How to Track Employee Time: 9 Options to Consider in 2024

Accurately tracking your employees’ time is a crucial part of running a business. It helps ensure that you pay employees the right amounts, and if you do work for customers/clients, it ensures that you invoice your clients for all of the time your team spent on their projects.

Tracking your employees’ time the right way will also lead to reduced payroll errors, increased productivity for your administrative staff, lower payroll costs, and decreased time theft.

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to track employee time, providing four different methods to consider and nine different time clock apps you can use.

How to track employee time: 4 popular methods

When keeping track of work hours, remember that the best method for you will vary depending on whether you’re an individual tracking time, running a small business with employees, or running a larger company with multiple locations, departments, and job classifications.

Here are four popular methods employers use to track employee hours.

Method 1: Use a mechanical punch clock

The most basic way to track employee hours is by using a mechanical punch clock. These devices function very simply: employees enter paper timecards into the punch clock when they start and stop working, and the clock automatically registers the time and date of punch on the timecard using printer ink.

We used this method ourselves when tracking time for over 20 employees across three locations in our previous business. And at first, we were happy with its results.

We would have our employees punch using a mechanical clock, and then before each pay period, we would sit down and review all timecards one by one and calculate all the time worked using a free online calculator.

After we’d completed this process, we would take that information and use it to run payroll for all our employees.

However, we quickly started running into problems:

Manual time tracking is prone to error. It’s easy to make a miscalculation, forget to account for overtime, or overlook a shift, which causes major headaches and rework for payroll and is upsetting for employees.
It’s incredibly time-consuming. You’re not just calculating employee hours from their punch cards; you also have to account for overtime and paid time off. And with many states having different laws for overtime, this can get very complex and time-consuming very quickly.
Physical timecards are easily damaged or lost. Employees can lose or misplace their timecards, giving you no way to validate what hours they worked. And more common is that employees insert the timecard incorrectly, causing two punches to overlap each other and make both illegible.
There’s no way to keep employees accountable. Manual time tracking has no safeguards against time theft like buddy punching when one employee clocks in or out for another, increasing your labor costs.

Method 2: Use paper timesheets

A good alternative to using a mechanical punch clock is to have your employees write down when they started and stopped working on a sheet of paper. This prevents issues like the punch clock printing on the same spot twice and making the data illegible.

This method of time tracking comes with one major upside: it is simple and intuitive.

But despite its simplicity, this method comes with many of the same problems as tracking time with a punch clock.

Calculating work hours is still a time-consuming process that requires extreme attention and is prone to errors. Paper timesheets offer no help with calculating PTO or overtime. And time theft is even simpler with this method: employees can simply write down whatever times they want to get paid for.

Method 3: Use spreadsheet software

Another way to track employee hours is with an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet.

With this method, employees can log their hours using a punch clock or a paper timesheet — or they can enter them directly into the spreadsheet. The obvious upside to the latter method is that you don’t risk losing or damaging a piece of paper and you can back up the data.

Another upside is that this method lets you skip one step of the payroll process: instead of having to manually transfer all data from paper to your computer, you can simply upload the spreadsheet to your payroll software.

Additionally, when using an Excel or Google Sheets file, the process of calculating total billable hours does get a little bit easier since you can set up things so it does all that math automatically. That said, the process is still somewhat manual, with all the risks that entails.

Your employees still need to sit down and write down the time and date of their punches, meaning they can easily forget to punch, or make a mistake when recording (writing 8:15 when they punched in at 8:05, for example).

Also, using Excel or Google Sheets to track employee hours does not take into account overtime and paid time off — at least not by default. You could set things up so the spreadsheet calculates them in real-time, but that process requires technical knowledge to set up and can be extremely time-consuming.

Method 4: Use time clock software

The most common way businesses track employee hours today is with time clock software.

These applications let employees clock in and out using a computer, tablet, or mobile phone. Their punch data is stored within the time clock application, which collates the clock in/out data into timesheets and calculates employee hours automatically.

With time clock software, entries are recorded in real-time, ensuring precise tracking of hours worked, breaks taken, and overtime accrued. This makes running payroll easier and less error-prone, and it ensures compliance with labor laws.

Time clock software also automatically integrates with payroll systems, simplifying the transfer of data and reducing the administrative burden. Additionally, these systems can generate detailed reports on employee attendance, hours worked, overtime, and patterns of tardiness or absenteeism.

Finally, many time clock apps come with features that keep employees accountable and reduce time theft. And most also include features that simplify other administrative tasks, such as automatically calculating PTO accruals, tracking time-off requests, and creating employee schedules.

And if you do still need an on-site way for employees to clock in that mimics the old punch clocks, most time-tracking software can be used to create a clock-in clock-out kiosk.

Some time clock providers sell physical devices that can be installed on-site. Others integrate with systems you already have on-site, such as a point-of-sale (POS) system commonly used by restaurants and retail stores.

