Are you searching for the best time card app for your business or personal use (for some reason)? Whether you want to upgrade from the punch card system to its better alternative, you are a new business, or you want to switch to a better app for this purpose, you are browsing the right page. In today’s blog post, we have you covered with everything you need to accrue employee hours data.
With the right app for employee time clock, you will get many benefits from accurate time tracking and no time theft, to streamlined employee hours, accurate payroll, and everything that comes in between. However, choosing the right app for this purpose can be overwhelming. Besides, you have so much crucial work to do as well.
So, in today’s blog, we will tell you all about what it is, its features, the steps to choose one, and the top 10 time card apps for businesses and individuals alike. Plus, we will also reveal the app we use to accrue employee hours data. So, read till the end.
An Overview of Time Card Apps in 2025
Employee time card applications, also known as time tracking apps or time clock apps, are software solutions that track employee hours. A good part is that you can flexibly install the apps on smartphones, tablets, and computers for cross-device accessibility. Overall, what the software does is log employee clocking, breaks, and other work-related activities.
Here’s what else you need to know about time card apps.
- The app assists you in tracking employee attendance and efficiently managing payroll.
- Staff can also view their working hours, schedules, and request time off.
- Advanced software solutions in this category also provide you with functionalities, including GPS tracking, task management, and project tracking
Overall, employee time card software solutions assist you in simplifying and streamlining work-hour monitoring, decreasing errors and disputes, and skyrocketing efficiency and productivity. Moreover, here are the key features that make it work.
1. Time Clock
This is a mandatory feature in all time card apps. It’s useful because it lets your employees clock in and out of their shifts without any hassle. This feature also provides you with pinpoint, precise logs of employee hours, breaks, overtime, and so on.
In short, an employee time card system application keeps track of all things employee hours-related.
2. Shift Scheduling
Time card apps also provide you with the feature to schedule, update, and share shifts with a few clicks as possible.
3. Overtime Tracking
Employee time card apps also help you prevent unauthorized overtime by tracking early clock-ins and late clock-outs. A pretty handy feature, which can also be found in clock in and clock out applications.
4. Leave Management
Whether built-in or integrated, time off management is another handy functionality of a time card app. It’s a better alternative to emailing leave requests as it works in real-time, and you can approve or disapprove leaves with a single click.
5. Timesheet Management
Here’s the most useful and often-used feature of apps for employee time clock. Not only can the app generate complex timesheets within minutes, but you can also edit these sheets as per your requirements for added convenience.
6. Geolocation
If you have field and remote employees, then being aware of their locations all the time is important. For the same, a time card app will provide you with a geofence or GPS-based location tracking feature for precision.
7. Analytics & Reporting
Only tracking data is not enough. Plus, manually analysing and reporting employee hours will consume a lot of your valuable time. So, it’s better to use the analytics and reporting feature of an employee time card application that does it automatically and provides you with detailed insights to view however you understand better.
8. Integrations
The integration of your time card app is usually with your payroll application. This makes payroll processing automated and streamlined. Plus, there are barely any chances of errors or inaccuracies.
Read Also: 26 Time Management Techniques that Still Work in 2025
How to Choose the Best Time Card App for Your Business in 2025?
Do you have the time, R&D teams, and resources to research the best employee time card software according to your requirements? If yes, then it will only take 6 expert (we) recommended steps. So, let’s get your teams to work to find the best time card app to implement in your organization:
1. Requirement Analysis
First, you need to identify why you need the employee time card system application. Will you use it to only accurately track employee clocking data, or is the purpose also to simplify scheduling? You also need to identify human resources exempt from time tracking and so on.
2. Feature Evaluation
Based on your requirement checks, you will shortlist the features you require your time card app to have. For instance, if you work with more field service and remote employees, the location tracking feature is a must-have.
3. Budgeting
Remember that your employee time card app will only be an assistant that will help you accrue employee hours tracking and not the entire reason behind it. That’s why you need to ensure that you end up implementing a cost-effective solution.
4. Shortlisting
Based on your above evaluations, analysis, and budget, you will make a shortlist of the best time card apps. So far, if you have done everything right, your list will have 10 applications at max.
5. Testing the Apps
Now, you need to conclude which apps for employee time clock will work and the ones will not work as per your desired outcomes:
- Read genuine reviews
- Get free trials and demos.
- Ask around the ones already using the applications from your list to get more clarity.
6. Finalizing
All you need to do now is cross off all the time card apps that are even marginally different from what you require from your checklist.
Best 10 Time Card Apps for Your Business in 2025
Make your workday more productive
Time tracking and work management can help you reach your goals
faster.
Don’t have the teams, time, and resources to research the best employee time card application as per your requirements? No need to worry, as we did the hard part for you. We have included the key features, overviews, user ratings, the most affordable paid plans, and the best uses with each app to ensure you make a wise choice.
- DeskTrack
- Buddy Punch
- Timely
- Clockify
- Homebase
- DeskTime
- Paymo
- When I Work
- Hubstaff
- Insightful
1. DeskTrack
DeskTrack provides the best time card app for your business. It’s packed with advanced features to accrue employee hours tracking and boost their work-time utilization efficiency, and get their productivity to peak levels. Beyond time tracking, DeskTrack is your complete package for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Windows for employee monitoring and management.
