Gusto - Best all-in-one time tracking & payroll app
Overview
Gusto tops our list for best all-in-one employee time tracking app with a wealth of easy-to-use features and fully integrated functionality that take the complexity out of managing hours for your team. Clocking in is easy for employees and can be done from web, mobile, or time kiosk. With GPS-enabled clock-ins you can see where employees are clocking in from and restrict clock-in access based on custom locations.
FULLY INTEGRATED PAYROLL & HR
While Gusto’s time tracking app isn’t the most robust on the market, what sets Gusto apart is the seamless integration with their award-winning payroll and HR offerings. Timesheets and hours automatically sync to payroll and can be reviewed and approved by a manager in just a few clicks. No need to set up an integration with third-party software or deal with multiple logins and payments each month.
Every time you run payroll, all federal, state, and local taxes are automatically calculated, filed, and paid. You can build custom PTO packages for different employees, and time off automatically accrues each pay cycle. Employees and admins can request and approve time off from anywhere.
Plus, Gusto’s robust suite of HR tools including hiring, onboarding, and benefits administration are all included in Plus and Premium plans at no extra cost.
TIME KIOSK
For extra accountability and peace of mind, Gusto’s time clock kiosk is a centralized system that lets employees easily clock in and out with a 4-digit PIN. And it’s included in both the Plus and Premium plans. Got multiple locations? Add as many kiosks as you need at no extra cost.
BUILT-IN COMPLIANCE & REPORTING
Gusto’s built-in compliance means you never have to worry about missing breaks, meal times, or miscalculating overtime. And their powerful job- and workforce costing reports help you to better manage your team and keep labor costs down.
Key Features
- Seamlessly integrated payroll, HR, and benefits
- Automated timesheets
- Custom PTO policies and automated accruals
- Built-in compliance for employee breaks, overtime, and labor laws
- Centralized clock-in kiosk or mobile app clock in
- GPS tracking while clocking in and out
- Time tracking by project
- Robust workforce costing reports
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Intuitive, easy to use interface | No biometric clock-in support |
| All-in-one solution for payroll, time tracking, and HR | Time tracking isn’t available with the Simple plan |
| Transparent pricing, no hidden fees | |
| Job-specific time tracking and workforce costing reports | |
| Great customer service | |
| Easy to fix employee clock-in errors | |
| Time tracking is included with Plus and Premium plans |
Pricing
Gusto’s time tracking tools, including time kiosk, come included at no extra cost with their Plus and Premium plans. Plus plans start at $80/mo plus $12/mo per user.
Premium plans are priced exclusively, and include everything Gusto has to offer with no hidden monthly fees. For more info on Premium pricing, contact their sales team today.
Free Trial? Yes, you don’t pay until you run your first payroll.
Free Plan: No.
Transform your payroll processes with Gusto, a platform that’s already the choice of over 400,000 businesses.
Create accountDeputy – Best time tracking app for shift-based scheduling
Overview
Homebase is an all-in-one scheduling, time tracking, payroll, and HR solution created specifically for shift-based businesses. Homebase has one of the most robust scheduling tools on the market. Auto-schedule by availability or using sales and labor forecasts. Shift swapping is a breeze, and communication between team members is easy within the app.
While Homebase is more of a time-tracking tool with a payroll and HR add-on, they’ve got everything hourly-based businesses need to manage their teams. Their HR suite includes hiring and onboarding with automated job postings across multiple job boards, employee happiness surveys and no-cost benefit options, and secure document storage and compliance designed with shift-based businesses in mind. Sick leave, PTO, and vacation time are easy to manage and track, and a team of HR pros is available to answer your compliance questions.
While there are more powerful HR-focused platforms on the market, Homebase is an easy choice for shift-based businesses looking to streamline their tech stack while still accessing all the people tools and functionality they need. Or if you want a more powerful payroll tool while scheduling with Homebase, they also integrate with the most popular restaurant payroll providers including Gusto, Paychex, ADP, Quickbooks, and more.
