Before payroll: a timecard check in plain words

Payroll day is when timecard problems get expensive. A clock-out that never happened turns a six-hour shift into a nineteen-hour one. A punch edited last week, without a note, raises a question nobody can answer. A break that ended early may matter under your state's rules. The usual check is a slow scroll through the punch grid, person by person, looking for the odd ones out.

With Mays connected to your AI app, you ask for the odd ones out directly.

Part of our series Run your restaurant with your AI: one real situation per post, with the words you type and what happens in Mays. The prompts and results are illustrative examples.

What the manager types

The pay period at Harbor Lane Café's Riverside location runs September 16 to 30. The day before closing it, Maya L. asks:

"Check Riverside's timecards from Sept 16 to 30 before payroll. List missing clock-outs, auto clock-outs, punches a manager edited or added by hand, short breaks, and anyone in overtime. Also anyone who went more than an hour over their shift."

What the AI does in Mays

It reads Riverside's timecards for those days: the same data as the punch grid on the Time Clock page, for the locations you manage. Every punch comes back with:

• clock-in and clock-out, on the location's clock, and the hours worked;
• breaks, each one marked paid or unpaid, meal or rest, and short if it ended before its required length;
• the shift it belongs to, with the scheduled hours and the variance (worked minus scheduled), minutes late and an early clock-out;
• overtime hours on that punch, under the pay-period rules;
• flags for an auto clock-out (Mays closed the punch; the time is a cutoff, not when they left), a missing clock-out, and a punch with no matching shift;
• how it was made: phone, kiosk, added by a manager, or imported;
• the edit trail Mays keeps: who last edited the punch and when it last changed.

Plus totals for the range: punches, people, hours, overtime hours, and how many were edited, auto-closed or missing a clock-out. One question covers up to 31 days, so a biweekly or semimonthly period fits. You can narrow it to one person: "Show Jordan R.'s punches this period."

Wages appear only if you can see pay in Mays and included pay when you connected. Otherwise hours only, and the AI is told never to estimate the rest.

What you see

The AI sorts the list into what needs a look, for example (illustrative):

"15 days, 9 people, 412.5 hours, 6.0 overtime hours. 1 missing clock-out: Jordan R., Sept 23, clocked in 6:28 am. 2 auto clock-outs, both on Sept 26 at the nightly cutoff. 3 punches added or edited by a manager, last edited by Maya L. 1 short break: Sept 19, 22 minutes of a 30-minute meal break. Jordan R. ran 1 h 20 m over the Sept 27 shift."

Fix it where it lives

The AI reads timecards; it doesn't change them. You fix punches in Mays, on the Time Clock page, where every edit is recorded, then approve and close the period as usual (see Timesheets and pay periods).

What the chat gives you is the list to work through, and the questions to ask before you fix anything. An auto clock-out means the real end time is unknown; ask the person. A punch with no matching shift may be a pickup someone forgot to add to the schedule. And if your team fills in a paper correction form, our missed punch and time card correction form shows what it should hold.

What it replaces

Who can ask

Anyone who can view the schedule in Mays, for their own locations. It's read-only, so no actions setting is needed. Pay needs pay access in Mays and a connection that includes pay.

What Mays doesn't do here

• It doesn't keep earlier values of an edited punch. It records who last edited it and when, not what it said before.
• It doesn't edit or approve punches from the chat. That's on the Time Clock page.
• It isn't legal advice. Whether a short break or overtime triggers a premium depends on your state; Mays applies the rules set for each location (see Labor & compliance (per location)).
• Long lists are capped. One answer lists up to 100 punches, and the totals stay exact. Ask for one person or fewer days to see the rest.

Try it before your next close

1. Connect Mays to ChatGPT, Claude or Grok from mays.app/ai (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok). Connect Mays to ChatGPT, Claude or Grok explains the pay box.
2. Ask for the period's exceptions.
3. Fix them on the Time Clock, then close the period.

Try Mays free for 30 days, with no credit card, and connect it to the AI you already use.