Key Features:
- Real-time time tracking
- Automatically generates editable timesheets
- Real-time attendance tracking and synchronization
- Screenshot monitoring
- Automated blocking of blacklisted URLs
- Call tracking
- Location monitoring
- One-tap employee clocking
- Task management
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Best overall | $5.99/user/month | 5/5 |
2. Buddy Punch
The next employee time card software on our list is Buddy Punch. To begin with, it’s versatile and user-friendly. Overall, it provides you with a multitude of features to track employee hours, run payroll, make schedules, and manage PTO.
Key Features:
- Geofencing
- Payroll integrations
- Employee scheduling
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Payroll tracking | $4.49/user/month + $19/month base fee | 4.8/5 |
3. Timely
Timely is the all-in-one time tracking and time card app for your business. Especially, if you are running an agency or consultancy business, then Timely will be a handy addition to all your resources. Overall, it helps you and your employees improve work-time utilization efficiency by showing every second between clock in and clock out with detailed work insights.
Key Features:
- Automatic time tracking
- Project profitability analysis
- Time planning
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Agencies | $9/user/month | 4.7/5 |
Read Also: Top 10 Best Construction Time Clock Apps for 2025
4. Clockify
Clockify is one of the most flexible employee time card system applications on our list. It provides you with multiple employee clocking options, such as a kiosk, app, and multi-device accessible tools. Plus, it’s simple and easy to use, as all you have to do is start a timer to track every second you work on the task.
Key Features:
- Time tracker
- Reports
- Billable rates
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Personal usage | $5.49/user/month | 4.8/5 |
5. Homebase
Homebase is one of the ace free time card apps for small enterprises. With the app, you can track up to 10 employees for 1 location for free. However, the paid features are costly for even medium-sized organizations.
Key Features:
- POS system integrations
- Location-based pricing
- Team communications
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Small businesses | $24/location/month | 4.6/5 |
6. DeskTime
This employee time card app is specially coded for staff who do all their work on computers. With DeskTime, managing labor costs and time becomes simple and easy. Plus, the app and URL monitoring feature is also useful.
Key Features:
- Automatic time tracking
- App and URL tracking
- Document title tracking
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Automated time tracking | $4.27/user/month | 4.6/5 |
7. Paymo
Want a balance of time tracking and project management into a single interface? Then, Paymo is one of the top picks for you. Features include Gantt charts, Kanban boards, to-do lists, task calendars, and everything else that comes in between.
Key Features:
- Built-in project management
- Collaboration
- Project templates
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Project management | $5.90/user/month | 4.7/5 |
8. When I Work
As the name suggests, this time card app will let you know when your employees worked and when they didn’t. It’s a scheduling-first application built for organizations that pay employees by the hour. All employees have to do is set their availability, which allows you to build the most reliable schedules accordingly, directly from the app.
Key Features:
-
- Team messaging
- Shift availability
- Shift trades
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Employee scheduling | $2.50/user/month | 4.5/5 |
9. Hubstaff
If you have employees working in the field and the office as well, then Hubstaff is one of the best apps for employee time clock for you. It provides you with compatible features, such as location tracking, to hold your on-site employees and teams accountable.
Key Features:
- Geofencing and GPS tracking
- Website and app tracking
- Mouse and keyboard activity monitoring
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| GPS-based location tracking | $4.99/user/month | 4.6/5 |
10. Insightful
Insightful is a time card app that also provides you with a plethora of features to get useful, detailed insights into the productivity of your teams and employees. Plus, a useful feature is focus tracking, which provides you with data regarding the peak focus time of your employees.
Key Features:
- Focus tracking
- Productivity analytics
- Productivity dashboards
| Best For | Most Affordable Paid Plan | User Rating |
| Employee management | $6.40/user/month | 4.7/5 |
Conclusion
Now, we hope that you have wrapped your head around what time card apps are and how they work. As a final word, we can say that manual punch card systems are full of errors, inefficiencies, and inaccuracies. These mistakes can cost you heavily, which we don’t want.
In short, whether you are tracking employee hours or time off, nothing and no data should be off by even a second. That’s the level of precision we need. Simply put, only the best applications for employee time tracking can provide you with this level of accuracy.
To conclude, it’s awesome how these apps are convenient to use across multiple industries. However, what if you also want to monitor your employees’ work from the same interface? A more cost-effective solution than integrations is to use DeskTrack, the complete employee monitoring and management software solution for your in-office, field, hybrid, and remote teams.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. What are Time Card Apps?
Ans. Employee time card applications, also known as time tracking apps or time clock apps, are software solutions that track employee hours. A good part is that you can flexibly install the apps on smartphones, tablets, and computers for cross-device accessibility. Overall, what the software does is log employee clocking, breaks, and other work-related activities.
Q. What Features Do Time Card Apps Offer?
Ans. These key features enable time card applications to function effectively.
- Time clock
- Shift Scheduling
- Overtime Tracking
- Leave Management
- Timesheet Management
- Geolocation
- Analytics & Reporting
- Integrations
Q. How to Choose the Best Time Card App?
Ans. Here are the 6 steps you need.
- Requirement Analysis
- Feature Evaluation
- Budgeting
- Shortlisting
- Testing the Apps
- Finalizing
Q. Which are the Best Time Card Apps for Businesses?
Ans. Here’s a shortlist for you.
- DeskTrack
- Buddy Punch
- Timely
- Clockify
- Homebase
- DeskTime
- Paymo
- When I Work
- Hubstaff
- Insightful
Q. What are the Benefits of Using Time Card Apps?
Ans. Here are the changes you will experience from using the best time card app.
- Reliable payroll
- Streamlined attendance tracking
- Reduced Expenses
- Saved Hours
- No errors
