Honest Review:

Clockify

• Rich free version
• Easy-to-use interface
• 80+ integrations

Find more on what users love about Clockify.

Clockify has five pricing tiers: the Free plan and four paid plans, namely the Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. An additional Cake.com bundle plan is also available for users requiring management features beyond time tracking. Paid plans begin at US$3.99/mo/user (annually), and features vary depending on your level of need, scaling up in quantity and quality with each tier

Clockify Free

Clockify Free is the software’s offer for users who don’t want to shell out for their services or are exploring its features before committing to a paid option. Its time tracking features include unlimited tracking for unlimited users with the Clockify time tracker on the desktop and mobile apps or Kiosk, timesheets, auto tracker, calendar, Pomodoro timer, idle detection and reminders, and tracking integrations.

It allows users to generate reports of team activity, billable rates, and project statuses, these reports can be exported and shared with others in CSV, PDF, and Excel formats via live links. It also allows project data exports in CSV and Excel formats and enables the pushing and pulling of data to and from Clockify with API and Webhooks.

Clockify Free also has solid management features for unlimited users and projects that allow admins to control project access, communicate with team chats, and use the software in seven languages, all for the sweet price of $0.00, forever.

Clockify Basic

At $3.99/mo/user annually or $4.99/mo/user monthly, Clockify Basic is tailored for administration and has all of the features of Clockify Free, plus more advanced time tracking features such as break tracking, required fields, and the ability to add time for others and import time from files.

Clockify Basic also allows users to enter time in a decimal format, time audits, you are able to split time, favorite entries, customize exports and use historical rates to apply new hourly rates to past time entries.

Management-wise, Clockify Basic allows admins to hide time and pages, bulk edit time entries, projects,  users, as well as edit profiles, use project templates and add a layer of security to Kiosk with a PIN.

Clockify Standard

Clockify Standard Plan builds on Clockify Basic, adding more features focused on streamlining timesheeting and billing. 

At $5.49/mo/user on the annual plan or $6.99/mo/user with a monthly plan, this tier improves time tracking with time off tracking, targets and reminders that automatically notify users via email when they forget to track time or track too much, and the ability to lock timesheets so they can’t be edited by anyone other than admins.

With Clockify Standard, insights are amplified by reports that show attendance and overtime. The ability to round time entries becomes available at this tier as well as entering specific hourly task rates and integrating with Quickbooks.

On the management end, security is enhanced with forced 2FA, an added layer of customization is provided with the ability to add a company logo to the kiosk and you are also able to determine how long the Kiosk is active from the time of launching. Invoicing, timesheet approval, and the ability to define manager roles also become available at this tier.

Clockify Pro

Clockify Pro is the most popular plan among the options. For $7.99/mo/user on the annual plan or $9.99/mo/user with a monthly plan, users get to enjoy all the features of the previous tiers, plus better time tracking with custom fields, GPS tracking, screenshots, and the ability to prevent manual time addition or editing of start and end times with the force timer.

Greater visibility into the health of operations is achieved with reports that tackle labor cost and profit, budget & estimates, expenses, assignments, and progress forecasting. 

Managers will also be notified with alerts once projects reach allocated budget limits or estimates and receive weekly custom reports on important details via email. They can also add user fields to improve analysis.

Management is also improved with a scheduling feature that allows admins to plan projects, manage resources, and give assignments to individual employees. The expenses feature also allows the recording of fixed fees on projects and enables users to attach receipts. Plus, at this tier, account holders can choose which country they wish to hold their data in.

Clockify Enterprise

Clockify Enterprise is the highest tier and is designed for optimal security and full control of enterprise-level operations.

At $11.99/mo/user on an annual plan or $14.99/mo/user on a monthly plan, clients get all the previous tiers’ features, plus improved security with Single Sign-on (SSO), the ability to streamline workspaces with a custom subdomain, manage and edit user accounts with control accounts, and improve accountability with an audit log.

cake.com Bundle

The Cake Bundle pricing plan of Clockify offers a comprehensive productivity suite for $12.99/mo/seat when billed annually, or $15.99/mo/seat if billed monthly. This plan includes all the features of the Enterprise tier and integrates three powerful tools: Clockify for time tracking, Pumble for team communication, and Plaky for project management.

Read 5 things you MUST know about Clockify’s pricing.

1. Time Tracking

For more intuitive time tracking that allows users to see exactly how their time is spent across the day, the Clockify desktop app’s auto tracker offers a solution that unobtrusively records programs and websites used throughout your active period. By clicking the A icon at the top of the interface and toggling the subsequent start recording button, the software will begin to record all apps and URLs visited for more than 10 seconds or according to a period defined by administrators. 

These records are visible only to the individual user and are stored in the user’s computer. Nothing is sent online and their personal computer usage and browsing habits are kept private. This information is stored for up to 45 days and past data viewing goes back up to a week.

