Run your workforce on one calm platform.

Chapter 01

Welcome to Tickin

Tickin replaces the spreadsheets, the email threads, and the three tools your team has been gluing together. Time, leaves, payroll, overtime, shifts, and reports in one workspace. Accessible from the web, from Slack, and from an optional desktop client.

What you can do with Tickin

Chapter 02

Getting started in five steps

Most teams are fully onboarded in an afternoon. No implementation consultants, no setup calls.

1. Sign up & create your workspace

   Go to tickin.pro/signup. Continue with Google or use your work email. Pick a workspace name and a slug; your workspace lives at your-slug.tickin.pro. The slug — the your-slug part — uses lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens; dots aren't allowed (spaces and dots are turned into hyphens automatically), because the slug is a single web address.

2. Set your currency and time zone

   From Workspace settings, choose the currency you pay employees in and your primary time zone. Tickin localizes payroll, shifts, and salary slips around these values.

3. Invite your team

   Open People → Invite. Add emails individually or paste a CSV. Each invite carries the role you assigned: Admin, Team Lead, or Employee.

4. Connect Slack (optional but recommended)

   Under Integrations → Slack, click Add to Slack. Once connected, employees can clock in, request leave, and approve overtime without leaving Slack.

5. Pick your plan

   You start on a 14-day free trial of Starter or Growth with full feature access. No card required. Upgrade or switch any time from Workspace → Billing.

Chapter 03

Your workspace, end to end

A workspace is your company's private home in Tickin. People, policies, payroll, and history all live inside it.

What lives inside a workspace

• People. Employees, team leads, and admins. Each profile holds employment details, salary, leave balances, and reporting line.
• Teams. Group people for delegated approvals. A team lead manages their own team only; admins see everyone.
• Policies. Leave types, accrual rules, working hours, overtime thresholds. Set once, applied everywhere.
• Records. Time entries, leave history, payroll runs, salary slips. Immutable once finalized.
• Audit log. Every meaningful change is logged with who, what, and when.

Workspace settings to configure on day one

A first-run setup checklist on the admin dashboard tracks which of these you've completed and links straight to the right page for each.

Chapter 04

Three roles. Clear boundaries.

Each role sees what they need and nothing more. Promote or demote any time from the People page.

Chapter 05

Plans & pricing

Three plans, one optional add-on, two billing cycles. All amounts in USD. Invoices and tax handled for you.

The Desktop App add-on

The Desktop App is optional on every plan. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, captures activity-aware time entries, and syncs to your workspace automatically. Pricing is consistent across tiers, and is never discounted on annual billing.

Monthly or annual

Switch billing cycle from Workspace → Billing. Annual prepays 12 months and applies a 20% discount to your base plan. The Desktop App add-on is billed at its full rate either way.

The free trial

New workspaces get a 14-day free trial of Starter or Growth with full feature access. No credit card required. We email the workspace contact before your trial ends, so nothing pauses by surprise.

Chapter 06

Managing your billing

Everything you'd otherwise need a support ticket for is a button in your dashboard. Change plan, toggle the Desktop App, see what you'll be charged, before you confirm.

Where to find it

Open Workspace → Billing. Only admins see this page. From here you can:

• Switch plan (Starter ↔ Growth)
• Switch billing cycle (monthly ↔ annual)
• Toggle the Desktop App add-on
• Toggle auto-renewal
• Open your billing portal to update card details or download invoices
• View payment history

Switching plan, with a prorated preview

When you change plans mid-cycle, Tickin shows you the exact prorated charge or credit before you confirm. The new rate applies immediately and your next renewal moves to the new plan. Add-ons stay attached.

What happens if a payment fails

You get an 8-day grace period. We email and Slack-DM the workspace contact on day 0, day 2, and day 5 with a one-click link to update the card. If the card still hasn't cleared by day 8, the workspace pauses. Your data stays safe; only write access is locked until billing is current. Reactivation is instant once payment goes through.

Auto-renewal

Auto-renewal is on by default. Turn it off from Billing to let your subscription expire at the end of the current cycle. You'll still have full access until then. Turn it back on any time to keep going.

Adjusting seats

On per-seat plans, your seat count updates automatically as you add or remove people. Bills prorate; you'll never be billed twice for the same period. There's no seat minimum — your bill always reflects exactly your current team size.

Canceling

From Billing, click Cancel subscription. You retain full access until the end of the current billing period. After that the workspace becomes read-only; your data remains exportable for 90 days.

Chapter 07

Features in depth

A reference tour. Skim by heading, or read end to end on a slow afternoon.

