Time and attendance software helps businesses track employees’ working hours, arrival times, and departure times by logging when employees clock in and out of work. It turns this data into detailed timesheets with total hours automatically calculated, and it provides notifications and reports that let you know when employees were late for or missed a shift.

But finding the right time and attendance software for your company can take a lot of time and effort, and choosing the wrong solution can cause a lot of headaches.

To save you from having to do deep research to find the right option, we tested and compared dozens of tools to put together this list of the seven best time and attendance software. Read our detailed reviews of each system below to learn about the unique features each different system brings to the table and how all of the options compare to each other on price.

Platform	Summary	G2 Rating	Free Trial	Starting Price for Time and Attendance
Buddy Punch	Best for deskless employees, Buddy Punch has features that prevent time theft and let you stay on top of attendance no matter where your employees are working.	4.8/5	14 days	$5.49/user/month
Insightful	Best for companies with remote knowledge workers, Insightful tracks time and computer activities so you can tell when employees are billing time but not working.	4.6/5	7 days	$8/seat/month
Jibble	Best for biometric time and attendance tracking, Jibble offers a facial recognition feature that works on mobile and kiosk devices to prevent buddy punching.	4.8/5	14 days	$7.99/user/month
Timeero	Best for traveling employees, Timeero records how many miles employees traveled and how much time they spent at different job sites over the course of the day.	4.8/5	14 days	$10/user/month ($5/user/month for time tracking plus an additional $5/user/month for segmented tracking)
Deputy	Best for foodservice and hospitality businesses, Deputy integrates with POS systems, letting you turn your POS into a time clock with attendance tracking.	4.6/5	30 days	$5/user/month
QuickBooks Time	Best for teams using other Intuit products, QuickBooks Time offers GPS and mileage tracking in addition to employee scheduling and a detailed attendance report.	4.5/5	30 days	$8/user/month
TrackingTime	Best for professional services companies, TrackingTime combines project management, time and attendance tracking, and invoicing into one system.	4.4/5	14 days	$5.75/user/month

1. Buddy Punch – Best for deskless employees

Buddy Punch combines time tracking, employee scheduling, attendance tracking, and payroll into one affordable platform that makes it easy to keep track of your team even when you’re not all working in the same location. Its price and features make it great for hourly teams in industries like construction, field services, manufacturing, and trucking, as well as franchises that are managing multiple locations.

Employees can clock in and out of work from anywhere using a computer, tablet, or their mobile phones. That work hours data is compiled into timesheets that automatically calculate employee hours and overtime. Timesheets can be easily edited when an employee forgets to clock in or out for a shift, and you can also set up approval workflows for getting timesheets approved by managers before running payroll.

In addition to tracking time, Buddy Punch offers multiple features for preventing time theft. Turn on GPS on punch to log employees’ locations when they clock in/out, set up geofences to block off site punches, enable real-time GPS tracking to monitor their movements across the workday, and require photos on punch to have employees take a selfie when clocking in and out to prevent and identify buddy punching.

When you use Buddy Punch for employee scheduling, you get detailed attendance tracking insights too. On the Buddy Punch dashboard, you can see who’s currently clocked in and out, and labels show you if anyone was late. Set up alerts to get an email when employees clock in late or clock out early, and pull detailed attendance reports when you need to talk to an employee about attendance issues.

When scheduling employees, you can specify which hours they’ll work and locations/roles they’ll work in. Create repeating shifts to speed up scheduling for future weeks, view employee availability directly on the schedule, and enable manager-approved shift swaps and covers to let employees trade shifts or get others to cover for them without you having to get involved in the negotiation until it’s finished.

Then, when it’s time to run payroll, you have three options. You can download reports that are formatted perfectly for your payroll provider, integrate with your existing payroll provider to send time data to payroll in seconds, or use Buddy Punch’s built-in payroll system. With built-in payroll, you can simply import your time data into payroll and then send employees their wages via check or direct deposit.

Pros

• One of the most affordable options on the market for time and attendance tracking
• Many options for preventing time theft and keeping track of employees working at multiple locations

Cons

• No free plan
• No computer activity monitoring features

Pricing

Free trial available. View Buddy Punch’s current pricing.

