Gusto time tracking for field crews
If you run payroll in Gusto, you already know the Friday routine. You gather texts and paper time sheets, add up the hours by hand, then type them into the Gusto payroll run one worker at a time. Clox tracks the hours on the phone all week and gives you a Gusto-ready file to import. This post shows how the export works and what is inside it.
Gusto handles the hard part of payroll well. It files your taxes, pays your people, and keeps the paperwork straight. What it does not do is watch a crew clock in and out on a job site. That gap is where your Friday goes. You are collecting hours from texts, a group chat, and a couple of paper sheets, adding them up, and re-typing them into the Gusto payroll run by hand.
Clox closes that gap. Your crew clocks in with one tap on their phone. Hours add up by person and project through the week. When it is time to run payroll, you export a file built for Gusto's hours import and bring it in. You are not changing how you pay people. You are removing the manual re-keying step in front of it.
How the export works
The weekly flow is short, and only the last two steps touch Gusto.
- Your crew clocks in and out on Clox all week. It is one tap on their phone, it works offline, and you can lock it to a geofenced worksite.
- You review the week on the web. Hours accumulate by person and project, and overtime is calculated for you.
- You approve the hours, then export the Gusto file from the Reports page.
- You start a payroll run in Gusto and import the file into its hours-by-employee step.
Because the hours are already reviewed and approved in Clox, the file you hand Gusto matches what you signed off on. There is no second tally to reconcile.
What is in the file
The Gusto export is a CSV built for Gusto's hours-by-employee import during a payroll run. Clox writes these columns, in this order.
Overtime is pre-split in the file. Clox's overtime engine decides what counts as regular, overtime, and double overtime, and it writes those three totals into their own columns. The numbers match the detailed report you review on the web, so you are not asking Gusto to re-derive anything. Standard defaults are daily eight hours and weekly forty, configurable per employee, with an optional California rule set that adds daily double time and a meal-break review flag.
Set it up once
The setup is a one-time job, and then the export is there every payroll run.
- Open Settings, then Integrations, then Payroll, and select Gusto. Only the systems you pick show up in the Reports export menu, so the menu stays short.
- Check that each worker's name in Clox matches their name in Gusto, since Gusto matches this import by name.
Gusto matches on name, so there is no payroll ID to set for this export. If a name looks off in the file, fix the worker's display name in Clox and export again. For the exact steps to import hours during a Gusto payroll run, follow Gusto's own help documentation, since their import screens can change.
There is also a universal Payroll summary in CSV that always appears in the export menu. It maps into any provider, so it is a useful backstop if you ever want the raw hours in a plain format. You can compare Clox's pricing before you commit to anything.
Common questions
We already do it by hand. Why change?
Doing it by hand works right up until it does not. A missed text, a smudged paper sheet, or a math slip means a wrong paycheck and a fix on the next run. Clox captures each punch on the worker's phone at the moment it happens, so the hours you import into Gusto are the hours the crew actually worked. You still review and approve everything before it leaves Clox.
Does it handle overtime?
Yes, and it does the split before the file leaves Clox. The overtime engine separates regular, overtime, and double-overtime hours and writes each into its own column, so Gusto receives them ready to pay. Defaults are daily eight hours and weekly forty, and you can configure them per employee or turn on the California rule set for daily double time and a meal-break review flag.
What if a job runs across two pay periods?
You export by date range, so you pull the hours that fall inside the pay period you are running. Punches sit under the days they happened on, and a job that spans two periods simply contributes to whichever period each day belongs to. Nothing is double counted, and you approve each period on its own before you export.
What if a worker has no signal on the job site?
Clock-in works offline. The punch is saved on the device with its real timestamp and syncs when signal returns, so a dead zone on the site does not cost anyone their hours. You can also lock clock-in to a geofenced worksite as a deterrent, though location checks are a deterrent and not a foolproof guarantee.
Do my workers need to install an app?
Not necessarily. The iPhone app is on a TestFlight beta, and anyone can also clock in from a phone browser at app.getclox.com. That means a new hire can start clocking in on day one without waiting on a download. When you are ready to set your crew up, start a free trial and invite them from the web.
Use a different payroll system?
Clox exports to several payroll systems, and you pick which ones appear in your Reports menu. If you run payroll somewhere else, read the guide for your system: ADP, Paychex, or QuickBooks.