Connecteam is a workforce management app designed to provide full workplace control to business owners. However, there are a few features it lacks that prevents it from being an all-in-one tool for all business owners. For example, there is no built-in payroll option, there are no notable calendar features, and it only has right integrations. 

For these reasons and others, Connecteam may not be the best time card app for your business. If that’s the case, one of these five Connecteam alternatives might better serve your needs.

Connecteam alternatives comparison

Platform
Best for
Rating
Paid Plans Start At:
Affordability and ease of use
4.8/5
$4.49/user/month
Legal businesses
4.4/5
$9.60/user/month
Restaurants
4.6/5
$4.50/user/month
Desktop monitoring
4.7/5
$6.40/seat/month
Client billing and invoicing
4.5/5
$6/user/month

Why look for a Connecteam alternative?

Connecteam is designed to be an all-in-one tool for employee management, but its specific features and integrations mean it can only fulfill this role for a narrow segment of business owners. Even if you feel that you’re part of that audience, you may encounter your fair share of issues:

Connecteam is designed to be an all-in-one tool for workforce management. However, it can’t meet this ideal if it has limited tools and flexibility, an unintuitive design, and restrictive pricing that makes users feel like they got baited and switched

The 5 best Connecteam alternatives

This list of the five best Connecteam alternatives (and who they’re ideal for) should help you find the right solution for your company.

1. Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch is an all-in-one workforce management app that offers business owners everything from time tracking to employee scheduling to payroll, including a built-in payroll app to replace third-party software.

Buddy Punch has a specific focus on affordability, simplicity, and flexibility to empower business owners while remaining intuitive for even your least tech-savvy employees. As of this post’s writing, it has a rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars on Capterra, with an individual rating of 4.8/5 in the ease of use, customer service, and value for money categories.

Buddy Punch can convert any device into a time clock, including smartphones and tablets, due to being accessible via the web or as an app for iOS and Android. You can also designate a device as a time clock kiosk for multiple employees to use for clocking in and out.

You can create accounts for employees without requiring them to have their own unique email address. Once onboarded, employees can log in through email and password, PINs, facial recognition, or QR codes. 

Buddy Punch updates employee hours worked and current GPS locations in real-time. The drag and drop schedule builder lets you easily organize shifts and even set schedules to recur week after week. Once finalized, employees will receive automatic notifications informing them of work expected. Team members can be empowered to trade shifts and cover open shifts for each other.

Buddy Punch integrates with seventeen different payroll processors, which beats out Connecteam’s six.

Key features

Similarly to Connecteam, Buddy Punch offers a wide range of features across time tracking, employee scheduling, and payroll. However, Buddy Punch tends to offer more flexibility and customization in its functions.

  • Remote team management: Log team member locations when they clock in or out. Create geofences to designate authorized areas where employees are allowed to clock in or out. Monitor real-time GPS locations of employees while they’re on the clock. 
  • Employee scheduling: Drag and drop shifts to build out your schedule. Save time by creating recurring shifts designed to repeat week after week. Allow team members to trade shifts or cover open shifts to reduce no-shows and improve staff engagement.
  • Job tracking: Create job codes that team members can clock into and out of to track hours spent on individual jobs, tasks, and projects. 
  • Overtime cost management: Set punch limits to prevent team members clocking in too early before their shift starts. Alternatively, enable automatic clock outs to prevent forgetful employees accidentally running up time on their shifts. Reduce the odds of unplanned overtime hours reflected on payroll.
  • Time theft reduction: Require employees to take a photo of themselves upon clock in and out to prevent buddy punching. Use facial recognition to automatically compare new photos with those on file.
  • PTO tracking and accruals: Establish rules for Buddy Punch to automatically calculate PTO accruals. Establish if PTO will carry over or run on use-it-or-lose-it rules. When employees request time off, an alert will be sent to managers or admins to approve or deny the request.
  • Payroll management: Use Buddy Punch’s built-in payroll for automatic tax filings, assurance of local, state, and federal tax compliance, and automated payroll payments. Alternatively, stick with your favorite payroll provider. Buddy Punch integrates with numerous favorites such as ADP, Paychex, QuickBooks, and more. Click here to view the full list of integrations.

You can also track changes to employee timesheets, get alerts for employees improperly clocking time or outright missing a shift, and generate customized reports based on hours, overtime, locations, and more. See all of Buddy Punch’s features here.

Pricing

Buddy Punch’s plans start at $4.49/user per month plus a $19/month base fee. Admin users are included for free in all plans.

2. Time Tracker by eBillity

Time Tracker by eBillity is a time tracking, scheduling, and client billing tool that’s particularly popular in legal fields. As of this post’s writing, it has a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

Time Tracker can be accessed via the web or as an app for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Users can sign in with an email address and password or with a unique, 4-digit PIN.

Time Tracker by eBillity monitors estimated time and money versus actuals on projects, tracks GPS locations of remote team members, and converts time and expenses into branded client invoices.

