Find the Best Time Card App: 10 Top Picks for 2024

Time card apps help teams track time accurately and easily. They’re more efficient than paper time cards — which are hard to centralize, edit, and keep accurate records on — and can be simpler for small businesses to use than feature-heavy HR tools.

Additionally, time card apps keep your timesheets accurate by preventing accidental mistakes like clocking in too early or forgetting to clock out at the end of the day. They also have features to prevent time theft by making sure the right employee is clocking in for their shift — and that employees are at the right location.

Finally, some time card apps will have advanced features that help you create employee schedules, notify you when employees are nearing overtime, automatically calculate PTO accruals, and either run payroll directly or integrate with your existing payroll software.

If you’re ready to upgrade how you track employee time, we’re here to help. We’ve picked out 10 of the best time card apps and analyzed their main features to help you cut through the noise and find the solution that best fits your business’s needs.

1. Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch is a user-friendly and versatile time card app that’s ideal for small businesses, retail locations, construction sites, remote teams, and more. You can use it to track employee hours, create schedules, manage PTO, and run payroll.

We know how frustrating and time-consuming time tracking can be for business owners. Before starting Buddy Punch, our employee management system consisted of using a paper punch clock and timesheets to manage 20 employees in three different locations. It was free, but it was horribly inefficient and generally a hassle.

Calculating total work hours, tracking PTO, and then having to do payroll — all manually — didn’t let us focus on what mattered most: making our business grow and thrive.

Even worse, it led to many mistakes that cost us more time and money no matter how many times we checked our numbers.

That’s why we set out to make Buddy Punch intuitive and easy to use both on the employee and administrator side.

What makes Buddy Punch unique?

There are several reasons why Buddy Punch stands out among time card apps.

Intuitive and easy-to-use interface

We designed Buddy Punch so that employees don’t have to worry about not being tech-savvy enough to clock in and clock out.

As you can see in the image below, when employees log in, they are presented with a minimal number of options:

They can clock in, clock out, and view or submit their timesheet. In other words, we’ve eliminated unnecessary distractions. There’s no need for your employees to have to learn a new, complicated app interface or disrupt their workflow just to be able to punch in at work. 

As one of our customers wrote on Capterra (a popular software review site):

“I love many things about this software! It is self-explanatory. Even the most technically challenged employee can figure out how to use it.”

But Buddy Punch isn’t limited to a simple interface. Your employees can still request time off, submit a request to correct a punch-in mistake, or view their estimated pay. We’ve just hidden these secondary functions to prioritize the day-to-day experience.

Seamless onboarding

While building Buddy Punch, we focused our efforts on making onboarding as easy as possible. If you struggle with onboarding at any point, our team is available to help you right away through live chat. As one customer writes:

“The customer support team is super responsive, thorough, and effective. You get much quicker response times than you could get on the phone. We have had very few issues but have always received immediate resolutions when anything has come up.”

Administrators are given the option to add employees manually or through an Excel import. 

If you decide to add your employees manually, the Buddy Punch team will walk you through the different steps required to do so. 

If you want to import your entire team at once, we provide you with an Excel file to fill out. You simply send that file to us when you’re ready, and we’ll handle the rest.

Another key feature of Buddy Punch is that we do not require your employees to have email accounts. This is particularly helpful for businesses where employees don’t have access to an email address to sign up for the app. Instead, employees can log in with a username and password. 

Once your staff has their Buddy Punch account, you can use the app to contact them via private message or send push notifications to communicate with all of them at once.

Customer support we can be proud of

Excellent customer support is one of our top priorities at Buddy Punch. To maintain that standard, we’ve centralized communications through our live chat feature. We’re proud to say we have a median first response time of 54 seconds during business hours.

This applies to everyone on your team. Employers can take advantage of our live chat when navigating the administrator functionalities of our app, and employees can use our live chat to deal with any questions or problems that might arise when using our app.

All of our live chat representatives know our software backward and forwards. They can help you with any queries you might have, no matter how complex.

How Buddy Punch keeps your team accountable

One of the biggest impediments to team management is a lack of accountability for your employees. This leads to wasted time and money due to inaccurate timesheets.

To prevent employees from being dishonest about when (or where) they punch in and out of work, Buddy Punch offers the following features.

