Switching from one job to another

A pause, like a clock-out, rounds the piece it ends up to the next quarter hour. Pause Harbour Road at 10:07 and that piece is stored to 10:15. If you then clock in on another job at 10:07, the two would both claim 10:07 to 10:15, so as soon as the new clock-in reaches the server, the piece before it is moved back to end where the new one begins, 10:07. Resuming the paused job does the same. The same goes for a third job, or a fourth: each piece ends where the next begins, and no two overlap. Each piece's hours are still rounded up on their own, as every entry's are (see Rounding).

It only ever moves a finish earlier, and only one this phone made with Pause or Clock out, and only by less than a quarter hour. A time you typed, a piece ended on another phone, or two entries that overlap by a quarter hour or more are left exactly as they are; Summary's Before you send it lists those. A clock-in made with no signal moves nothing until it has been sent, so after a day without signal, check the Log where you switched jobs.

Clocking out

If a journey is still recording on the Journey card, Clock out asks first: Your journey is still recording, since when, and did it end here, or are you still driving?

• End the journey here ends the journey where you are, asks which route you took, and then clocks you out.
• Keep recording - I'm still driving clocks you out and leaves the Journey card running until you press End journey on it.

Clock out shows the entry as it will be filed, before it is filed:

• Started, Finish, Total, and the sentence under them saying how the total was arrived at, e.g. 9h 15m clocked, less a 30 minute break. Change the break and all three recompute, and the total keeps up with the clock while the form is open, so the figure you confirm is the figure stored.
• Description: anything worth recording.
• Unpaid break: none, 15, 30, 45 minutes or an hour. It shortens the paid time by that much.
• Miles driven: leave blank if you were not driving.
• Onsite and Overnight stay: asked again, for the reason above.

OK files it. Keep running goes back without stopping the clock. Like a clock-in, a clock-out shows at once and is sent straight after. If somebody in HR corrected the entry while it was running, the server refuses the clock-out rather than overwrite them: it says so in red, Clock-out not saved, and the strip lets you look.

It works wherever the phone is: a timer started at home can be stopped in any time zone.

A timer left running

When the timer has run past your working day plus three hours, Clock out asks Is the finish right? It opens on Now, the finish you pressed, as every clock-out does, with Usual - your working day's End, from Settings - one tap beside it. Whichever you pick is what is saved, and the press itself is still kept. A Travel timer, or a day that began after your usual finish, is not offered a usual finish: correct it in the Log once you have clocked out.

Rounding

The paid time, after the unpaid break has come off, is rounded up to the next quarter hour, per entry. Two clock-outs in one day therefore round twice. A timer started and stopped by accident becomes a claim for fifteen minutes, so delete it rather than leaving it; anything under five minutes is flagged when you export. Every screen shows an entry's hours rounded, the way the timesheet counts them; the times themselves stay as they were.

A travel day

The Journey card

With GPS on, Today has a Journey card, clocked in or not. It records a journey as it happens: where you set off, any stops, and where you arrived. Nothing is recorded between your taps.

• Start journey takes your position and puts your clock on Travel: from whatever was running, or on the job you were last on.
• Kind says how you are going: Personal vehicle, Taxi, Hire car, Train, Flight, Ferry or Lift or other. The line under End journey says where it will be saved: your own vehicle and a lift on Journeys, the rest on Travel.
• Add a stop takes one more position for each place on the way, so a detour is measured as the road you drove rather than the straight run.
• End journey takes the last position and saves the journey. A drive is then measured by road, and where there is more than one way it could have gone, you are asked which (see Measuring a drive by road).

If your clock is still on Travel, it then asks What now?: Carry on working puts the clock back on what you were doing before the drive, or Labour; Finish for the day opens the clock-out form; Keep the clock as it is leaves it running on Travel.

A day of several kinds of transport - a taxi, three flights and a taxi - is End journey and Start journey again wherever the transport changes, each one with its own kind. Flights, taxis, trains and ferries are never measured by road.