But the least expensive way to create a time clock kiosk is typically to download a time clock app to a computer or tablet device that’s kept in a central location.

The 9 best time clock software for tracking employee time

There are many challenges involved in the process of manually tracking your employees’ hours. You have to depend on employees to enter their time accurately, you have to perform complex calculations in spreadsheets, and running payroll requires a significant time investment.

Luckily, many tracking solutions on the market can help you circumvent these challenges. The difficulty is in deciding which tool will work best for your specific business needs.

To help you decide, we’ve put together this list of the best apps for tracking employee time, listing which use cases and business types each app is best for:

1. Buddy Punch

In our previous business, we struggled to track time for 20 employees across three different locations using paper punch clocks and manual time entries. We couldn’t believe how frustrating and time-consuming it was to track employees’ hours and knew there had to be a better way.

Buddy Punch was born out of that frustration. When we set out to build our time-tracking tool, we wanted it to be something more than just a digital version of physical work time tracking. That’s why we created features to help with employee accountability, payroll processing, and scheduling.

Features that improve employee accountability

Tracking employee hours effectively and reliably isn’t possible if your employees aren’t kept accountable for when and where they work. Without that, employees clock in and out however they feel, and might even grow accustomed to committing time theft.

A lack of accountability from your team members invariably translates to wasted money and time due to inaccurate timesheets.

At Buddy Punch, we don’t want you to worry about these time management issues. We created a whole range of automated time-tracking features that can help you keep your employees honest and accountable when they punch in and out of work.

Geofencing

Buddy Punch’s geofencing feature allows you to determine the radius inside which your staff can clock in and out of work. If your employees attempt to clock in “on-site” but are found to be outside that radius, Buddy Punch will prevent it and show them an error message instead.

You can create multiple geofences and assign each a unique job code, which is especially helpful for businesses working on projects at more than one job site. This makes it a great tool for field service businesses.

GPS tracking

With this feature, you can keep track of all your workers’ locations whenever they are out in the field. Buddy Punch’s GPS tracking records your employees’ locations whenever they punch in and out of work and centralizes that information in detailed reports for you to review.

IP address locking

Our IP address locking feature allows you to limit which networks your employees can punch in and out of. All you have to do is input a specific IP address into the Buddy Punch platform, and our software will automatically block all attempts from your employees to punch when not connected to that network.

Photos on Punch

When you activate Buddy Punch’s Photos on Punch feature, our software will prompt your employees to take a photo of themselves before they can punch in or out of work. Buddy Punch then saves all these photos on your dashboard, which you can review all at once.

This reporting feature is particularly helpful if you want to make sure your employees can’t have one of their co-workers punch in for them.

Features to help you streamline payroll

Buddy Punch offers multiple features to help you make the payroll process as simple and effortless as possible.

Integrations with payroll providers

Screenshot of some of Buddy Punch's payroll integrations

Buddy Punch integrates with the most popular payroll providers so you can process payroll for your team in a fast, simple, and accurate manner in just a few clicks. A few of Buddy Punch’s payroll integrations include:

ADP
Gusto
Paychex
Workday
Paylocity
QuickBooks

Buddy Punch also integrates with Zapier, which means you can connect our platform to thousands of other apps even if we don’t have a direct integration with them.

Payroll reports

Screenshot of a payroll report from Buddy Punch

There’s no need to waste time manually reviewing employee timesheets to fix errors and omissions. Like the best employee management tools, Buddy Punch calculates what you need to run payroll. Additionally, as you can see in the above screenshot, you can export all data into an Excel or CSV file.

Project tracking

With Buddy Punch’s ability to track projects, you can decide on pay rates tailored to your different jobs and pay scales. You can calculate labor costs, create budgets, and generate project reports in just a few clicks. This makes it much easier to maximize your profitability.

Time off tracking

With Buddy Punch, you can easily keep track of employees’ time off (PTO and unpaid) and then export reports with all the information for you to review. Reports can include time off information for all your employees at once or broken down on a per-employee basis.

PTO accruals

Screenshot of PTO accrual rules in Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch allows you to set up time off accrual rules. These can be based on an annual accrual period, total hours worked, or a specified pay period.

Employee scheduling features

Without the right tools, creating schedules for your employees can quickly turn into a time-intensive and headache-inducing process. There are too many moving parts involved, including which employees can work on what day and for how long.

Tools like pen and paper or Excel spreadsheets can help, but they aren’t very efficient.

At Buddy Punch, we wanted to remove all complexity from the scheduling process. We created a whole host of features to accomplish this, starting with our drag-and-drop scheduling functionality.

Screenshot of Buddy Punch's employee scheduling tool

Our drag-and-drop scheduler allows you to create employee shifts in a matter of minutes.

Simply click on the empty slot next to an employee’s name and create a shift for that employee. If you’d like to change/edit the schedule, drag a shift to its new slot, and drop. Once you’re done moving things around and are happy with the end result, hit publish to update all changes.