Key Features
- Designed specifically for shift-based businesses
- Powerful time and scheduling tools
- Recruiting, hiring, and paperless onboarding
- Payroll add-on available with automated tax filings
- Built-in compliance for meal time, breaks, and minimum wage
- Integrations with popular POS, recruiting, accounting, and payroll software
- Robust, native communication tools
- Mobile app for time tracking, communication, shift swapping, and more
- Employee happiness surveys and retention tools
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Built specifically for shift-based businesses | Requires third-party payroll and accounting integration |
| AI-optimized scheduling can save hours each week | Time Clock app for Android tablet has limited functionality |
| Strong value for the price | |
| Good for businesses with multiple locations |
Pricing
For the basic scheduling functionality, Deputy costs $4.50 per user per month. However, their scheduling tool does not include Time Clock, Timesheets, or Payroll Integration.
If you want time & attendance tools, it’s also $4.50 per user per month, but does not include any scheduling tools, schedule templates, or meal and break planning. The time & attendance package includes both POS and payroll integrations.
To get both scheduling and time and attendance tools, it costs $6 per user per month. For businesses with more than 250 employees, contact Deputy for custom pricing.
Free Trial? Yes, one month.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about Deputy
Workyard – Best time tracking app for field workers
Overview
Workyard may sell themselves as a time tracking app for the construction industry, but their high accuracy GPS is great for any field-based business that needs to track their employees’ locations throughout the day. This includes landscapers, contractors, home health services, house cleaning companies, and more.
Push notification reminders pop up when employees arrive on site to make sure they don’t forget to clock in, and Workyard records labor costs by job and project type. The built-in scheduling feature makes it easy to assign jobs, add checklists, and make sure everyone knows what needs to be done, and where.
Since Workyard doesn’t rely on geofencing to tell you when an employee is working, you don’t have to add a job site for every Home Depot in town. Workyard automatically switches to high accuracy mode when it detects driving, recording driving routes, travel time, and mileage. Get live updates on employee locations anytime you need them.
Key Features
- High-accuracy GPS tracking for field-based teams
- Push notification clock-in and clock-out reminders
- Add hours and expenses by location and project type
- Real-time project and labor costing along with robust reporting and invoicing options
- Seamlessly integrates with payroll processors like Gusto
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy-to-use app increases accountability | Expensive, starting at $50 per month + $6 per month per user |
| Higher accuracy than most GPS-enabled employee clock in apps | |
| Robust job and workforce costing reports | |
| Easily integrates with major payroll providers |
Pricing
Workyard offers two pricing plans along with custom Enterprise pricing. The Time Tracking plan costs $50 per month plus $8 per month per user (with annual billing). It comes loaded with the full suite of time tracking tools including GPS tracking, break and overtime compliance, timesheet control, and payroll integrations.
The Workforce Management plan costs $50 per month plus $16 per user per month (with annual billing) and comes with all of the time tracking tools in addition to scheduling tools, checklists, project tracking, labor cost reporting, and accounting software integrations.
Free Trial? Yes, 14 days.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about Workyard
Hubstaff – Best time tracking app for productivity & employee monitoring
Overview
Hubstaff is one of the more robust time tracking apps on the market. Far more than a time clock, its advanced features will help you get the most out of your team while keeping remote employees accountable and engaged.
Employees can clock in and out from any mobile device or computer, and GPS location allows you to see who’s clocking in from where, or set up auto clock-in when someone enters a geofenced job site. While Hubstaff does have scheduling tools and other site-based capabilities, their real power lies in their productivity suite.
Workforce optimization software helps you pinpoint productivity while cutting operational costs. Understand which employees are more efficient at which type of work, and assign the right tasks to the right people.
Keep your remote employees accountable and on task with full reports of URLs visited, keystrokes, mouse movements, and automated screenshots throughout the day. While there’s no denying Hubstaff has a powerful suite of tools, it’s important to keep in mind that keystroke tracking and screenshots can be seen as privacy-invading to many employees.
