From field to office: one record, end to end

Most sites keep two versions of the truth. There's what happened at the gate, and there's what reached the office a few days later, after someone copied it out of a notebook. The gap between the two is where disputes live, and where hours quietly go missing.

Buildpal is built around a single record that starts at the gate and ends in a worker's wallet. Here's the path it takes, step by step.

What happens when a worker taps in?#

Each worker has one Buildpal card with a printed serial, registered to them. When they tap it at the reader, the record captures who, which card, which reader, which site, the direction and whether entry was granted. If a tap is denied, the reader says why on the spot, so the worker knows what to fix.

1. The tap is recorded at the gate, even when the network is down.
2. Recorded attendance is approved and becomes an amount owed.
3. The funds are held for the worker.
4. The money lands in the worker's wallet.
5. The worker withdraws it to mobile money.

Workers can see their money at each of these stages. Payouts run on a schedule, not as a favour, and a payout that fails shows its reason and returns to the wallet.

Why does one record matter?#

Because every later step depends on the first one being true. Pay is calculated from the tap record, not from a typed timesheet, and a dispute is settled against the same record both sides can see.

It also means the office stops being the place where attendance gets rebuilt. When the record is right at the gate, nobody spends Friday afternoon reconstructing the week from notebooks and memory.

What does the office see?#

The office sees the same record, live. Who is on site, which crews are short, what is approved and what is still pending. Nothing has to be retyped, so nothing drifts between the gate and the office.

For a contractor running several sites, that means answering a client's question about headcount or progress in minutes, with evidence behind the answer, instead of a round of phone calls.

See how the gate side works in detail on the Site Access & Attendance page.