2. Insightful – Best for remote teams of knowledge workers

Insightful is a time tracking and employee monitoring tool that not only tracks the hours your employees work but also lets you monitor what they’re doing on their computers while they’re on the clock. The platform captures real-time data on remote workers’ activities, including active and idle times, applications used, and websites visited so you can see how employees spend their time.

Admins can install the Insightful app on Windows and Mac computers, and it works in the background to collect activity data. Everything employees do on their computers is monitored while they’re on the clock. You’ll be able to see what websites they visited and if they were idle at any point in the day. The system also grabs images of their screens so you can tell if they were using YouTube for work or stealing time. 

The platform is also flexible. If you have employees you trust and others you suspect are stealing time, you can create custom rules to dictate what specific activities — activity monitoring, app usage, and screen monitoring — are tracked for each employee individually.

But the interesting thing about Insightful is that it doesn’t just tell you about productivity issues; it also lets you know how to improve productivity. Focus tracking identifies periods of intense employee focus, letting you optimize employee schedules and allocate tasks during peak productivity times. Productivity analytics let you identify top performers, track work habits, and spot areas for improvement.

You can also see how your team is performing at a high level on Insightful’s dashboard that provides an overview of productivity trends, time usage, and application activity, and there’s benchmark data you can refer to in order to compare your company’s productivity against other companies in your industry.

Pros

• Computer activity monitoring lets you see when knowledge workers are stealing time
• Stealth mode lets you collect activity data without employees knowing they’re being monitored

Cons

• Insightful’s desktop apps require a lot of technical setup
• Employees may feel activity monitoring is an invasion of privacy or extreme micromanagement

Pricing

Free trial available. View Insightful’s current pricing.

3. Jibble – Best for facial recognition

Jibble’s time and attendance software stands out because of its facial recognition feature that works across all devices. Some of the other apps on this list offer facial recognition, such as Buddy Punch and Timeero, but they use Face ID which is limited to iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices. Jibble uses its own facial recognition technology, allowing you to require facial recognition identification on all devices employees use.

Jibble’s face recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to identify distinct facial features. When employees install the app on their phones or tablets, they begin by capturing multiple images of their faces from different angles. Jibble then uses face detection to verify which employee is logging in. Jibble also captures a photo of the employee and attaches it to their time card, adding an extra layer of security.

Jibble offers a free plan that lets you track time for unlimited users, but unfortunately, it doesn’t include attendance tracking; its attendance report is only available on the $7.99/user per month Ultimate plan.

As far as time theft prevention features, Jibble has quite a few. You can set up geofences to block offsite punches, turn on GPS tracking to see where employees were located when they clocked in/out, use facial recognition to prevent buddy punching, and capture screenshots of employees’ computers at regular intervals throughout the day. Limited versions of all of these features are available on the free plan.

For attendance tracking, you’ll need to be able to access the Attendance Insights Report, available on the Ultimate plan. You can select a date range, download the report in XLS format, and open it in Microsoft Excel. It will show you details like how many days employees were scheduled to work, how many absences they had in that timeframe, and if they were late, early, or took an extended break.

Pros

• Its facial recognition feature works on all mobile and kiosk devices and prevents buddy punching
• There’s a generous free plan that includes time tracking and time theft prevention features

Cons

• Attendance tracking is only available on Jibble’s most expensive plan
• Attendance reports cannot be viewed in the system, only downloaded as an XLS file

Pricing

Free plan and trial available. View Jibble’s current pricing.

4. Timeero – Best for traveling employees

If your employees travel between job sites throughout the day — common in trades, transportation, home healthcare, and sales — Timeero is a great option for tracking time and validating attendance. It tracks both time and mileage, offers offline tracking so it works even at remote job sites with no cell phone signal, and offers a segmented tracking feature that logs time spent at specific locations automatically.

Timeero’s segmented tracking feature uses real-time GPS to track employees’ locations across the entire workday. You get a breakdown showing when they clocked in, how many miles they drove to each location they visited, how much time they spent at each location, and exactly when they left each location.

You’ll get a detailed report showing where they traveled, you can click on any segment in the day to zoom in and see only that job, and you can replay the entire day if you want to see everything they did. You can also set up automatic alerts that notify you when an employee travels outside of their designated route.

If you have jobs set up, you’ll see the job name for each of the locations employees visited over the course of the day. Plus, jobs automatically attach the time employees spent at that location to the correct job, project, or client so their time is tracked automatically; they don’t need to remember to check in and out of specific jobs when arriving at or leaving a location. The mileage they drive is totaled up automatically too.

