Clock-in apps, GPS and fingerprints: what your employer can record

The Privacy Act and your hours

Your employer must keep a wages and time record showing the hours you work each day and the pay for them (Employment Relations Act 2000, section 130), so a clock-in app that records your hours is collecting what the law expects it to hold. Our guide to keeping your own timesheet covers that record.

How it is collected is a matter for the Privacy Act 2020. Three of its principles matter most:

• Principle 1, purpose: information may be collected only for a lawful purpose connected with what your employer does, and only if it is necessary for that purpose.
• Principle 3, telling you: your employer must take reasonable steps to make sure you know it is being collected, why, who will receive it, and that you can see and correct it, before it is collected or, where that is not practicable, as soon as practicable after.
• Principle 4, manner: it must be collected lawfully and fairly, without intruding unreasonably on your personal affairs.

Employment New Zealand says monitoring employees with cameras, software or other equipment must follow the Privacy Act, and that an employer going ahead should have a policy explaining why and when, consult staff and make sure everyone knows about it.

GPS and location tracking

The Privacy Commissioner accepts that employers can use GPS in work vehicles, for example to monitor the time a driver works. GPS data about a work vehicle can be personal information about the driver, so the Privacy Act applies.

The Commissioner says the employer should have good policies on how GPS is used, and drivers should know the vehicle has it and what the policies are. Information about time outside work hours needs to be handled very differently from information gathered on the job.

A phone app that records where you are when you clock in falls under the same principles. Ask whether it records your location only at clock-in and clock-out or all shift, whether it records anything once you clock off, who sees the data and how long it is kept, and ask for the policy in writing.

Fingerprints and face scans: the biometrics code

A time clock that matches your fingerprint or face to the one it holds for you, or picks you out from everyone enrolled, is doing biometric processing, which the biometrics code covers. The code came into force on 3 November 2025 for new biometric processing, and on 3 August 2026 for processing already under way, so it now applies to every biometric clock-in system, old or new.

Under rule 1, an employer must not collect biometric information unless it is for a lawful purpose and necessary for it, which means the system works and the purpose cannot reasonably be achieved as effectively by another means with less privacy risk. The employer must also have reasonable safeguards, and believe on reasonable grounds that it is proportionate, weighing the risk, the benefit and the cultural impacts on Māori.

The Commissioner's guide treats employment as a power imbalance that tends to raise privacy risk, because staff may feel they have no real choice. It calls consulting people good practice, and notes that employment law may require it.

Under rule 3, before or when your biometric information is collected, you must be told, clearly and conspicuously, that it is being collected, each specific purpose, and whether an alternative to biometric processing is available to you. Rule 10 limits its use: unless an exception applies, it must not be used to infer your health, mood, emotion or personality, or to sort people by a prohibited ground of discrimination.

The code does not ban fingerprint clocks, but if nobody has told you whether there is an alternative, ask.

Asking to see what is held about you

Under principle 6, you can ask your employer to confirm whether it holds personal information about you and to give you access to it: clock-in times, location records and anything else the system keeps. If an app company stores the data for your employer, the law treats your employer as holding it, so the request goes to your employer. It must respond as soon as reasonably practicable, and generally within 20 working days. For biometric information, rule 6 of the code also entitles you to know what type is held.

If it is wrong, principle 7 lets you ask for a correction; if your employer will not make it, you can ask for your own statement of correction to be attached, so it is always read with the record. Your wages and time record is a separate right: your employer must give you access to it, or a copy, immediately on request (section 130(2)).

Send it to your employer's privacy officer, a role every organisation must fill. If you cannot resolve a concern with your employer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which expects you to have tried to sort it out with your employer first.

Keeping your own record alongside

A clock-in system belongs to your employer, and you may lose access to it when you leave. Employment New Zealand tells employers to check that payroll software records changes to hours accurately, and says that if a timesheet is missing or wrong, the employee must still be paid.

A record you make yourself, on the day, gives you something to compare: your start and finish times, breaks and anything unusual. If you are salaried and stay late, our article on working out your real hourly rate shows what that does to your pay.

Your Timesheets in jobtracker.co.nz keeps that record in your own account, with start and finish times, a timer and every earlier version of an entry kept by the database, and it never tracks your location. Nobody at your work sees it unless you choose to send it, and logging your hours is free on every plan.

Your hours, on a record that is yours