Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Time and attendance systems give you new, better, and easier ways to manage your employees, stay compliant with labor laws, and run payroll. But finding the right option 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 10 best time and attendance systems for small businesses.

Time clock apps built specifically for construction companies go beyond basic time tracking with features that improve oversight and accountability for crews that work in the field. In this post, we’re taking a look at the seven best time card apps for construction companies, highlighting their unique features and comparing their pricing so you can find the right option for your crew.

You have nine employees, three overlapping time-off requests, and 20 shifts needing varying amounts of coverage. Even for the smallest of businesses, employee scheduling can feel like a decidedly less fun game of Tetris. It’s a game you can play with pen and paper — or even a trusty spreadsheet — but the right employee scheduling app can make things a whole lot easier.

Your best engineer books a week off. It turns out two other engineers took the same week off. You didn’t notice the problem until the Friday before, because the spreadsheet didn’t warn you. Spreadsheets weren’t built for PTO tracking. They break under accrual rules and edge cases. They don’t have automatic alerts. PTO tracking software, on the other hand, does the math for you.

There are hundreds of time clock apps on the market, but not every option is right for every team. Some are designed for freelancers or students, and some are built for businesses looking to track their employees’ time. Some cater to different types of work (remote, field services, in-person), and some cater to specific industries (construction, healthcare, legal services, etc.). Given all of the differences, there is no one specific “best” clock in and out app for everyone.

Time tracking software for professional services businesses needs to help you log billable and non-billable hours without micromanaging your team. It also needs to take that data and turn it into information you can use to profitably bid on projects. Unfortunately, too many tools for desk-based teams focus on monitoring rather than insight. Consulting, architectural, and engineering agencies need to know how their staff spent their time.

If your team still relies on handwritten timesheets or a spreadsheet passed around by email, you’re probably losing more time (and money) than you think. Rounding, missed punches, and manual errors can easily add up to hundreds of dollars in payroll mistakes each month. Then, you have to account for all the time it takes to fix them.

Healthcare runs on people, and when staffing falters, patient care suffers. A missed shift, a late punch, or an unplanned absence leaves already overworked teams scrambling, which can compromise the quality of bedside care. Tracking your staff in a care setting is uniquely complex. Nurse managers and administrators have to juggle rotating shifts, credentialing requirements, and strict staffing-to-patient ratios that aren’t flexible when someone calls out.

Every general contractor knows the drill. Guys are running late and ask their buddies to punch in for them so they can make a quick stop at the gas station to fill up and grab a coffee on the way out to the job site. Paper timesheets get lost in the truck. Meanwhile, jobs are running over budget because nobody had a clear record of who was working where. You miss a few hours here, an electrician rounds up a few hours there, and suddenly your labor costs are bleeding you out faster than you can bill.