Timeero also offers some unique features for home healthcare teams. On the Premium plan ($10/user per month), you can configure the app to be HIPAA compliant, and you also get access to Timeero’s electronic visit verification (EVV) feature. EVV works by integrating with Sandata so you can easily document patient visit times, employee locations, and the type of care that was provided.

The one downside of Timeero is that attendance tracking is much more manual than it is with other apps. Reports will show you the total amount of time employees were scheduled to work and how long they actually worked, but you’ll have to figure out why there were discrepancies. Additionally, segmented tracking is great for in-depth attendance information but has to be manually reviewed each day.

Pros

• Segmented tracking automates time tracking, mileage tracking, and job costing for traveling employees
• HIPAA compliance and an EVV module make the app appealing for home healthcare companies

Cons

• Attendance tracking is very manual; there aren’t reports showing attendance issues specifically
• Segmented tracking is sold as a separate add-on, increasing the cost of the tool

Pricing

Free trial available. View Timeero’s current pricing.

5. Deputy – Best for foodservice and hospitality businesses

Some of the other tools on this list have the ability to create a time clock kiosk by downloading an iOS or Android app onto a tablet, but if you want to use hardware you already own, Deputy is a good choice. It integrates with point of sale (POS) systems like Clover, Square, and Epos Now, letting you turn your existing POS into a time clock that employees can use to clock into and out of work each day.

Deputy’s scheduling features are more advanced than its time tracking features, but it’s not as big of a deal since hospitality employees typically work on-site with their managers — you don’t need GPS tracking or facial recognition to know when employees are working. However, you can use face unlock to prevent buddy punching and set up geofences to make sure employees are at the correct locations.

As far as scheduling goes, Deputy’s connection to your POS system makes it powerful. You can use your historical sales data to create schedules for upcoming weeks automatically; the system predicts your sales volume and slots in the number of employees needed, which speeds up scheduling and helps reduce labor costs. You can also schedule employee breaks, paid and unpaid, to stay compliant with state laws.

For attendance tracking, you can use Deputy’s attendance and absence report. Choose the timeframe you want to look at, and it will give you both high-level and granular data. From a high-level, you can see how many late arrivals, no-shows, and early departures you had in a given timeframe, show if attendance issues are growing or declining, and see which locations have the most attendance issues.

If you want to get more granular, you can see a table showing attendance issues by role (server, hostess, guest services), area (bar, kitchen, valet), or individual team member. When viewing data by team members, you can see all of their clock ins and outs, or you can filter the data to only show days where there was an attendance infraction. Finally, you can also customize the reports to include other data.

Pros

• POS integrations let you use your existing POS system as a time clock
• POS integrations pull in historical sales data for automatic work schedule creation

Cons

• POS integrations are only available on the Core plan and higher ($6.50+/user/month)
• Built-in payroll is offered through a third party service and pricier than many comparable options

Pricing

Free trial available. View Deputy’s current pricing.

6. QuickBooks Time – Best for teams using other Intuit products

QuickBooks Time is a great option if your organization relies heavily on other Intuit products like QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Payroll. QuickBooks Time lets you easily share data between other Intuit applications — no separate integration is required. Your timesheets will sync to QuickBooks Payroll automatically, and you can easily pull in expense data or client information from QuickBooks Online.

As far as time tracking, QuickBooks Time is similar to Buddy Punch and Timeero. Employees can clock in and out using a computer, tablet turned into a kiosk, or their mobile phones. Real-time GPS tracking is available, and you can track both time and mileage. You can also set up geofences that automatically clock employees in and out (or remind them to clock in and out) when visiting geofenced locations.

QuickBooks Time does have better attendance reporting than Timeero, though. If you use QuickBooks time to create employee schedules, there’s a tardies and absences report you can run that will show you which employees clocked in late for a shift and which didn’t clock in at all for a shift. It only works for completed shifts, however; you can’t use the report to see who’s currently late or not clocked in.

As far as employee scheduling, QuickBooks has a few interesting features. You can create specific shifts in the app (such as opener or closer) and assign employees to work those shifts rather than scheduling them for specific start and end times for each shift. You can also create repeating shifts, save a specific schedule as a template, or copy a previous week’s schedule over to the current week.