Key Features
- Manual and automated time tracking
- GPS-tracking for field-based teams
- Alerts for when employees leave and arrive early and late
- Set work limits by employee or project
- Employee engagement tool for remote teams
- Robust workforce optimization tools including screenshots, activity rates, idle tracking, and keystrokes
- Detailed project costing, budgeting, and attendance reports
- Integrated payment options with multi-currency support
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Over 30 integrations with payment, payroll, communications, and productivity tools | Expensive, starting at $4.99 per user per month for bare bones functionality |
| The most powerful productivity and employee monitoring tools | No support for ACH payments or direct deposit |
| “Insights” and “Tasks” packages not included in pricing plans |
Pricing
Hubstaff has three pricing tiers in addition to Enterprise level. The Starter plan offers basic time tracking, timesheets, and some limited monitoring tools, but integrations aren’t possible, and it probably isn’t worth the price tag of $4.99 per user per month.
The Grow plan starts at $7.50 per user per month and includes 1 integration along with idle timeouts, expenses, and breaks.
The Team plan costs $10 per user per month, and only here can you access the powerful monitoring, scheduling, payroll, and time tools that set Hubstaff apart. Unfortunately, the “Tasks” and “Insights” packages that provide more advanced efficiency and collaboration tools must be added at additional cost.
Free Trial? Yes, 14 days.
Free Plan: Yes, but only for a single user.
Learn more about Hubstaff
ADP Workforce Now – Best time tracking & payroll for mid-sized businesses
Overview
While ADP isn’t a dedicated time tracking platform, they are a behemoth in the payroll space, and they offer two full-stack HR and payroll solutions with integrated time tracking. For small- and medium-sized businesses, they offer ADP Run (fewer than 50 employees) and for larger businesses they offer ADP Workforce Now (50–999 employees). ADP Run includes payroll, onboarding, and reporting features, while ADP Workforce Now also includes retention tools like employee engagement and development.
For businesses with fewer than 50 employees, ADP Run is a highly rated payroll platform, but their time tracking tools aren’t included with any of their base plans, and we believe there are better all-in-one solutions at more attractive price points for smaller businesses out there.
For businesses with more than 50 employees, ADP Workforce Now’s more advanced time tracking and HR features, along with their a la carte pricing can make it an attractive candidate to grow as you grow. Their fully integrated time tracking includes more complex rules to support wage and hour compliance, and advanced scheduling, analytics, and attendance policies. They also support biometric clock-ins and have the largest set of software integrations available in the market.
It’s not the cheapest service on the block, but there’s no question they have the tool you need to run your business. The only questions are: how much does it cost, and is that included in the plan I have? Getting the answer requires reaching out for a custom quote.
Key Features
- Fully integrated payroll, time tracking, benefits, and HR
- Payroll, taxes, and compliance in all 50 states
- Over 700 software integrations available
- Job and workforce costing reports
- Mobile app
- Features siloed based on # of employees
- More complex rules to support wage and hour compliance
- Advanced scheduling capabilities
- Attendance policy and leave case management
- Advanced workforce analytics and industry benchmark data
- Global compliance support, languages, and currencies
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Tons of products and features for maximum scalability | Software feels clunky and dated |
| Complex compliance and customization options | Slow customer service |
| Robust HR options for businesses with 50–999 employees | Pricing is not transparent and difficult to piece together |
| Biometric clock-in options | Time tracking not included for businesses with fewer than 50 employees |
Pricing
ADP’s pricing tiers are confusing at best. Their Workforce Now product for businesses with more than 50 employees comes in at 3 pricing tiers: Select, Plus, and Premium. Time tracking & attendance tools are only included in the highest-tier plan.
ADP no longer posts pricing for any of their packages, so you’ll need to contact sales in order to get a quote. According to Forbes, users reported pricing starts from $62 per month, but it’s unclear if that’s still accurate, or how much any of the add-ons cost. No doubt the price per month can start adding up quickly.
ADP might make sense for quickly growing companies who need a custom-built package that's ready to scale, but for more agile startups and small businesses looking for an easy, out-of-the box solution, Gusto consistently takes the top spot.
Free Trial? No.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about ADP
TimeCamp - Best time tracking app for hybrid & remote teams
Overview
The future of distributed work is here, but keeping track of your team isn’t always easy when people are working from across the state and across the country.
TimeCamp’s time tracking tool does more than just tell you who’s working, when. It allows employees to track time manually by project as well as automatically based on which websites or programs they’re using. Increase accountability to make sure your team is spending time in the right places, all while getting insight into employee productivity, project costing, and more.