Geofencing

Our geofencing feature lets you create a radius around a physical location to limit where your remote employees can clock in and out of work. If they’re not within the radius, the app prevents them from clocking in and out.

Additionally, you can assign your employees to multiple areas, each with a unique job code. This is especially useful for businesses where employees alternate between different locations.

GPS tracking

Buddy Punch lets you automatically record where your employees punch in and out. You can then use these records to generate reports and look at your team’s entire activity in one place. This is particularly useful when your employees are out in the field or working at multiple locations on a single day.

Facial recognition

Buddy Punch has a built-in facial recognition feature for business owners who are concerned about time theft increasing their labor costs. With this feature, employees can only clock in if the app validates that the employee clocking in is the correct individual.

IP address locks

IP address locks prevent employees from clocking in and out when they’re not on your company’s IP address. This is great for office workers as they can only clock in when they’re connected to your company’s Wi-Fi, preventing off-site punching.

Photos on punch

Finally, Buddy Punch also offers an optional webcam feature. If you activate the webcam, our app will prompt your employees to take a photo of themselves when clocking in and out. These photos appear in your administrator dashboard and help you prevent buddy punching.

How Buddy Punch helps you run payroll

When you use Buddy Punch to track your employees’ time, payroll becomes effortless. To avoid wasting time and money on the frustrations and inherent inaccuracies of manually running payroll, we offer the following easy-to-use features.

Payroll integrations

To make your payroll processing as easy and time-efficient as possible, Buddy Punch integrates with each of the most popular payroll software on the market:

• QuickBooks Online and Desktop
• ADP
• Gusto
• Paychex
• Paylocity
• PayPlus
• SurePayroll
• Workday

Pairing Buddy Punch with any of these providers allows you to export a payroll summary and automatically populate your employee hours and PTO by importing the summary into your chosen accounting or payroll software.

Alternatively, we also offer a Zapier integration that lets you connect Buddy Punch to more than 2,000 additional applications.

Payroll reports and exports

With just a few clicks, Buddy Punch calculates everything you need to run payroll in the form of a payroll report that can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet, CSV file, or PDF.

Time-off tracking and accruals

If your employees get PTO, you can use our accruals feature to calculate earned time off and display that to employees. Additionally, employees can request paid time off within Buddy Punch, and those requests are sent to admins or managers for approval.

When a PTO request has been approved, that time is automatically added to their timesheets, meaning you no longer have to manually calculate PTO separately when running payroll — it’s all handled for you automatically!

Project tracking

Set up job codes, departments, or locations in Buddy Punch, then assign those to employees. When employees clock in, they select the specific job or task they’re working on. Then, you can run reports to see exactly how much time was worked on specific jobs or projects.

Additional features

The features described above are not the whole picture. Buddy Punch has a whole range of other powerful features — including employee scheduling, overtime calculations, notifications, time card approvals, and editing timecards — that you can pick and choose from depending on your specific needs.

Want to learn more about Buddy Punch? Start a free trial, watch a recorded demo, or request a personalized demo.

2. Timely

Timely is a great option for agencies and consulting businesses where employees do most of their work online. It captures every second of your employees’ workdays and shows them what they were doing at that time so they can easily track time spent on client projects down to the second. Some of Timely’s key features include:

• Automatic time tracking: Record the time spent in different apps automatically. This allows you to create a perfect timeline of the workday, ensuring accurate client billing.
• Project planning and analysis: Use Timely as a full project management tool to monitor if your projects are going to be delivered on time and within budget.
• Time planning: Monitor who’s at capacity, who’s available, and who will be available for upcoming projects to easily plan resources and manage your workloads.
• Integrations: Timely integrates with all of the popular project management apps, including Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp, Airtable, Jira, Monday, Notion, and more.

With 214 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing (an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars), Timely is a well-liked time-tracking solution. Here’s what one customer has to say about it:

“The best thing about Timely is that it lets you focus on your work first, time capture second. Traditionally, you need to constantly keep on top of your time entries, or it will snowball into a big mess by the end of the week. Timely allows you to just get on with things and, perhaps at the end of the week, you just approve the timesheet that was pre-filled for you.”

3. Clockify

Clockify is a great time card app for freelancers, independent contractors, and small businesses with basic time-tracking needs. You can use it to track time for an unlimited number of employees and across an unlimited number of projects — all for free. Some of the features included in Clockify’s free plan are:

• Time tracker: Employees can clock in and out on computers, tablets, and phones.
• Reports: View timesheet reports and export them to run payroll.
• Billable rates: Set up different rates for your different projects and tasks.
• Idle detection: Detect when employees are idle and automatically remind them to get back on task.

