The site is empty and you don't know yet
You find out when the client walks in at 08:00. Sending a replacement is now a four-hour problem instead of a twenty-minute one, and the complaint is already logged.
Proof of attendance · South Africa
Know they didn't arrive while you can still send someone else.
MerchTags puts a battery-powered reader on the wall at every checkpoint. Your people carry a tag. When a shift starts and nobody scans, you get told — not at the end of the shift, and not when the client phones.
No wiringNo network on siteNo smartphones~1 year battery
01
Main Entrance
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waiting
02
Stairwell B
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waiting
03
Level 2 Ablutions
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waiting
04
Plant Room
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waiting
Plant Room not scanned
30 minutes of shift remaining · supervisor notified 09:30
Illustration of a four-checkpoint morning clean
The problem
Three ways a shift quietly fails
None of them announce themselves. All three cost you the contract eventually.
They arrived, and did the easy half
Reception and the entrance get cleaned every single day. The plant room, the back stairwell and the third-floor ablutions get cleaned when somebody checks.
You can't prove any of it
The client says the bathrooms weren't done on Tuesday. Your evidence is a paper register, signed by the person being accused, countersigned by nobody.
How it works
Mount it, hand out tags, set the shift
Three steps, in this order, and the third one is the only one you ever repeat.
Mount the readers
One battery-powered unit per checkpoint, fixed to the wall. No power, no cabling, no network point, nothing run back to a comms room. A four-checkpoint site is done in well under an hour, by whoever is already on site.
Hand out tags
Each person carries a tag on a lanyard or belt loop. Nothing to charge, nothing to dock, nothing to hand back at the end of a shift. Tags are cheap to replace, and reassigning one keeps the old history attached to whoever held it at the time.
Set the shift, get the exceptions
Tell MerchTags who works where, and when. It watches the clock so no supervisor has to. Missed arrivals and skipped checkpoints escalate on their own — you only hear from it when something is wrong.
The difference
Everyone else makes the person carry the hardware
A handheld to charge and hand in. A phone app running on the worker's own battery and their own data. A fingerprint reader that needs an electrician and a network point. We put the powered device on the wall instead, and left your staff carrying a tag with nothing to charge, nothing to dock and nothing to hand back.
| Patrol baton | Phone app | Fingerprint reader | MerchTags | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flags a no-show during the shift | No — data only exists once the baton is docked | Yes, if the phone is charged and online | Only at the one door it is bolted to | Yes |
| Needs the worker's own phone | No | Yes | No | No |
| Works in a basement plant room or stairwell | Yes | Patchy — depends on signal | No — needs power and a network point | Yes |
| Cost of covering one more checkpoint | A stud — cheap, but still blind | A sticker — cheap, but needs signal | Electrician, cabling, network point | Another reader — priced to be easy |
| Install per checkpoint | Screw a stud to the wall | Stick a QR or NFC sticker | Electrician and cabling | Mount and go |
| Ongoing handling by staff | Collect, carry, dock, charge — and it is expensive to lose | Keep phone charged and online | None | Carry a tag — cheap to replace if lost |
| Price estimate | Moderate, all upfront 3 out of 5 | High, every month 4 out of 5 | Highest 5 out of 5 | Lowest, and it scales 2 out of 5 — the lowest of the four |
What lands on your desk
Four things, and only one of them needs you to go looking
The point of the system is that you are not sitting in front of it. It should interrupt you when it matters and stay quiet the rest of the time.
The arrival exception
A short list of who should be on site and isn't yet, sent while the shift is young enough to fix. Not a dashboard you have to remember to open.
The skipped checkpoint
Two of four done and the shift is nearly over. Raised against the person and the checkpoint, so the supervisor knows exactly where to walk.
Today, at a glance
Who is on site, who arrived late, and who checked in somewhere they weren't scheduled to be. One screen, sorted by shift start.
Proof for the client
Every scan, timestamped, per person and per checkpoint, over any week you choose. Exportable, and hard to argue with in a contract review.
Where it fits
Anywhere the job is "did someone physically go there"
The question is always the same. Only the building changes.
Contract cleaning
Facilities management
Security patrols at unmanned sites
Grounds & municipal maintenance
Pest control & periodic servicing
Field merchandising
Pricing
Priced per person. Hardware kept cheap on purpose.
The readers are the cheap part, deliberately. A system that only watches the front door tells you almost nothing, and we would far rather you cover every checkpoint on a site than ration them because the hardware stings.
So the hardware gets out of the way, and you pay a monthly fee per person — bracketed, so the rate per head comes down as the team grows. Put up as many checkpoints as the building actually needs; they are not the thing you are billed for.
- Billing
- A monthly fee per person, in brackets — the bigger the team, the lower the rate per head. Checkpoints are not metered.
- Hardware
- Kept deliberately low. Rented, not sold — no capital outlay, and swap-outs are covered.
- Install
- Included. No electrician, no cabling, no network point, no landlord approval.
- Contract
- Start with a single site, and add checkpoints freely as you go.
Get started
Start with the site that gives you the most trouble
Pick the one that generates the complaints. We'll walk it with you, mount readers on its checkpoints, and run it for a month alongside whatever you use now. Then compare the two and decide.
info@silico.co.za South Africa