Key features

  • Scheduling: Automate employee rostering and easily share schedules with your team. Create and save multiple templates, including breaks and holidays. See changes and view schedule at any time.
  • Project tracking: Manage time, money, and activities with pre-loaded project settings. Assign clients and teams to projects. Allocate employee rates, such as normal rates or overtime rates, and establish client billing rates. Assign a project lead.
  • Budget management: Monitor progress in real-time to see if your teams are going over budget. Admins can review time tracked and see which tasks are taking longer than expected, and how team member efforts have been allocated. Admins can also approve, reject, or edit time against a project to ensure accuracy.
  • Client billing: Ensure accuracy of billing and invoicing. Upload receipt images from mobile devices and add them to invoices. Track time even for remote employees. Provide greater transparency for clients.
  • Business reports: Run existing reports or create your own custom reports. Monitor project profitability, labor cost distribution, realization rates, and more. Establish email schedules for sending reports out to specific team members. 
  • Lawbillity: Track time with built-in legal features to assist in law firm functions. Options include conflict checker, trust accounts, LEDES & LSS invoice formats, UTBMS patent billing codes, and more.
  • Expense tracking: Keep track of all business expenses. Upload receipt images from mobile and optionally add them to invoices. Make use of preloaded and customizable expense categories. Generate expense reports to monitor reimbursements.

Time Tracker by eBillity also has in-app messaging, can be set up as a kiosk that eliminates time theft through facial detection, and can sync to Google Calendar for greater visibility.

Pricing

You can get Time Tracker by eBillity’s GPS and geofencing, time tracking, and client invoicing for $15/user/month plus a $22/month base fee. Adding on features for legal firms such as ABA codes, legal invoicing, and trust accounts requires getting LawBillity at $30.00/user/month.

3. Deputy

Deputy is an employee timesheet, scheduling, and HR management app that can send all gathered data to payroll in a single click. As of this post’s writing, it has a score of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

Deputy can be accessed through the web or downloaded as an app for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Users can log in through their usernames or emails and passwords, or they can login with Facebook, Google, Apple, or Xero accounts. Deputy also has third-party logins through Intuit, ADP RUN, and ADP Workforce Now.

Deputy lets you create schedules in minutes, ensure labor law compliance, and post jobs to hire ideal candidates.

Key features

  • Labor forecasting: Lower labor costs and optimize schedule coverage. Identify trends relating to labor and demand. View business performance on a day-to-day basis or over a period of time.
  • Labor compliance: Streamline compliance with wage and hour laws. Easily manage fair workweek rules and create a record of compliance to ensure smooth business operations. Utilize Deputy’s compliance hub to remain updated on the latest labor law changes.
  • Smart scheduling: Use AI to gain visibility into team efficiency. Automatically schedule your best team members at the best time with real-time sales graphs. Forecast and scale schedules based on sales and busyness data.
  • Time and attendance tracking: Ensure time records are correct. Employees can verify location and time along with a GPS location stamp. Cut down on time theft with touch-free facial verification.
  • Meal and rest breaks: Plan breaks and coverage to maintain quality service. Schedule paid or unpaid breaks, or different break types within the same shift. Flag any missed breaks and automatically request employee attestation.
  • Leave management: Permit employees to track their own balances and submit time off requests directly through Deputy. Allow managers to review and approve PTO requests in just a few clicks. Manage different leave types, view remaining balances, and see booked time off.
  • Hiring: Use Deputy’s AI to create eye-catching job descriptions. Create and promote job listings across the world’s leading job boards. 

Deputy also lets you allow team members to initiate shift swaps on their own, has auto-scheduling to fill shifts with the most suitable team members, and can automatically block off PTO requests for important dates that need all hands on deck.

Pricing

Deputy lets you create unlimited shifts and timesheets, has employee scheduling and auto-scheduling, and provides full-service PTO management for $6 per user per month. 

4. Insightful

Insightful is a workforce management app that has features for tracking time, balancing workloads, and managing budgets – all in one software. It has a Capterra score of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Insightful can be accessed via the web and has a download available for Window and Mac desktops. It can also be downloaded for smartphones or tablets through the native app designed for iOS and Android systems. Users can sign in with their email and password or through Google, Slack, or Single Sign-on. 

Insightful provides productivity insights to improve your understanding of how your team works throughout the day, has full management features to control your workforce whether they’re on-site, remote, or both, and track employee work hour data in real-time.

Key features

  • Employee monitoring: Track what employees are up to every minute of the day. Monitor apps and website usage for individual team members, entire teams, or on a company level. Get random screenshots or those triggered by suspicious activities.
  • Time and attendance: Streamline time management with automated and manual clocks. Accurately capture when employees start and finish work on computers. Transform work hours and activity into actionable productivity insights.
  • Screen monitoring: Foster productivity and efficiency with privacy-minded screen monitoring. Custom screenshots to monitor team members at intervals of your choice. 
  • InsightsAI: Use AI to make better decisions for your workforce management. Get a deeper layer of insights into your team’s performance and optimize your decisions. Eliminate time-consuming tasks like data analysis and reporting.
  • Project budgeting: Watch how much time goes into your projects to prevent blowouts. Accurately estimate and monitor task durations to remain within projections.
  • Process improvement: Insightful auto detects subtasks and group activities like calls, cases, and tickets to improve processes. Measure effectiveness of resource usage to forecast needs and save money.
  • Client invoicing: Automatically track billable hours to ensure accuracy of client invoices. Insightful then translates tracked hours into simple invoices. Add screenshots to reduce odds of any disputes or discrepancy, and to improve transparency. 

