The contractor keeps their own register. That is the problem.
Contract labour maintained separately, in a different format, reconciled with nothing — and a liability that stays with you when the contractor defaults.
Contract labour without a parallel set of books
One register, two employment types
Contract and on-roll in the same attendance structure, distinguished by type rather than kept apart.
Records you can produce
Site attendance that answers who was present on a given day with one number, not two disagreeing ones.
Contractor-wise visibility
Headcount, attendance and cost per contractor, so the arrangement is actually managed.
The liability does not follow the invoice
Where a contractor fails to pay wages, the principal employer is liable to pay them and recover afterwards. In practice the same exposure extends to being able to evidence statutory compliance for people working on your premises.
So the arrangement that keeps contract labour entirely in the contractor's notebook is not risk transfer. It is risk you cannot see.
Two records is a worse answer than one
When an inspection asks who was on site on a particular day, the worst possible position is two records that disagree — yours and the contractor's — because the discrepancy itself becomes the finding.
Keeping everybody in one attendance structure, with employment type as an attribute rather than as a reason to maintain separate books, removes that entirely. The contractor's people are visibly the contractor's people; they are simply in the same register.
Manage the arrangement, not just the paperwork
Once contract labour sits in the same structure, ordinary questions become answerable: how many contractor staff were on site last month, at what cost, from which contractor, with what attendance pattern.
Those are the questions that tell you whether the arrangement is working commercially — and they are unanswerable when the data lives in somebody else's book.
One register, everybody in it
Onboard both ways
Contract and on-roll joiners through the same invite flow, with type recorded.
One attendance record
Everybody punching into the same register, on site, from a phone or the gate device.
Registers produced
Contemporaneous records covering everyone present, produced from one source.
Contractor visibility
Headcount, attendance and cost per contractor, month by month.
Manage contract labour alongside your own staff FAQs
Does this make us the employer of contract workers?
No. Recording attendance does not change the employment relationship — the contractor remains the employer. What it changes is your ability to evidence who was on your premises, which is an obligation you already have.
Do we pay contract workers through Klok?
Usually not — the contractor pays them. Klok holds the attendance and the records; whether you also compute their wages depends on your commercial arrangement.
Can contractors see only their own people?
Access is role-based and scoped, so a contractor supervisor can be limited to their own workers rather than seeing your whole site.
What about contractor licence and registration tracking?
Contractor documents can be held in the vault with expiry surfaced ahead of the date — which is exactly the kind of lapse that is discovered at the wrong moment.
Are contract workers on the same system as our own staff?
Yes, on the same register with their arrangement recorded, which is what makes the principal-employer position visible rather than assumed.
If the contractor fails to pay, what is our exposure?
Materially more than most principals expect. That is precisely why the arrangement and the attendance behind it are worth holding in your own records.
See it on your own data
Fourteen days, no card, no consultant. Import your spreadsheet and watch it compute.