Time tracking & attendance

Employees clock in from the web, from Slack with /clockin, or from the Desktop App. Breaks are toggled with /break, which pauses and resumes the work timer; the Desktop App also captures idle periods automatically and deducts them from worked time. Net worked time is gross hours minus break time, end of story. Admins and team leads can adjust entries with a reason; employees submit adjustment requests for their approver to action.

Leave management

Define leave types at the workspace level: annual, sick, casual, unpaid, parental. Each type has an annual quota, a flag for whether it requires approval, and a unique color in the calendar. Employees submit requests from the web portal; team leads approve their team, and admins sign off. Used days are tracked automatically from approved requests, and a daily Slack roll-up shows who's out today.

Payroll & salary slips

Tickin calculates pro-rated salary, deductions, and overtime automatically. Run payroll for any period; review line by line; publish. Salary slips render as PDFs in each employee's locale, with full CJK font support for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names, and ship monthly on the 3rd to every employee's email.

Overtime detection

Set a daily threshold per workspace (default: 9 hours, editable in Settings → Work schedule). When an employee clocks out having exceeded it, Tickin sends a Slack DM with two buttons: continue (records as OT) or cap at the threshold (no OT). The decision is logged with the session, and confirmed overtime flows straight into the monthly report and the admin's approval queue.

Monthly summary

On the 1st of every month, Tickin snapshots the previous month's overtime per employee and shows a 3-step breakdown: how much approved OT was absorbed into the monthly required hours (gap-fill), how much offset desktop-tracked idle time (idle-cover), and the leftover payable surplus. Admins see everyone, team leads see their reports, employees see themselves. The view sits next to the daily OT log on the Overtime page.

Monthly required hours are computed automatically from your Work schedule (daily hours × working days in the month, minus paid public holidays, minus each employee's approved leave). Admins can pin a custom monthly total if the auto value doesn't fit.

Shift management

Design weekly work schedules per employee or per department. Set working hours, active days, and minimum hours from the Shifts page. Employees and team leads see their week at a glance from the home screen.

Team-lead approvals

Tickin delegates without losing oversight. Team leads handle adjustments and leaves for their own team only; admins see everything across the workspace. The team lead role is a clean middle layer between admin and employee.

Slack-native workflow

Slack is a first-class surface, not a bolt-on. Clock in, take breaks, check status, and confirm overtime, all without leaving the channel where your team already lives. Leave requests and approvals happen in the web portal, with Slack DMs that link straight back to the relevant screen.

Reports & insights

Weekly and monthly time-entry summaries land in your inbox: sessions and hours per employee. Overtime, attendance, leaves, and a daily roll-up are available in the admin portal, filterable by employee, department, and date range.

Self-serve billing

Switch plans, add or drop the Desktop App, toggle auto-renewal, update your card, download invoices, all from Billing. Every change shows its prorated impact before you confirm.

Activity log

Employee, integration, and tax changes are recorded append-only with actor, timestamp, and before/after values. Key day-to-day events (clock-ins, leave approvals, OT decisions) are recorded separately in the activity log. Both are filterable and useful for compliance and forensics.

Chapter 08

Slack workflow

Tickin treats Slack as a primary surface. Clock in, take a break, check your status, all without leaving the channel where your team already lives.

Slash commands

How breaks work

Breaks pause your work timer. Type /break when you step away; type it again when you're back. Tickin tracks the state for you. Net worked time is always clock-out minus clock-in minus the sum of all break time for that session. Take as many breaks as you need; they all add up.

Daily and weekly summaries in your dashboard show three numbers side by side: gross hours, break hours, and net hours. Admins see the same breakdown for their team. Overtime detection uses net hours, so a long lunch never trips the daily threshold by accident.

How the math lands for one work session, side by side:

Two breaks of 30 and 18 minutes total 48 minutes, which Tickin subtracts from the 9h 12m between clock-in and clock-out, leaving 8h 24m of net worked time. Half-day or seconds-level breaks are handled the same way — every break is summed and deducted.

Notifications you can expect

• Overtime check. DM the moment your net work crosses the workspace daily threshold, with two buttons: continue working (counts as OT) or clock out now (caps at the threshold).
• Leave requests. DM to the team lead (or admin if no lead) when an employee submits a leave request, with an "Open in dashboard" button.
• Leave outcomes. DM back to the requester when their request is approved or denied, including the admin's note.
• Adjustment notifications. Attendance adjustments and overtime decisions DM the team lead, admin, and requester at each step.
• Public holiday announcements. When an admin adds a public holiday, the attendance channel gets a heads-up message.
• Daily leave report. Each day, a grouped report posts to the report channel listing who's on WFH, sick, casual, annual, paternity, or maternity leave.

