The 7 Best PC Time Clock Software Options (In-Depth Post)

ByEric Czerwonka Last Updated
PC Time Clock Software

There are a couple of factors to consider when selecting between attendance software that functions on Windows PCs for your team. While the initial impulse to use a pc time clock software that comes with as many features as possible can be strong, the truth is you need tracking functions that are still accessible to even the most technologically struggling employee.

For most managers, the name of the game is going to be compromise. The software has to be intuitive, otherwise your team members will end up losing productivity trying to understand it, in addition to growing more confused or frustrated. This means that your decision of time clock software has to juggle between 3 core fundamentals:

  • Accountability – The reason you’re looking for a time clock solution in the first place. Whatever your decision, you want to make sure that employees are being effectively tracked regardless of how capable they are with Windows software, so that payroll reports are accurate.
  • Accessibility – The main drawback you’ll encounter when weighing your different options. While having a ton of features puts the power in your hands, each additional one makes a time clock that much less accessible for the average team member. You’ll want to ensure that the time clock software you implement into your workplace is easy to use for any team members.
  • Simplicity – The difference maker. The last thing you want is to overwhelm your employees and actually impair their ability to be productive, and the less time you have to spend training them to use a time tracker in their workflow, the better.

We believe a truly effective time clock solution strikes a balance between these 3 fundamentals, making it easy for both managers and employees to get the most out of the software.Keeping this in mind, we’re going to dive into 7 of the best time clock systems that we found to be the most effective and intuitive on Windows PCs:

Best PC Time Clock Software

1. Buddy Punch

Between smartphones, macs, and varying levels of computer literacy across teams, using PC based apps doesn’t always come easy to team members. Employee time trackers can actually make workforce management more difficult if their use isn’t simplified and streamlined for anyone to understand.

That’s why Buddy Punch carefully created a time & attendance experience that caters to both team members and managers. This is an employee time clock software that keeps the more effective methods of time tracking and employee management intact to be used as needed, but otherwise presents a simplified interface for your employee clock ins and clock outs without much thought on their part. Consider features such as:

These are just a few of the features Buddy Punch offers that greatly increases your ability to track time, all without coming at a cost to your or your employees’ experience. We’ll go into further detail below to show how these examples demonstrate Buddy Punch’s commitment to accountability, accessibility, and simplicity.

Note: If you’d rather try these features (and others) on your own, every Buddy Punch plan comes with a free trial. We also have a help doc center to answer any questions you may have on how to best utilize Buddy Punch with your team.

Biometric Facial Recognition

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Our Biometric Facial Recognition is a perfect example of how Buddy Punch balances between accountability and simplicity. All employees need to do to make use of this feature is select the facial recognition option when viewing our website or app on their PC, then choose between punching time or logging in. Just like that, their photo will be taken to verify their identity.

While it truly is as simple as it sounds, our facial recognition feature is incredibly effective when it comes to increasing employee accountability and cutting down on time theft or buddy punching. There’s no getting around a photo when it comes to verifying the identity of the person clocking in, which gives a manager peace of mind.

Best of all, it only adds seconds to an employee’s clock in, which makes it a great feature to enable as long as your team members have access to a webcam on their PCs.

PTO Tracking

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Buddy Punch takes a self-service approach to PTO, allowing team members to directly enter on their employee time card whether they are requesting vacation time, sick time, or time off for personal reasons. Then, you as the manager receive a notification and can choose to approve or reject the request – or you can automate paid time off management entirely and let it be added in without your manual approval.

This is another great example of how Buddy Punch mixes accountability, accessibility, and simplicity. This level of streamlining allows you full control over how much autonomy your team has; something you can adjust with each team member as they build up trust and reliability over time. Keep it simple for less tech-savvy employees, or give the more advanced ones more freedom over their own leave management. This feature is literally whatever you want to make of it.

If your business could make use of Time Off tracking take a look at this help article or view this help video.

OT Calculations

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Buddy Punch enables you to choose between more than a dozen overtime types in order to ensure accuracy and accountability when it comes to overtime pay calculations. You can even assign different types of overtime to employees on a person-by-person basis if the need arises. Payroll calculations have never been easier, nor more capable of saving time so you can focus on more important aspects of your business.

This is perfect for managing overtime hours, ensuring the accountability in your workforce is at its highest by the end of payroll processing.

Keep in mind – these 3 features are just a taste of what Buddy Punch has to offer when it comes to time management on PCs. We’re constantly on the lookout for new innovations we can make to our software, and include resources such as blog posts and guides that help our clients make the most of our time tracking tool.


Buddy Punch’s Other Features

Buddy Punch was created with both employees and managers in mind. Even though we wanted to make a simple real-time tracking software, we made sure to include many highly requested features such as:

No matter what features we may come to add, we always keep in mind accessibility, simplicity, and accountability. Nothing more, nothing less – so managers and employees are never overwhelmed by the offerings in this time clock software. Whether you’re a PC-based small business or an enterprise, Buddy Punch is flexible enough to adapt to a workforce of any size.

Buddy Punch’s Online Reviews

Don’t just take our word for what we say about our own software! As of the writing date for this post, Buddy Punch has 4.8 out of 5 stars and 669 reviews on Capterra.


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Below, we’ll list just a few reviews that speak to Buddy Punch’s ease of use and great customer support service. (Click here to explore the full list of reviews.)

As several reviewers have noted, Buddy Punch is intuitive and easy to use for both employers and employees on Windows PC:

“Excellent! The product works well on iPads and PCs. It seems to be very low maintenance and the staff are great to work with when I have questions.”

