The first hour in the office goes to the same questions every day. Who punched in. Who is late. Whose timesheet has a gap in it, and which date is coming due before anyone remembered.
Otto, the AI office assistant from Idle Work, answers those before you ask. It runs the time clock, the staff rota and your renewal dates, and every morning it sends one brief: who is in, who is late, and what is coming due. You approve or correct it in chat, so nothing changes unless you say so. It is $50 a month, setup included.
What the morning actually looks like
Here is a sample from the page, from an office Idle Work made up to show it. At 8:30 AM Otto writes:
6 of 7 are in. Dana is off today, approved time off. Jordan punched in at 9:14, 14 minutes late. That is the second time this week. Priya did not punch out yesterday. She is down from 9:02 with no end. Set it to 5:30, her usual? Timesheets close Friday. 2 missing punches to fix before then. The office insurance renews November 28. That is 60 days out.
You reply "Yes, 5:30," and Otto sets it. It keeps the original punch and puts the change on the timesheet under your name.
That brief is real work you would otherwise do yourself: count heads, chase the lateness, find the missing punch, and remember the insurance renewal. Otto hands it to you as one message instead of ten checks.
Why this costs more the longer it waits
Every one of those tasks is small, and small is the point. A missing punch is a two minute fix on the day. It is a guess two weeks later, with nobody remembering the day.
- A missing punch surfaces the same morning. Two weeks later it is a reconstruction from memory, and timesheets close before you notice.
- A late punch you never hear about is a habit nobody corrects. Jordan's 14 minutes is trivial on the first day. Left alone, it becomes the normal.
- A renewal date you find on expiry day means a rushed decision and, for a licence, possibly a gap.
None of this explodes. It accumulates. The longer a missing punch sits, the more of your own memory it borrows to fix, and the payroll file still has to be handed over on time either way.
You stay in control
Otto starts by watching. It reads the clock and the rota and tells you what it sees, changing nothing. Every raise needs your hand, and hard limits hold at every level.
The levels, in the page's own words:
- Watch. It reports what it sees. It changes nothing.
- Suggest. It tells you what it would fix and why, and leaves the call to you.
- Act with your OK. It gets the fix ready and waits. Nothing changes until you say yes.
- Act within your limits. Inside limits you set, it gets on with the job and tells you what it did.
You raise each level yourself, one at a time, in the app. Otto can suggest when it is ready. It can never raise its own. A punch fix always needs your OK at every level, and the original punch is never deleted.
There are also hard limits, the things Otto will never do. It will never keep a copy of anyone's fingerprint, delete a punch, run payroll or pay anyone, show one person someone else's hours, change your office rules on its own, or message anyone outside your office.
Do it by hand until then
If you are not ready for Otto, this is the routine it replaces. It is not hard, but it has to happen every working morning.
- Before open, pull yesterday's punches and check every name against the rota.
- Note who is absent, who was late, and read lateness the same way all week.
- Find punches with a start and no end, and close them the same morning while the day is still in your head.
- Keep a running list of dates: lease, licences, insurance. Check it on the 1st and 15th of the month.
- Friday, build the weekly timesheet from the punches with every fix recorded, and hand payroll a file rather than a stack of paper.
The rule that matters most: fix punches the morning you find them. A fix made the same day is a fact. A fix made two weeks later is a memory.
One message before you open
If that routine sounds familiar, you can stop running it yourself. Book an assessment and Idle Work comes back with what they would automate first and what they would leave alone. If you would rather try first, you can start Otto yourself: a 14 day trial, then $50 a month from day 15, and you can cancel before day 15 if it is not for you.