5 clock-in/clock-out apps for small business, and what the rest of the platform actually costs

Wrkbase's attendance module is included on every plan, including the free tier for teams up to 5. Sign-in, breaks, and sign-off are checked against your organization's own configured office hours, with late and early-leave flagged automatically, and every status change posts live to a shared Activity feed instead of sitting in a report nobody opens.

The reason to look at Wrkbase specifically for this: attendance data isn't a dead end here. It feeds directly into payroll, a pay run reads the same hours the attendance clock recorded, no export-and-reconcile step, and into the task board's own automatic time tracking, a separate clock from attendance by design. Team, at $8 per member per month, includes payroll and the AI agent on top of attendance, no per-module add-on pricing to track.

What it doesn't have: GPS location tracking or geofencing. If your team clocks in from a job site or delivery route and specifically needs that, Buddy Punch or Connecteam below are the better fit.

Homebase is built for shift-based retail and hospitality teams, with a point-of-sale integration for clocking in at the register that Wrkbase doesn't offer. Its free Basic tier covers basic scheduling and time tracking. Task management is a $13/month per-location add-on, team chat starts at Essentials ($30/month per location), and payroll is a separate line item entirely: a $39/month base fee plus $6/month per employee paid.

If you run a single retail floor and need the POS integration, that strength is real. If you want attendance, tasks, chat, and payroll under one price instead of several stacked add-ons, that's the specific gap Wrkbase closes.

Buddy Punch is built around the punch clock itself, with GPS, geofencing, and kiosk-mode punching as its core strengths starting at Starter ($4.99/user/month plus a $19 base fee); GPS and geofencing specifically are gated behind Pro ($6.99/user/month) or a $2/user/month add-on. Task management only comes bundled by default on its top Advanced tier ($12.99/user/month plus the base fee), on lower tiers it's a separate $4/user/month add-on. Team chat isn't offered at any tier, and payroll is either a third-party integration or Buddy Punch's own add-on at $8/user/month plus a $49 base fee.

Where it genuinely wins: GPS and geofencing for field or delivery teams. Where the add-on math adds up fast: tasks, payroll, and chat are three separate line items stacked on top of the base per-user price.

QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is a time-tracking-first product, not a task board or attendance system with tasks bolted on. Premium runs $20/month base plus $10/user/month; Elite runs $40/month base plus $12/user/month, both prices rose in July 2026. Both tiers require an active QuickBooks Online subscription to use at all.

There's no built-in task board here, and payroll runs through QuickBooks Payroll, a separate product and a separate subscription. If your accounting already runs on QuickBooks, the integration is genuinely convenient. If it doesn't, you're paying for a QBO seat you don't otherwise need just to unlock time tracking.

Connecteam splits into three separately priced "hubs," Operations (time clock, scheduling, tasks, forms), Communications (chat, updates, directory), and HR & Skills (time off, training, documents), and you mix tiers across them independently. A free Small Business plan covers up to 10 users with a basic time clock, geofencing and kiosk mode included even on free; paid tiers run $29, $49, or $99 per month for up to 30 users, per hub.

It has no native payroll processing, it integrates with QuickBooks, Gusto, and ADP instead of running payroll itself. For a team that wants scheduling, a time clock, and basic tasks in one place and is fine handling payroll separately, that's a reasonable fit. For one connected system that includes payroll, it isn't.

Every product here can clock someone in and out reliably, that part is solved. The real decision is what you want connected to that punch: nothing extra (fine, if payroll and tasks already live elsewhere), GPS and geofencing for field teams (Buddy Punch, Connecteam), a QuickBooks-native workflow (QuickBooks Time), or one system where attendance, tasks, and payroll already agree with each other with no export step (Wrkbase). Pricing and features above are as publicly listed in August 2026 for each vendor, confirm current numbers on their own pricing pages before deciding.