At best, chasing late or missing timecards is frustrating. At worst, it takes over an entire afternoon, forces you to stop what you’re doing and fix errors, and slows down payroll.

And when it becomes a pattern, it quickly feels unfixable.

The good news is that this cycle is avoidable. You just need timecard reminders that employees actually see, understand, and act on.

In this article, we show you how to create effective timecard reminders, using advice from real managers. We also highlight how Buddy Punch can help ensure your employees remember to clock in, clock out, and submit their timesheets so your payroll is always accurate.

The cost of ignored timecard reminders

When reminders aren’t followed, you’re left with missing timecards, incomplete hours, and time submitted in different formats. You then have to track down employees, piece together hours, and try to resolve errors. 

Not only are you in a scramble, but payroll teams are, too. They’re forced to make judgment calls in a hurry and without reliable information, which directly affects payroll accuracy.

As Emily Demirdonder, Director of Operations and Marketing at Proximity Plumbing, tells Buddy Punch, “The need to rush through the payroll processing because of this delay creates a higher probability of errors in calculations.” 

Yad Senapathy, founder and CEO of Project Management Training Institute, has experienced the same thing:

“[It] compels payroll staff to ‘guess’ as to what is owed to the employee. Teams have had to ‘patch’ hours using texts, emails, and memories to account for the hours, thus resulting in inaccuracies of pay, missed overtime, and correction runs.”

When this happens, there’s more room for incorrect entries, which is a big reason time theft is harder to spot when timecards aren’t submitted neatly and on time.

And the ripple effects go beyond payroll. Demirdonder adds that her office team “wastes valuable [time] chasing technicians for their hours instead of answering customer calls or booking new jobs.” For her staff, late or missing timecards also disrupt cash flow because invoices can’t go out on time.

How to send timecard reminders that employees will act on

You don’t have to nudge your team every day — or rewrite your whole timekeeping policy — to get better follow-through. Let’s break down how to create timecard reminders that really work.

Keep reminder messages short, calm, and clear

Harvard Kennedy School researchers found that shorter emails are more likely to be acted on. And in everyday life, you’ve probably heard people admit they delay responding to long texts, emails, and other messages. 

It’s not surprising, then, that many managers told us the same thing: If a reminder is long, dramatic, or vague, employees are more likely to put it off. 

The experts identified that a great timecard reminder message has these traits:

• It’s short (around 8–15 words). 
• It’s calm and polite in tone. “Employees will generally disregard messages with a sense of urgency or drama,” explains Fuel Logic LLC CEO Eliot Vancil. Kira Byrd, Chief Accountant and Compliance Strategist at Curl Centric, agrees — she used a “message written in a plain tone” to reduce late timecard submissions. In practice, this means avoiding guilt or intensity (“Last warning!” or “You cannot forget again”) and staying level-headed.
• It’s clear about the task and the deadline. Workers should be able to see at a glance what you’re asking them to do and when it’s due. Clarify the action (e.g., “submit your timecard”) and include the exact cutoff (day/date and time).

The exact wording you’ll use is up to you, but you can take inspiration from Senapathy. To him, the ideal reminder message is something like, “Timecard due by 5 p.m. today. Please submit now.” 

Pro tip: Consider personalizing the message with the employee’s name, especially if you’re sending reminders by text or push notification. Artificial Grass Pros president Johannes Hock does this, and studies show that this kind of personalization helps encourage people to take action.

If you send reminders manually (e.g., through text, email, or group chat), write one “best version” and reuse it. But we recommend automating your reminders with time tracking software. Automation makes the message more consistent and reduces the risk that reminders won’t go out because one person forgot to hit send. 

With Buddy Punch, for example, you can easily create (and edit) reminders with custom messages. Just navigate to Settings → Alerts & Reminders, and type your message into the Name field; that’s what employees will see in the reminder.

Make reminders predictable

Speaking of consistency, this was a key theme in the advice experts shared with us. When employees receive timecard reminders at the same time, with the same wording, through the same channel, they begin to recognize the message and know immediately what they need to do.

As Guillermo Trian, Principal Consultant and CEO of PEO Marketplace, explains: 

“Oddly enough, the best reminder techniques are ones that do not require active reading or response from the employee. […] I am talking that every Friday at 2:55 p.m., your crew hears the same message, in the same format. With enough repetition, it will turn into muscle memory.”

In other words, consistency helps turn timecard submission from an easily overlooked task into part of your team’s standard routine.

Automating reminders is usually the easiest way to build this repetition, but you can also do it manually by issuing reminders on a set schedule. Either way, you have to make sure timecard reminders arrive at the proper time and through the right channel. Let’s break that down next.

Send reminders at the right moment

Many timecard reminders get ignored because they show up when employees can’t act on them, such as too long after a shift ends or too soon before clock-out. As Kira Byrd, Chief Accountant and Compliance Strategist at Curl Centric, experienced with her team, any reminders sent “outside of their current habits […] would inevitably be ignored.”

The solution is to send reminders when employees are still in “work mode” and can complete timecards immediately. Depending on your team, that might be right before clock-out, right after the last job/delivery/closeout step, or a day before or after the pay period ends (when you know they’ll be working). 

