Employee time tracking software: how to choose the right one
Anyone looking for employee time tracking software usually wants to answer one of two questions: how many hours each person has worked or what they have worked on. They sound like the same question, but they lead to different tools. Starting here helps you choose between a clock-in system and a timesheet, and keeps you from buying the wrong product.
Two questions, two types of software
The first question is about attendance: what time people start, what time they finish, how many hours end up on the payslip. The second is about the work itself: how much time went into a client, a project, a job order, and whether that work paid off.
A workshop with fixed shifts mostly needs the first answer. A professional firm or a software house needs the second. Many small and mid-sized businesses need both, but almost always one weighs more than the other.
The four possible routes
The Excel spreadsheet
It is where almost everyone starts: it costs nothing and everyone knows how to use it. It holds up as long as the team is small. Then come files in different versions, broken formulas, hours filled in from memory at the end of the month, and someone having to retype everything by hand for the payroll consultant.
To get started, you can download the free attendance sheet template or timesheet template in Excel.
Clock-in
Terminals, badges or apps used to record arrival and departure. It is the right choice if you need to control working hours and shifts, for example in production, retail or logistics. It tells you when a person was there, not what they worked on.
The timesheet
Each person records their time against the work they did, using a timer or by filling in a weekly table. It is the right choice if you bill by the hour, work on job orders or want to know what a project really costs. It tells you where the time went, and it is not designed to replace a clock-in system.
The HR suite
It brings together attendance, holidays, shifts, documents and often payroll. It makes sense if you want a single system for all of your people management. The downside is that it costs more and demands a heavier adoption effort, especially if you end up using only part of its features.
Six questions to ask before choosing
- What do I need to measure? Attendance hours, time spent on jobs, or both.
- Who actually uses the data? Whoever runs payroll wants a monthly summary; whoever leads projects wants to see hours and margins per job.
- How do people work? Those in the office can keep a timer running; those at a client’s site often prefer to fill in at the end of the day or the end of the week.
- Do I need a check before the hours count? If hours end up on an invoice or a payslip, an approval step avoids corrections after the fact.
- How does the data come out? Check that it can be exported to CSV, Excel or PDF, and in what form it reaches whoever receives it.
- Where is the data stored and who can see it? People’s hours are personal data: look at where they are hosted, who can see them and what the privacy notice says.
Where Klokka fits
Klokka is Kamzan’s software for tracking the hours of employees and projects: it belongs to the timesheet family. Every hour is assigned to a client, project, sub-project and activity, and is recorded with the timer or in the weekly timesheet. For whoever runs payroll there is the monthly attendance sheet, exportable to CSV, Excel and PDF; for whoever leads projects there are hours per job and margin reports.
Klokka is not a clock-in system with badges or terminals: if your main need is to control arrivals and departures, you are better off with a dedicated attendance recorder. If instead you want to know where your company’s time goes and what it earns, it is the tool it was designed to be.
In short
If you need to control working hours, start from clock-in. If you need to understand what time is spent on, start from the timesheet. If you want to manage all your staff in one place, consider an HR suite. Excel is fine as long as the team is small and nobody has to trust the numbers too much.
Alex