If you need more advanced features like GPS tracking, a QuickBooks integration, time card approvals, and overtime calculations, you’ll need to be on one of Clockify’s paid plans. However, it’s worth noting that Clockify’s paid plans are more costly than some of the other options on this list for the features included in them.

Clockify currently has 4,894 reviews on Capterra, with an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Here’s what one customer has to say about it:

“My overall experience with Clockify was very positive. It gave me a free solution to a very real problem. I was able to move from tracking time on a spreadsheet to using a cloud-based, scalable product that I could update on my phone. It made my business more efficient and reduced billing errors.”

4. Homebase

Homebase is a great time card app for retail and restaurant businesses for a couple of reasons. First, it has integrations with popular point-of-sale systems like Toast and Square, allowing employees to clock in and out using your POS. Second, its pricing is location-based rather than employee-based. Here are some of its top features:

• POS system integrations: Turn your existing Square, Clover, Toast, or Shopify POS system into a time clock that employees can use to clock in and out.
• Location-based pricing: Instead of paying per employee, pay per location, making Homebase an inexpensive option for businesses with just a couple of locations.
• Team communication: Send employees messages and notifications directly within the Homebase app, which is helpful when employees don’t have company email accounts.
• Hiring and onboarding: In addition to time tracking, you can use Homebase as both an applicant-tracking system and an employee-onboarding platform.

With 1,040 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing (an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars), Homebase excels in scheduling and ease of setup. Here’s one customer’s review:

“I really value the integration with Square POS that allows me to use the analytical tools within Homebase. It’s really helpful for me to be able to see my labor estimates and even the weather (coffee is largely dependent on the weather). I value the real-time feedback on my labor costs as well.”

5. DeskTime

DeskTime is another option that’s designed for employees who do all of their work on computers. It helps business owners manage time and productivity, lets employees track their time automatically, and helps you monitor project progress and budgets. Some of DeskTime’s most unique features include:

• Automatic time tracking: With DeskTime, you can automatically track all time spent across your organization, no matter what app or device your team is using.
• URL and app tracking: To keep your staff accountable, you can monitor which URLs and apps your employees spend their time on when at work.
• Document title tracking: With this feature, you can see what specific documents a given employee worked on and how long they spent working on it.
• Idle time tracking: DeskTime allows you to track work time spent away from the computer.
• Automatic screenshots: You can set up DeskTime to automatically take screenshots of your employees’ screens, which is particularly helpful when managing remote teams.

With 525 reviews on Capterra (4.6 out of 5 stars), customers find DeskTime particularly helpful when dealing with team monitoring. Here’s one customer’s review:

“This software has helped us immensely since we started using it. It gives the business owners a better idea of what goes on in all of the departments, what’s being completed, and how long it takes.”

6. Paymo

Paymo is a great time card app if you’re looking to combine your time tracking and project management into a single tool. It comes with all of the project management features you’d expect — Gantt charts, Kanban boards, to-do lists, and task calendars — as well as time-tracking, team scheduling, and timesheets. Some key features:

• Built-in project management: Create task lists and measure project progress with Gantt charts, Kanban boards, to-do lists, spreadsheets, and task calendars.
• Collaboration: Assign tasks to team members, leave comments on tasks to collaborate in real-time, and send notifications to Slack. You can also invite your clients to Paymo to collaborate with them directly on the platform.
• Project templates: Turn completed projects into templates to simplify the process of setting up new projects and adding tasks and assignments to them.
• Accounting features: Create estimates and invoices, track expenses, set up recurring invoices, and accept payments from providers like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.

Paymo currently has 688 reviews on Capterra, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Here’s what one customer has to say about the platform:

“I’ve increased my productivity with Paymo’s Kanban board view combined with the table view and saved TONS of hours on admin, invoicing, timesheets, and client and project management. Just this time savings alone pays off the monthly subscription.”