TimeCamp supports both work-from-home and in-office employees. Set up a centralized clock-in kiosk in the office and see who’s clocking in from where. Easily track remote working days, on-site days, vacation days, and sick days at a glance.
TimeCamp’s more advanced plans also support invoicing for projects, making it easy to create and send invoices to clients while keeping project costs within budget.
Key Features
- Time tracking by project
- Free for basic tracking and clock in tools
- Track billable vs. non-billable hours
- Invoicing for clients
- Insight into employee activity and productivity
- Automated project tracking by app, keyword, or website
- Integrates with popular productivity tools like Google Calendar, iCal, Asana, JIRA, and Trello
- Time clock kiosk and geofencing come included with all plans
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Unlimited users and projects on all plans | No biometric clock-in support |
| Integrates with dozens of productivity tools | Quickbooks and Xero are the only accounting/payroll integrations |
| Color-coded timesheets make it easy to see how employees are using their time | Learning curve can cut into initial productivity |
| Employee project tracking increases productivity | All the most useful features are behind a paywall |
Pricing
TimeCamp has four pricing tiers. Basic time tracking and clock in and out functionality, along with kiosks and geofencing is free for unlimited users and unlimited projects.
The Starter plan adds on attendance, time-off, PTO, and overtime tracking at $2.99 per user per month.
The Premium plan, at $4.99 per user per month, includes one integration, app & website tracking, as well as budgeting tools.
And their Ultimate plan, at $7.99 per user per month, includes unlimited integrations, billable rates, expenses, timesheet approvals, and labor costs, along with a suite of more powerful admin controls like audits, SSO, custom user roles and more.
Free Trial? Yes, 14 days.
Free Plan: Yes.
Learn more about TimeCamp
Connecteam – Best free time tracking app for small business
Overview
While plenty of apps for employee time tracking offer a free version with limited functionality, Connecteam’s free version offers access to all of their scheduling, clock-in, communications, and HR features for up to 10 employees at a single location.
Connecteam touts itself as an “all-in-one solution for managing employees,” but their product offering isn’t quite robust enough to support this claim. Payroll has to be processed through a third-party app, their HR tools are somewhat limited, they don’t have job and workforce cost reporting, and they don’t offer any benefits or benefits integrations. Connecteam is better thought of as a great time tracking and communication app with extra features to help take care of your team.
Connecteam is packaged in three different “hubs:” Operations, Communications, and HR & Skills. The Operations hub contains all the time tracking tools including time clock, geofencing, kiosk, shift scheduling, and task management. The Communications hub includes in-app chat, employee directory, surveys, and knowledge base, and the HR & Skills includes time off, document storage, courses and quizzes, as well as recognition and rewards.
Key Features
- Powerful scheduling tool including employee qualifications, preferences, time off, overtime limits, and shift swapping
- Time clock includes geofencing, clock in- and out-reminders, and break management
- Native communication and chat features
- Track time by job, project, or client
- Export timesheets or integrate with accounting and payroll processors like Gusto and Quickbooks
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Great for businesses with fewer than 10 employees | The Basic plan lacks functionality |
| Powerful clock in, scheduling, and time tracking features | Complex pricing structure for communications and HR tools |
| More free features than most competitors | Price jumps up very quickly for larger teams or access to all tools and hubs |
| Payroll integration with Gusto, Quickbooks, Xero, and Paychex | Limited reporting and integration support |
Pricing
Connecteam offers 3 pricing tiers in addition to the free and enterprise versions, though depending on if you’re looking for communications and HR tools, the price per month can quickly jump up.
All of their pricing plans are based on a single price for up to 30 users, and add a cost per user per month above that, which varies depending on the plan you choose.
All time tracking and scheduling features are bundled in their “Operations” packages. The Operations Basic plan is $29 a month for the first 30 users, the Advanced plan jumps up to $49 per month, and the Expert plan is $99 per month. All Operations plans come with limited access to the Communications and HR & Skills hubs, though it’s unclear how much “limited” means.
You are free to mix and match pricing packages in each hub (for example, going “Expert” in Operations but adding the “Basic” plan for Communications), but these monthly costs add up quickly.
Free Trial? Yes, 14 days.
Free Plan: Yes.
Learn more about Connecteam