That’s just the type of the iceberg. Buddy Punch’s other scheduling features include:

Repeating/recurring shifts

Screenshot of recurring shifts in Buddy Punch

Don’t waste time and effort creating new schedules week after week just so your employees know nothing has changed. With Buddy Punch’s repeating/recurring shifts feature, you can copy schedules across time or make them repeat over specified periods (i.e., weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly).

Employee availability

Buddy Punch’s employee availability features make the scheduling process even easier by allowing your employees to suggest their preferred times and days of work, subject to your approval.

All they need to do is log into our app and choose their availability. You can then take that information and use it to shape the perfect schedule for your team.

Punch limiting

Limit your employees’ punches so they can only clock in and clock out when inside the time frame specified by their schedule. If they try to punch outside their scheduled hours, our software will show them an error message.

Notify employees of their schedules

Screenshot of new schedule notifications in Buddy Punch

After you spend time creating the perfect schedule, you can use Buddy Punch to share it with your team in just a few clicks. Hit the publish schedule button, and Buddy Punch will prompt you to choose whether to share through email, push notification, or both.

Buddy Punch also offers other types of scheduling notifications, which you can configure to automatically get sent to employees and/or administrators. These include:

Shift start reminder and shift end reminder
Late in alert and late out alert
Early in alert and early out alert

Your employees can check their schedules at any time through the Buddy Punch mobile app (iPhone and Android), desktop app, or tablet app.

Additional features

We’ve covered some of Buddy Punch’s key features dealing with accountability, scheduling, and payroll, but those are just the tip of the iceberg. Buddy Punch offers a whole range of other features, including:

Despite everything we included in our tool, a focus on ease of use and our intuitive design make it easy for anyone to use Buddy Punch.

What do users have to say about Buddy Punch?

We’re proud to say that, at the time of writing, Buddy Punch has received a total of 992 reviews on the popular software review site Capterra, with an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars.

Interested in learning more?

There’s more to Buddy Punch than what we covered in this article. If you’d like to explore what Buddy Punch can do for you and your business, you can start a free trial, watch a recorded demo, or request a personalized demo.

2. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a great project management app to help you track your employee’s hours. They offer a whole host of features, such as:

To see a full list of Hubstaff’s features, click here. Hubstaff works on Windows and Mac Desktops, as well as smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android).

Hubstaff has a total of 1480 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars.

3. Connecteam

Connecteam is another solid project management tool to use as an employee hours tracker, thanks to features including:

Its free plan even works for small business owners with up to 10 users, while the pro plans come with even stronger options. To see a full list of Connecteam’s features, go here.

Connecteam has 329 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars.

4. Paymo

Paymo is another great option to track employee time. They offer a whole range of features, such as:

Paymo’s pricing depends on the number of users you have. To see a full list of Paymo’s features, click here.

Paymo has a total of 687 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

5. Insightful

Many employers use time clock apps like Insightful to monitor mobile time and bill clients, thanks to features such as:

To see a full list of Workpuls features, click here.

Insightful has 96 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

6. DeskTime

A great choice to track your employees’ billable hours is DeskTime, thanks to features such as:

It’s a great app for both teams and freelancers. To see a full list of DeskTime’s features, go here.

Desktime has a total of 525 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars.

7. Homebase

Homebase is another tool regarded by some as the best employee time-tracking software. Their features include, but are not limited to:

To see a full list of Homebase’s features, click here.

Homebase has 1,022 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.6 out of 5 stars.

8. When I Work

When I Work is another great employee time-tracking app. Some of its key features include:

To see a full list of When I Work features, click here.

When I Work has a total of 1,089 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

9. TimeCamp

Last but not least in our list of the best time-tracking solutions is TimeCamp. They offer a whole range of features, such as:

To see a full list of TimeCamp’s features, click here.

TimeCamp has a total of 597 reviews on Capterra at the time of writing, with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Note: Runner-up apps include Clockify, Quickbooks Time, and Toggl Track.

Why tracking employee hours accurately is important

Ensuring employees are paid correctly for the time they work is crucial for morale and retention. Additionally, it leads to smoother payroll processes, less rework, and better compliance.

Accurate time tracking provides an audit trail that can protect the company in case of disputes or audits, which can help you avoid legal issues and fines.

Finally, proper time tracking helps improve your business’s profitability. If you make money invoicing customers for the time you spend on their jobs, knowing exactly how much time employees worked on those projects is crucial.

Each method of tracking time has its own pros and cons: some are more error-prone, some are more time-consuming, and some are more expensive. The way to choose the right method for you is to weigh the risks against the benefits of each method given your business’s unique needs.

By choosing the right tool for your specific needs, you can ensure that your business operates smoothly and your employees are paid fairly for their work.

Time Tracking

Employee Scheduling

Payroll