7. When I Work

When I Work is a scheduling-first time card app that’s built for companies that employ hourly workers. Employees can set their availability, then you can build schedules automatically based on who is available and when. Then, employees can clock in for their scheduled shifts, and you can track their hours in the admin dashboard. Other features include:

• Team messaging: Send messages to every employee, to a single employee, or start a group chat. Employees can also communicate with each other.
• Shift availability: Employees can set their availability directly within When I Work.
• Shift trades: Employees can work with each other to trade shifts. The requests are sent to an admin for approval.
• Shift fills: When you need a shift covered, you can open it up to all employees and let them accept it if they’re available.
• POS integrations: When I Work integrates with point-of-sale systems like Square, Clover, and Lightspeed.

When I Work currently has 1,160 reviews on Capterra (4.5 out of 5 stars). Here’s one customer’s experience with the platform:

“I’ve been using this software for five 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 time. When I change places of business, if I have a choice, I will choose When I Work again and again.”

8. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a great time card app for businesses with employees working both at computers and in the field. It has the features you need to keep field workers accountable — like GPS tracking and geofencing — as well as computer productivity tracking features like idle detection and automatic screenshots. Some other key features include:

• App and website tracking: Hubstaff tracks the applications and websites employees visit while working.
• Keyboard and mouse activity: Hubstaff monitors keyboard strokes and mouse movements to gauge activity levels during employee work hours. This data is used to generate activity reports that show how active an employee is during their logged time.
• Timesheet reports: Build actionable time reports with just a few clicks. Track employee work hours, craft budgets, and pay your team accordingly.
• Automated payroll and invoicing: Streamline payroll through time and expense reports you can easily export and send to your payroll provider.

With 1,489 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, Hubstaff has an average score of 4.6 out of 5 stars. Here’s what one customer likes about the platform:

“I like the wide variety of tracking features included that not only let employees register work time but also allow us to see activity such as screenshots and location trackers.”

9. Insightful

Insightful is another time card app that’s built for managing knowledge workers’ time. It’s designed to give business owners and managers deep insights into team productivity, with features that help you identify peak focus hours, benchmark your productivity, and prevent burnout. Key features of the platform include:

• Focus tracking: Identify periods of intense employee focus to optimize employee schedules and allocate tasks during peak productivity times.
• Productivity analytics: Identify top performers, track work habits, and spot areas for improvement. Identify employee burnout and address it before it becomes a problem.
• Productivity dashboards: Review Insightful’s productivity data on dashboards that provide an overview of productivity trends, time usage, and application activity. 
• Benchmarks: View benchmark data to compare your company’s productivity against industry standards.

Insightful has 96 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars. Here’s one customer’s review:

“This has been useful for our organization while transitioning from office to work-from-home arrangements. We are able to do timekeeping and monitoring of the productivity of our employees with this application. It is easy to set up and easy to use.”

10. TimeCamp

TimeCamp is a great, low-cost option for web development agencies. It includes time tracking, attendance tracking, and integrations with popular developer tools like Azure DevOps, Github, Gitlab, and Jira. It’s also one of the few time trackers that offers desktop apps — those are available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Other key features include:

• Automatic time tracking: TimeCamp automatically tracks your team’s time; all you have to do is turn on the app.
• Custom billing rates: With TimeCamp, you can set up customizable billing rates, create budgets, and do revenue, cost, and margin reporting on any given project.
• Productivity tracking: See what apps and websites your team members are using most often during the workday.
• Time budgeting: Burndown reports show you how you’re tracking toward time and budget estimates for all of your projects.

TimeCamp currently has a total of 597 reviews on Capterra (4.7 out of 5 stars). According to its customers, the app is particularly good for client invoicing and project time budgeting:

“Being able to simply track time worked on different projects by different business analysts was always tricky. Often analysts would be guesstimating at the end of the week. TimeCamp has solved this issue, and we can now accurately track and invoice hours spent on each project.”

Choosing the best time card app for your business

The best time card app for your business will depend on what’s most important to you.

If you want to track time accurately and get access to features to help you prevent time theft and reduce your labor costs, you can’t go wrong with the affordability and range of features that Buddy Punch offers.

If you’re more concerned with productivity tracking for employees who work on computers, select a tool like Timely, Hubstaff, Insightful, or DeskTime.

If you run an in-person shop or restaurant, apps like Homebase and When I Work will cater well to your needs with POS integrations that work with your existing equipment.

And if you’re looking to consolidate your time tracking and project management tools into a single app, consider Clockify, Paymo, and TimeCamp.