QuickBooks Time’s location and mileage tracking features make it a good alternative to Timeero if you need more detailed attendance reporting, and it’s similarly priced. If you don’t need mileage tracking, though, Buddy Punch offers comparable features and more attendance tracking options for a much smaller per-user cost, and it also offers an integration with QuickBooks Online and Desktop.

Finally, it’s worth noting that you cannot use QuickBooks Time without a QuickBooks Online subscription, so if you’re not already subscribed to QuickBooks Online, you’ll need to factor that into your cost as well when making a decision.

Pros

• Syncs data automatically with other Intuit products like QuickBooks Online and Payroll
• There’s a robust API for bulk changes like adding/deleting employees, geofences, locations, and job codes

Cons

• Requires a QuickBooks Online subscription to use
• Pricing is higher than similar alternatives that have the same core features

Pricing

Free trial available. View QuickBooks Time’s current pricing.

7. TrackingTime – Best for agencies and professional services companies

Insightful is great for preventing time theft by knowledge workers, but if you’re not interested in the activity monitoring features and just want to track employee attendance and time by project for client invoicing, it’s not going to be a great fit for your team. A good alternative to consider is TrackingTime. TrackingTime is a time tracking and project management platform built specifically for professional services teams. 

Employees can clock in and out from any device. Apps are available for Mac and Windows computers and iOS and Android phones, and there are also browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Every hour employees log is attached to a specific project, task, and client, and you can set up invoicing to automatically generate invoices based on your time data (though payment processing isn’t available).

For attendance tracking, TrackingTime compares each employee’s logged hours against their work schedules. Managers get a real-time view of who is present, late, or absent and can review attendance patterns by individual or team across any date range. TrackingTime automatically flags employees who clocked in late, left early, or didn’t log hours during a scheduled workday.

Where TrackingTime really stands out for agencies is its integrations. You can add a timer directly inside Asana, Jira, Figma, ClickUp, Monday, Linear, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and 60+ other tools so employees can log time without leaving the apps they already work in. Billing rates can be set by project, task, or team member, and reports can be filtered by client and project to generate the data you need for invoices.

TrackingTime does also offer a free plan, but the free plan does not include attendance tracking. However, similar to Jibble, you can use it to track time for unlimited team members toward an unlimited number of tasks, clients, and projects. Limitations might make you need to upgrade to a paid plan, however. For example, you can’t split billable and non-billable hours, and you don’t get access to most reports.

Pros

• Tracks time by project and client, making it easy to generate invoices for agency work
• No GPS, screenshots, or activity monitoring means employees won’t feel surveilled

Cons

• Attendance tracking requires a paid plan; it’s not included in the free version
• You can create invoices in TrackingTime, but you can’t accept payments through its invoices

Pricing

Free plan and trial available. View TrackingTime’s current pricing.

Choosing the best time and attendance software for your business

In addition to features and cost, there are some other factors you should consider to find the perfect time and attendance software for your business:

• Team size: If your team is small (5-10 employees) you can likely get away with using one of the more basic free options. Larger teams will quickly run into limits on the features available in those plans. You should also consider if you’re going to grow your business in the future. It’s difficult to switch systems down the line, so consider the future cost if you hire more employees.
• Industry: Some platforms cater better to companies in different industries. Software and services companies will want to choose one of the options with project tracking, productivity tracking, and invoicing. Restaurants and retail shops will want to go with a tool that has feature-rich scheduling. Field services companies will want to choose an app with geofencing and GPS tracking.
• Budget: Software costs tend to be confusing, and something that looks like it fits within your budget at a glance might actually cost much more than you expected. Make sure to spend extra time reviewing plan comparisons on each system’s pricing page to ensure you’ll actually get the features you need at the price you can afford to pay.
• Integration availability: You’ll absolutely want a tool that integrates with your payroll provider to speed up the process of running payroll, but you may also want something that integrates with your accounting, project management, team communication, or other business-critical tools to streamline passing data back and forth between those systems.

Make sure to at least get a demo of the system you’re considering or, better yet, start a free trial of it. Demos are great for getting answers to questions you couldn’t find the answers for on your own, and free trials let you get hands-on with the tool to make sure it will work for you. You might also want to send a request to the system’s support team to make sure you’ll get a quick response when you need help.