Connecting Slack to your workspace

Slack is set up from Admin Portal → Integrations → Slack. It's a one-time, ten-minute process. You'll create a Slack app, copy four credentials into Tickin, and register the slash commands.

1. Create a Slack app for your workspace

   Go to api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App → From scratch. Name it "Tickin" (or anything you prefer) and pick your Slack workspace. You'll be dropped into the app's settings.

2. Add the bot scopes

   Open OAuth & Permissions. Under Scopes → Bot Token Scopes, add: chat:write, commands, users:read, users:read.email, im:write. Click Install to Workspace at the top of the page and approve. Copy the Bot User OAuth Token (starts with xoxb-) for later.

3. Copy the Signing Secret

   Open Basic Information → App Credentials. Copy the Signing Secret value.

4. Create two Incoming Webhooks

   Open Incoming Webhooks and turn the feature on. Click Add New Webhook to Workspace twice, picking the channels you want announcements in: one for general attendance (clock-in / clock-out, public holidays, OT auto clock-outs), and one for the daily leave report. Copy both webhook URLs.

5. Register the slash commands

   Open Slash Commands and add each of these. In every Request URL, replace your-slug with your workspace's slug — the your-slug part of your-slug.tickin.pro:

   Command	Request URL	Short description
   /clockin	https://api.tickin.pro/api/slack/your-slug/clockin	Start a time entry
   /clockout	https://api.tickin.pro/api/slack/your-slug/clockout	End the current time entry
   /break	https://api.tickin.pro/api/slack/your-slug/break	Pause or resume the work timer
   /clockstatus	https://api.tickin.pro/api/slack/your-slug/clockstatus	See your current session status

   For /break, leave the usage hint blank or set it to (toggles a break). Plain /break with no argument is the recommended form; /break start and /break stop still work for users who prefer to be explicit.

6. Enable interactive components

   Open Interactivity & Shortcuts, toggle it on, and set the Request URL to https://api.tickin.pro/api/slack/your-slug/interactive (same your-slug as above). This is what powers the overtime confirmation buttons.

7. Paste everything into Tickin

   In the admin portal, open Integrations → Slack → Connect. Paste the Bot User OAuth Token, the Signing Secret, and the two webhook URLs. Click Test connection to confirm the bot token is valid, then Save. Your credentials are encrypted before storage.

8. Reinstall the Slack app

   Back at api.slack.com/apps, under Install App, click Reinstall to Workspace. This refreshes the OAuth grant so the new slash commands and interactive endpoint are live. You're connected.

Integration

LINE WORKS

Many teams in Japan run on LINE WORKS rather than Slack. Tickin works there too: your team can clock in and out, take breaks, and check their status right inside LINE WORKS — the same flows as Slack.

The commands

Type the word (no slash needed) or tap a Rich Menu button. Japanese keywords work too:

• clockin — start your day (日本語: 出勤)
• clockout — end your day; breaks are auto-deducted (退勤)
• break — toggle a break on or off (休憩)
• status — see whether you're clocked in and your net hours so far (状況)

Employees are matched automatically by their work email from the LINE WORKS directory — no manual linking. Clock-in/out events can also post to a channel you choose.

It's one clock, everywhere. A clock-in from LINE WORKS shows up on the web dashboard (and in admin reports), and a clock-out from the dashboard is reflected by the status command — because Slack, LINE WORKS, and the web all read and write the same attendance record.

Connecting LINE WORKS to your workspace

1. In the LINE WORKS Developer Console, create an App and a Service Account, and download the Service Account private key.
2. Register a Bot, enable it for your organization, and set its callback URL to https://api.tickin.pro/api/lineworks/callback/<your-subdomain>.
3. Grant the bot the bot, bot.message, and user.read scopes.
4. In Tickin, go to Settings → Integrations → LINE WORKS and paste the Bot ID, Bot Secret, Client ID, Client Secret, Service Account, and the private key. Optionally add an announcement channel ID.
5. Click Test connection, then Save and enable it.

Chapter 09

Connecting your email

Tickin sends a lot of email on your company's behalf: invites, password resets, leave updates, weekly reports, salary slips, billing alerts, birthday and anniversary greetings. To send from your domain, connect SMTP credentials once.

What we send, so you know what to expect

Setup with Gmail (app password)

Gmail is the most common choice. The setup uses an app password, not your regular Google password. This requires 2-Step Verification to be on, which we recommend anyway.

1. Turn on 2-Step Verification

   Open myaccount.google.com → Security. Under Signing in to Google, click 2-Step Verification and follow the prompts. This is required before app passwords become available.