This is the approach Vancil uses. “As soon as a driver completes the last job of the day, [our system] will prompt them to submit their timecard,” he tells Buddy Punch. And Hock does the same with an end-of-day routine: “When field staff return from a job and perform their end-of-day log-off/check-in, we require them to submit their timecard as part of the routine.”

Extra benefit: When timecards are submitted soon after the work is done, it’s much easier to track employees’ hours. And because hours are still fresh in their minds, their entries are more likely to be accurate. 

To do this with your team, choose one “wrap-up moment” that fits your timecard schedule (daily, weekly, or end of pay period) and applies to most employees, such as 10 minutes before clock-out, 10 minutes before the final shift of the pay period, or one day after the pay period ends. Then, send reminders during that window. 

For manual reminders, set an alert on your phone or digital calendar to notify you 10–15 minutes beforehand. That way, you have enough time to copy, paste, and send. 

For automated reminders, Buddy Punch comes in handy. You can use the Submit Timecard Reminders feature to schedule automatic nudges a set number of days before (or after) the pay period ends.

Use the channels that employees regularly check 

Sending timecard reminders to the right place is just as important as sending them at the right time. The “right place” is the channel or tool your employees check during work — usually the same place they get critical updates, such as schedule changes, job details, or customer messages.

For most hourly and field teams, that’s mobile. Push notifications, texts, or WhatsApp messages tend to be seen faster than emails because they appear on phones employees already have with them. And when the reminder appears on the same device workers use to submit their timecards, it’s easy to complete the task on the spot. 

This is what Seun Osho, founder and E-Commerce SEO Executive at Unyield, experienced with his team. “[We] prompt users on the phone they check regularly. […] Short WhatsApp prompts at the same time on each shift day increased [timecard] submissions to above 90 percent,” he tells Buddy Punch.

For office-based employees, email can work if it’s part of the everyday routine. If an office team spends more time communicating in a group chat than via email, for example, mobile-friendly reminders would be the better option.

In Buddy Punch, you can deliver reminders by push notification, email, or both, so you can use the channel that best fits your team.

Issue follow-up reminders to certain people only

Follow-ups are helpful, but they shouldn’t go to everyone. When employees who’ve already submitted keep getting nudges, they start ignoring messages. After a while, that habit sticks — and even reliable employees may tune out future reminders that do apply to them. 

Instead, send one main reminder to everyone, then follow up only with employees who still haven’t submitted.

How you identify those team members depends on the tools you use. For instance, in a time tracking or payroll system, check timecard status reports for anyone with “not submitted” statuses. Or if timecards come in through email or group chat, you can scan the thread for missing names and note who hasn’t replied. 

Your follow-up should be short and specific — e.g., “Your timecard isn’t in yet. Please submit by 2 p.m. today.” Make sure to send it through the same channel you used for the first reminder so it doesn’t get lost.

Buddy Punch makes this especially easy. From the Dashboard, you can see, in real time, who still needs to submit a timecard—then nudge only those employees before the cutoff. You can also set up as many Submit Timecard Reminders as you need, including more than one for the same employee.

Bonus: Add a rule if reminders still don’t work

These strategies should do the trick. But if timecards are still late or missing, try adding a rule that makes delaying or ignoring submission less appealing. 

Here are a few that real managers use:

• Workers can’t see next week’s schedule until timecards are in. Demirdonder uses a “Schedule Lock” feature in her field service software that blocks technicians from viewing their rosters or job sites for the following week until they submit. She says this is a “powerful intrinsic motivator” because on-time submission unlocks something employees really want.
• Employees can’t access key workflows until they’ve submitted. F5 Mortgage president and founder Ryan McCallister limits certain updates, requests, and capabilities to “employees who have successfully entered their timecards.” He says this rule reduces the need for repeated reminders and saves “hours of time each pay period.”
• Staff can’t edit timecards after the deadline without a formal request. Senapathy uses a time clock rule in his team’s timekeeping system that “prevents a user from editing and saving their timecard” after the deadline. Changes after that require “a formal request,” which he says helps employees take timecard submission deadlines seriously. 

Simplify timecard reminders with Buddy Punch

Late and missing timecards are preventable when reminders are easy to understand and easy to act on. Buddy Punch helps you deliver reminders like these without a ton of time or effort. 

You can create unlimited timecard reminders with your own phrasing, send them via push notification or email (or both), and schedule them around your pay period. And when you need to follow up, you can quickly see who still hasn’t submitted and nudge only those employees. 

Want to learn more? Book a demo, or try Buddy Punch for free today.

Contributors

• Emily Demirdonder, Proximity Plumbing, Director of Operations and Marketing — LinkedIn
• Yad Senapathy, Project Management Training Institute, Founder and CEO — LinkedIn
• Johannes Hock, Artificial Grass Pros, President — LinkedIn
• Seun Osho, Unyield, E-Commerce SEO Executive and Founder — LinkedIn
• Ryan McCallister, F5 Mortgage, President and Founder — LinkedIn