With no signal, End journey keeps the journey on the phone, and the button reads Save journey: press it again when you have a signal. Where you arrived is kept, not wherever you are when the signal comes back.

When you land

Clocking out of a travel entry moves your stays for you:

• Landed at home: the stay you left is closed on the day you arrived, and no stay is needed. The app says Travel time saved, names the stay it closed and the day, and ends Welcome home.
• Landed anywhere else: the stay you left is closed and a new one opened where you landed, named by its town.

The Travel time saved card on Travel says what was recorded, and Done closes it when there is nothing left to add. Home is your home town, set in Settings.

The other two ways to log time

Standard hours

One tap. Books your working day, the Start and End from Settings › Your working day, against your default job, for today. It is the button for a day that went exactly as days go.

For twelve seconds afterwards a strip under the button offers Take it back, which deletes the day just logged. If today already has hours on it, it shows you what they are, and whether this day would lie over them, before it logs anything: Cancel leaves the day as it is, OK logs it anyway. It works with no signal, waiting on the phone like a clock-in.

Not worked today

Appears on any day with nothing logged on it yet, weekday or weekend, and goes once anything is logged for the day. It books hours you did not work, so only use it when they are claimable, and it asks which kind:

• On site: your working day's hours, at the times in Settings.
• Not on site: your contracted hours for that day. If the day has no contracted hours, it asks you how many rather than quietly booking nothing, offering your Weekend standard hours.

Either way the hours land at plain rate and outside the weekly 39, whatever the day and whatever the Onsite tick says, because neither is work done. They never push the rest of your week into overtime.

On a salary, a weekday's contracted hours are already paid by it, so only the hours past them are claimed: a Tuesday booked On site at 11 hours claims 2.5. A Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday has no contracted hours and is claimed whole. Paid by the hour, every hour is claimed. A weekday left empty is taken as a standard day toward the 39; one booked Not worked is not.

Editing the entry afterwards keeps it booked as not worked.

It is not offered if you are self-employed: nobody is billed for hours not worked.

With no default job set, Standard hours and Not worked today go on the job you last worked.

Add entry manually

The full form, for a day that has already happened, or a correction. The same form edits an existing entry.

Times you enter for the future are saved, and said. Muster does not refuse an entry that finishes at 18:56 when it is 17:00; it saves it and tells you plainly that it has not happened yet.

As tapped

An entry you clocked shows As tapped under its calculated hours: when it Started and Ended by your phone's own clock at each press, in which time zone, the town nearby when GPS is on, and the Time passed. It is kept as it was pressed and nothing rewrites it. The hours above it are that time passed, rounded up to the next quarter hour, less any break.

If someone else has corrected the entry since, it says so, and what it said before is kept. Only you see your As tapped.

Travel entries and the journey block

Choosing Travel as the activity on the entry form unfolds a Journey block in the same form, so one save writes both the timesheet and the journey. That is deliberate: the moment you are recording the travel time is the moment you are most likely to actually record where you went.

Most of it is filled in for you:

• From comes from the stay you have not left yet, which is more reliable than the phone's time zone; that only tells you where the phone is now.
• To comes from the finish time zone.
• On arrival: Staying there, or Layover — same-day transit.
• Close the open stay in …: leave this on. Recording an arrival without closing the stay you left makes the record contradict itself: an open stay counts as "still there" through to today, so two open stays overlap and the travel audit will refuse to resolve them.

GPS

Off by default; the switch is Attach GPS to entries, in Settings › Features. With it on, Muster records two positions per entry, where you clocked in and where you clocked out, plus one for each tap on the Journey card. Nothing in between, and nothing while the app is shut. It is also what names the towns for your stays and journeys, and it is what shows the Journey card.

With GPS on, Muster also compares where the phone is against what the phone thinks the time is. See A phone on the wrong time zone.

Next: The Log · How your hours are paid