Insightful also lets you generate work type reports, contains workflow analysis, and has over 50+ integrations.

Pricing

You can get Insightful’s automated project and task time tracking, workflow analysis, and invoicing for $12.00 per seat per month.

5. Replicon

Replicon is a workforce management software with time tracking, scheduling, project management, billing, and more in one centralized app. As of this post’s writing, it has a Capterra score of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Replicon can be accessed via the web or downloaded on iOS and Android mobile devices as an app. Users can sign in through username and password or by using single sign-on (SSO) for SAML, Google, Intuit, and ADP. 

Replicon lets you capture employee time and work data and uses AI to optimize timesheets, automatically collects and curates data from tools like Slack and Zoom, and allows you to verify and review workflows for time information.

Key features

  • Workforce management: Automatically capture time spent by your workforce across 100+ work apps. Assemble accurate and comprehensive timesheets for employees to review and submit. 
  • Time tracking: Capture total hours or in/out times of team members. Automatically add paid holidays to the labor timesheet. Configure timesheets to collect custom information such as activities, shifts, and locations. 
  • Mobile time tracking: Empower your remote team members with self-service capabilities from any device. Use FaceID to reduce time theft and ensure team members are who and where they say they are. Track location details or create geofences to enforce authorized areas for clocking activity.
  • Time off: Create time off, vacation, sick leave, time off in lieu and other policies. Define and manage holidays specific to different locations and assign specific policies based on region, employee type, or other attributes. Set PTO accrual rules including increases, carryovers, and effective dates.
  • Labor compliance: Take advantage of Replicon’s built-in global labor laws and regulations. Use alerts and proactive monitoring to ensure your team stays in compliance. Remain aware of any regulatory changes.
  • Project time tracking: Track project status in real-time and get instant visibility into progress and performance. Create multi-level/task hierarchies, define project milestones, and set up relevant information in seconds. Control project delivery with proactive decisions and instant insights.
  • Expense management: Create and manage expense codes based on client contracts. Establish if expenses will be flat amounts or rate-based. Define tax formulas to calculate amounts automatically.

Replicon also lets you automate timesheet submissions based on predefined rules, has approval workflows specific to expenses, and has billing and invoicing for clients.

Pricing

You can get Replicon’s pre-populating timesheets, punch rounding, scheduling, and payroll exporting for $19 per user per month under their workforce management plan. If you want project time tracking and time off booking, you’ll have to get their ProjectTime plan at $29 per user per month.

Choosing the best Connecteam alternative for your company

All five of these Connecteam alternatives have their strengths, whether that’s in the specific features they offer or the way they tailor their programs for specific use cases. This means that choosing the tool that’s the “best” comes down to management style.

That said, trying out these tools is the easiest way to understand how they might fit your business needs. Many of them come with free trial periods so you can understand their functionality in ways that reading feature lists and comparisons can’t compete with. 

If you go this route, here are a few questions to keep in mind as you evaluate each software option:

  • Do you need all of the tool’s features? There is a chance that having too many options, buttons, and settings will just overwhelm your team members and administrators. Not to mention that you may end up paying a higher fee for features you aren’t even using. Make sure you find a tool that feels custom-built for your business needs. Having more features is not necessarily better.
  • How easy is the tool for your team members to use? Would your least tech-savvy employee have trouble navigating the user interface? Can clocking in, clocking out, and editing timesheets be done in a matter of seconds? You want to ensure your team members don’t have difficulty in the day-to-day usage of a time tracking tool.
  • Does the tool meet your specific business needs? Can you set the tool to automatically clock out your more forgetful employees? Can you establish the tool as a kiosk for all employees to clock in and clock out of? Make sure you select a software option that you can tailor to your management style, rather than forcing your management style to fit a tool.
  • Does the tool fit your budget? Pricing plans for software tools are notoriously tricky. Consider each tool and how they divvy up features in the plans. Try to ensure that you’re getting the greatest number of features you require at the most affordable price point.
  • How responsive is customer support? Don’t let a bug or a glitch disrupt your operations for an extended period of time. Test the customer support of each tool to make sure they have a responsive and accessible team ready to address any concerns or questions you and team members may have. You can check this by asking a question and noting how quickly and comprehensively you’re answered. 

Taking the time to test out a prospective option may sound tedious, but it’s an investment that pays off. Familiarizing yourself with each tool enables you to select a Connecteam replacement that you can rely on for years to come.