2. Create an app password

   Still in Google account settings, search for App passwords or open myaccount.google.com/apppasswords. Name the password Tickin and click Create. Google shows you a 16-character password. Copy it now; you won't see it again.

3. Open Tickin's Integrations page

   In the admin portal, click Integrations. On the Email (SMTP) card, click Connect.

4. Fill in Gmail's SMTP settings

   Use these values:

   SMTP host	smtp.gmail.com
   Port	587
   Username	your Gmail address, e.g. hr@yourcompany.com
   Password	the 16-character app password from step 2
   From name	how the sender appears, e.g. Acme HR
   From email	same address as username, or an alias

5. Test the connection

   Click Test connection. Tickin opens a TLS connection to Gmail and verifies your credentials. A green confirmation means the credentials are valid. If it fails, the most common cause is using your regular Google password instead of an app password.

6. Save & enable

   Make sure the Enabled checkbox is on. Click Save. Your password is encrypted before it's stored. From now on, all Tickin emails for this workspace go through your Gmail account.

Setup with a generic SMTP provider

SendGrid, Postmark, Amazon SES, Mailgun, or your own corporate SMTP all work the same way. Open the same Integrations → Email (SMTP) → Connect modal, then fill in:

• SMTP host: whatever your provider gives you, e.g. smtp.sendgrid.net, email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com, smtp.postmarkapp.com.
• Port: usually 587 (TLS) or 465 (SSL). Port 465 automatically uses SSL; everything else uses STARTTLS.
• Username: the SMTP username from your provider's credentials page. Often apikey for SendGrid, or an IAM-derived username for SES.
• Password: the SMTP password or API key.
• From name / From email: a sender identity verified with your provider. For SES this must be a verified sender; for SendGrid you'll need domain authentication set up first.

Click Test connection, then Save.

Disconnecting

From the same Integrations page, click Disconnect. Your encrypted credentials are removed. Future sends fall back to the platform default. You can reconnect any time without losing history.

Chapter 10

The Desktop App

Optional. Runs quietly in the background. Designed for teams that want activity-aware time entries.

What it adds

• Activity tracking that starts automatically when you clock in from Slack or the web.
• Idle detection: 15 minutes without keyboard or mouse activity is logged as idle and deducted from your worked hours.
• A small status indicator so you always know whether the tracker is running.

Available platforms

• macOS Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3) and Intel as separate .dmg installers.
• Windows 10 and 11 (x64) as a portable .zip — extract anywhere and run Tickin.exe.
• Linux as a universal .AppImage (works on every distro) or a Debian / Ubuntu .deb.

Installing it

1. An admin toggles the Desktop App add-on on from Workspace → Billing. Once active, a Desktop tab appears in every user's portal.
2. Each user opens the Desktop tab. Tickin auto-detects the OS and highlights the recommended installer; other platforms are listed below it with SHA-256 fingerprints for integrity verification.
3. Run the installer, then sign in with the same email or Google account used in the web portal. The app pairs automatically and starts tracking idle time the moment you clock in.

Pricing recap

$3 / employee / month on every plan. Annual customers pay the same per-seat rate; the Desktop App is not discounted on annual.

Privacy

The app only registers keyboard and mouse activity to measure idle time. It does not record keystroke content, application names, browser history, or screenshots. Admins see net worked hours and idle deductions, not the underlying activity stream.

Chapter 11

Data, exports & security

Your data is yours. You can take it out the same day you bring it in.

Accessing your data

Admins can view and filter the full set of records inside the admin portal: employees, salaries, time entries, leave requests, payroll, and the activity log. Monthly salary slips are delivered as PDFs to each employee's email, and the daily Slack leave report and weekly time emails give you running visibility.

For bulk data extracts or migrations off Tickin, our team can run the export for you. Reach out from tickin.pro/contact and we'll send a packaged dataset. Self-serve CSV export from the admin portal is on the roadmap.

How your data is protected

• Encrypted in transit and at rest. TLS on every connection, AES-256-GCM on stored integration credentials.
• Workspace isolation. Each workspace lives in its own dedicated storage; one tenant cannot reach another's data.
• Role-bound access. Permissions are enforced server-side at the route layer, not just in the UI.
• Append-only audit log. Employee, integration, and tax changes are recorded with actor, timestamp, and before/after values.
• Working toward SOC 2 Type II. SSO/SAML and a formal Data Processing Agreement are available on request; talk to us at sales@tickin.pro if these are a buying requirement.

Chapter 12

Frequently asked questions

Short answers to common questions. The longer answers live in the chapters above.

Chapter 13

Getting help

A few ways to reach us. Pick the one that fits the size of the question.