Click here to read the full review.

“Buddy Punch is easy to use, both on the phone app and on the desktop. The edit feature is helpful for those times when you forget to sign in or out. Also, the note feature comes in handy for letting the boss know what your doing with their time, especially when working outside of the office.”

Click here to read the full review.

“It has a very simple interface, easy to punch in and out as well as check timecards. I think both the desktop version and the smartphone version were well-designed. It doesn’t try to do too much and make things complicated, since the main purpose is just to clock in and out, and it efficiently allows the user to do exactly that.”

Click here to read the full review.

“Overall its a great app!!! I was able to easily navigate the app and desktop app. The guys were able to easily use it! It was much more efficient than the handwritten time sheets we have been using.”

Click here to read the full review.

Try Buddy Punch for Free  

If you feel that Buddy Punch might be the right fit for your business’s Windows PC needs, don’t hesitate to sign up for a free trial. You can also book a one-on-one demo, or view our pre-recorded demo video.

2. Redcort


Moving on to other options – Redcort is a popular time clock software for PCs, offering a variety of features such as:

It’s a great time clock software for Windows, and it also works with mobile and tablet devices. There’s even a free trial so you can test it out for yourself if you want a hands-on experience. As of writing this post, Redcort has 4.8 out of 5 stars and 231 reviews on Capterra.

“This is a very good program that is very affordable. It does exactly what I need it to do and the customer support is amazing. Any time I have a question I have received fast and friendly service.”

Click here to read the full review.

3. Connecteam



Another quality time clock software for small businesses or enterprises working on PC is Connecteam. They offer a variety of features that makes them a great option, including:

This is a powerful software if you want a desktop time clock, and a free 14-day trial lets you get a hands-on experience with its functionalities. As of writing, Connecteam has 4.8 out of 5 stars and 142 reviews on Capterra.

“We are very satisfied with the app, as well as the service! Thank you for helping us work through the initial transition and we appreciate your team’s attention to detail. Our staff have adapted to using the app with incredible ease and we are looking forward to using this as a tool moving forward.” 

Click here to read the full review.

4. QuickBooks Time

Click here to visit QuickBooks Time’s site to see all of their available features.

This is a great timesheet app for Windows devices or iOS, and (at time of writing) it has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra after 5540 reviews.

“Support is AWESOME and the Account Managers are the best. I never have to wait very long to get an answer or get a problem fixed. Just like today, the customer service rep, helped me fix an issue with the mobile app.”

Click here to read the full review.

5. When I Work



When I Work enables you to create an employee schedule or communicate with your staff both on PC and on their app. Some of their more popular features include:

This is a powerful, flexible tool that works across multiple devices to help manage and track employee time. It’s well-liked too. As of this post’s writing, When I Work has 4.5 out of 5 stars and 917 reviews on Capterra.

“I’ve been using this software for 5 years, first as an employee then as an employer. Ease of use for both parties is fantastic and it’s well worth paying for to save the time. When I change places of business, if I have a choice, I will choose When I Work again and again.”

Click here to read the full review.

6. Homebase

Homebase prides itself on turning “almost any device into a time clock” – including mobile devices, PCs, and Macs. This means access to a wide array of features, such as:

At the time of writing, Homebase has a total of 823 reviews on Capterra (see here), with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars. Some of its key features include:

“It is so easy to schedule, add time off and availability and it is so nice to have that show up when building a schedule. Just the entire scheduling altogether makes life so much easier. I don’t know what I would do without this! We have an outdoor workplace, so it is extremely convenient for myself and employees just to use the app on our phones. The communication features are amazing.”

Click here to read the full review.

7. Clockify

Last but not least, Clockify is a fantastic option for attendance tracking, especially if you’re adverse to monthly fees. This is a 100% free time tracking software, no hidden costs or prices involved.

Some of its most popular time management features include:

Clockify also has an excellent reputation. At the time of writing, it holds a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra, based on an average taken from 3974 reviews.

“I love how easy it is to add time, you get really fast at doing it as you can either use 24 or/12 hour clock to input..If you do 12 hour you can just put PM/AM after the time.. My invoices and timesheets are in the same place and I’ve been using it for a while now so I’ve got really fast at adding my time. You can even label invoices as ‘Unsent’ – ‘Sent’ – ‘Paid’ and they’re color coded so you literally never miss an unpaid invoice again. Invoice automatically adds address you’ve set the client up with so you never have to remember to add address to the invoice..I’ve scrambled around trying to find address of a business, but if you have repeat clients you’ll only have to ever do this once. The time I’m saving in admin is worth every penny of the subscription!”

Click here to read the full review.

Try Buddy Punch for Free  

We fully respect the accomplishments of our competitors with their software, and it’s not lightly that we’ve come to recommend ours as one of the best solutions. While we genuinely believe it to be the most effective mix of simplicity, accessibility, and accountability, it’s simply not for everyone.

If you want a time clock software that comes without any fees, not even a one-time purchase, something like Clockify might be suitable for your budget. If you’re particularly focused on mobile performance on android devices, When I Work has a very accessible mobile app.

But if your goal is to make use of the most intuitive and flexible PC time clock software, Buddy Punch has got you covered. But don’t just take our word for it.

If you want to test out Buddy Punch’s performance on PC for yourself, sign up for a free trial. You can also book a private one-on-one demo with us, or view a pre-recorded demo video to get a quick overview of the software. Either way, we hope this post was helpful in your discerning between the best options for PC time clock software.


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