How to use PagarBook, in short
To use PagarBook, sign up as a business owner, add your staff one by one or upload them from an Excel or CSV sheet, then set one shift, one leave policy and a salary template. After that, staff punch in from the PagarBook staff app (selfie and location) or at a PagarBook Lens face-attendance phone at the gate, and the attendance flows into the month’s salary calculation.
PagarBook says most businesses can finish this setup in an afternoon. This guide walks through each part, first on the owner side and then from the staff member’s phone, so you can run your first month without guessing.
Attend Mitra isn’t affiliated with PagarBook; we make a competing attendance app, and the steps below come from PagarBook’s own product pages and app-store listings. Exact button names can change between app versions, so treat the labels as a guide.
What the PagarBook app is (and which parts you need)
PagarBook is a staff attendance and payroll product from Gyankaar Technologies, Bengaluru, built for small Indian businesses such as shops, clinics, factories and field teams. It comes in a few pieces, and knowing which one you are using saves a lot of confusion:
- PagarBook app (Android and iPhone): the owner’s app for staff, attendance and salary.
- Web dashboard / Desktop App: the browser version for bigger teams, with menus such as Dashboard, Attendance, Staff, Roster, Reports, Payroll, Loans and Settings.
- Staff App: what employees use to punch in and out, apply leave, raise on-duty requests and see payslips.
- PagarBook Lens: face attendance that runs on any Android phone or tablet mounted at the entrance.
- PagarBook Geo and PagarBook iD: optional live field tracking and a dedicated face-attendance device.
How to add staff in PagarBook
Adding staff is the first thing to do, because shifts, attendance and salary all hang off the staff record. PagarBook lets you add people by hand or upload a sheet.
- Open PagarBook and go to the Staff section (Staff in the web dashboard sidebar).
- Choose the option to add a staff member and enter their name, contact details, staff type (regular, contractual or pay-per-work) and salary details.
- For a larger team, upload an xlsx or csv file instead of typing each person in.
- Store joining details and documents on the staff record if you want them in one place; PagarBook supports 50+ employee information fields.
- Ask each staff member to install the staff app so they can mark their own attendance.
How to add a shift, holidays and staff groups in PagarBook
In the web dashboard, shifts live under Attendance Configuration, where you set shifts, geo-fences, holidays and weekly offs for each staff group. PagarBook offers two shift types: Precise (fixed times with a grace period, for example 9:30 to 6:30 with 15 minutes grace) and Flexi (a fixed number of hours with any start time, useful for field staff).
- Open Attendance Configuration and create a Precise or Flexi shift with its timings and grace period.
- Add a geo-fence template (for example a 200 m radius around the shop) if staff should punch in only on site.
- Set weekly offs and the holiday list for the year, including comp-off rules if you use them.
- Apply the shift and rules to the right group of staff, so office staff and field staff can follow different rules.
- Use Roster in the dashboard when people rotate between shifts.
How to mark attendance in PagarBook
There are three ways attendance gets into PagarBook. Most small businesses start with the staff app and add Lens later if there is a busy gate.
From the staff app, an employee opens the app, taps Punch In, takes the selfie and uses Swipe to submit; the time and location are stamped on the punch, and they punch out the same way at the end of the day. With PagarBook Lens, staff simply look at the phone mounted at the entrance, and PagarBook says punches are stored on the phone and synced if the network drops.
Owners and supervisors can also mark or correct attendance themselves. PagarBook lists bulk attendance and manual attendance overriding, and you can add supervisors who mark attendance for their own unit while salary figures stay visible only to you.
- Staff: open the staff app, tap Punch In, complete the selfie and swipe to submit.
- Gate: install PagarBook Lens on an Android phone at the entrance and let staff mark by face.
- Owner or supervisor: open Attendance, check today’s list and mark or correct anyone who is missing.
- Field days: staff raise an On-duty Request so the day is not counted as absent.
How to add an advance or loan in PagarBook
PagarBook records salary advances, loans and early salary payments against each staff member, and recovers them from salary later. Its payslips show the recovery as an Advance recovery deduction, so the staff member sees exactly what was cut and why.
- Open the staff member’s record, or the Loans or Payments area in the web dashboard.
- Record the advance amount and the date you paid it.
- Check the recovery on the next payslip before you run salary.
- If a staff member asks through the app (Request Loan), approve or reject the request from your approval queue.
Leave, approvals and salary day
In the staff app, an employee taps Apply Leave, picks Casual, Sick or Unpaid, chooses the dates, adds a reason and taps Send request. The request shows their balance and goes to the supervisor first. Leave, overtime, expense claims and attendance corrections all land in one approval queue, and you can set two approval levels.
On salary day, PagarBook uses the approved attendance, fines, overtime and advances to calculate pay, and PagarBook’s payroll features cover PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS. What each plan includes, and what stays free, is covered in our guide on whether PagarBook is free or paid. If something stops syncing along the way, see fixes for when PagarBook isn’t working.
Doing the same in Attend Mitra
If you are comparing apps before you commit, here is the same first-month setup in Attend Mitra:
- Add people from Employees in the web console, one at a time or with the Excel template (adding employees).
- Create shift templates and publish the week on the Schedule Board (shift templates and rosters).
- Turn on the checks you want: face and selfie verification, GPS geofence or office Wi-Fi.
- Staff slide to clock in on the Android or iOS app; punches made offline sync when the phone is back online.
- Run salary with the Payroll module, which calculates PF, ESI, TDS, PT and payslips (payroll for small teams).
Who might prefer Attend Mitra instead
PagarBook is a good fit if you want attendance marking free and a cashbook alongside salary. Attend Mitra suits owners who want every clock-in checked by face, geofence or office Wi-Fi, plus kiosk and QR options, and who prefer paying per employee per month by module (Attendance is ₹29 and Attendance with Verified Attendance is ₹41.40 per employee per month, before 18% GST). There is a 14-day free trial but no free-forever plan. For how other HR apps handle the same daily punch, see our roundup of attendance steps across HR apps.