The recorded activities can be used to create time entries by simply clicking the list icon to the right. Users can also select multiple activities for bulk adding, bulk merging into a single entry, or permanent deletion from the Clockify system.

To enforce accountability and ensure that employers are only paying for actual worked hours, Clockify has several guardrails in place. The idle detector detects when there is no mouse or keyboard activity after a period defined by the administrator, and marks the elapsed period as idle which can then be removed from the timesheets. 

The targets and reminders feature automatically sends emails to employees and their managers when they fail to fulfill their quota of hours or track more time than needed. Timesheet locking prevents users from editing their previous time entries or adding new time entries to past days. The force timer disables manual time entries for more transparent time tracking. 

Additionally, screenshots allow managers to monitor the work being done by employees by taking images of the user’s screen at random intervals while the timer is running. Last but not least, GPS tracking allows admins to monitor the movement of on-site workers and their location history throughout the day while they are logged in on the Clockify app.

2. Break Tracking

In addition to tracking time spent on work, Clockify also allows users to track their breaks to help ensure that businesses stay compliant with state and federal laws that safeguard employees’ rights to meal and rest periods during workdays. 

The break tracking feature is available on Kiosks for users of the Clockify Basic tier and above, it can be enabled by administrators via the Workspace settings.

The time tracked for the break period will appear in the Clockify time tracker, detailed report, and approval as an entry with a gray break tag, visually differentiating it from other entries.

3. Time Off Management 

On the other hand, the time off tracking feature allows businesses to set up and manage different kinds of leaves and holidays that employees can request. That’s just a nutshell description, time off gets quite detailed when we take a closer look at how it is planned, requested, approved, and tracked. 

This feature is available on the Clockify Standard tier and above. Before anyone can request any time off, admins must first enable time off in the Workspace settings and define time off policies and accrued time off balances for specific months or the entire year. 

Think of time off policies as sets of information and instructions that define the nature, usage, period and duration of leaves. 

There are several fields that administrators must fill in with the required information so Clockify can implement it, namely the title of the policy (such as vacation, maternity, and sick leaves), assignees or the people who can request the leave, and the time unit by which the policy is to be tracked — days for leaves like vacation, or hours for shorter periods such as time off in lieu. 

Administrators can also define if policies require approval and from whom, if negative balance is allowed, if half-day leaves are possible,  if it can be done across multiple days, if hourly time off is allowed and if it can be done across multiple days as well. 

Holidays can be created, managed, and edited in the same way as time off, with the addition of the option to define it as recurring, and the ability to assign a specific color to it.

Requested leave periods that cover weekends and holidays will only use up the balance for working days. Policies that don’t allow for negative balances cannot be selected by persons who don’t have enough days or hours in their accrued time off. If a person with insufficient days requests for time off exceeding their limit on a policy that doesn’t allow negative balances, the request will display a red total and can’t be approved.

These nitty-gritty details may seem daunting at first, but they are essential to keeping organized policies and ensuring that even with employees on leave, businesses can operate with an adequate amount of workers at all times. 

I love the amount of thought that Clockify developers poured out on this feature, as the policy input fields cover all bases and leave no consideration hanging. The fact that they can be easily edited, archived, or deleted earns them extra points in my book as well.

4. Insightful Reporting

Clockify generates a variety of reports that give insight into how time and resources are utilized by businesses, helping in positively influencing future decisions with data-backed courses of action.

The summary report groups time entries by factors such as project, date, client, user, group, and tags so data can be presented exactly according to analysis needs. The weekly report displays some more detail by limiting date ranges to seven days, and is useful for verifying productivity levels on a weekly basis. 

The detailed report provides more granularity by showing the details of time entries one by one and not in groups and also allows for admins to edit time entries with this report.  

If the Clockify report templates don’t quite give the structure required by certain analysis needs, admins can customize reports by exporting it to CSV and creating the required presentation using pivot tables in Excel or Google Sheets.

 Reports can be generated for individual employees so admins can drill down on their numbers and identify areas where they excel and areas where they might need some help. For accounts on Clockify Basic and above, managers can view and edit employees’ hours directly on their time sheets. These can even be saved as PDFs and printed if needed. 

Another important tool for insight gathering is the team dashboard. It displays key information about employees and projects at a glance, including the previously-discussed logged-in and on-break employee statuses, what they’re currently working on, what their last activity was, and time elapsed on ongoing tasks and latest activities. 

It also shows each employee’s total tracked time for a date range, which is helpful in quickly determining who didn’t track time or who didn’t reach the quota for the selected period.

As of September 2024

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The flexibility built into Clockify’s time tracking feature is commendable and their concern for employee privacy is worth noting as well. Its time off management features can be daunting to navigate at first, but it does cover a whole lot of ground and ensures that all factors are accounted for and businesses are never lacking in operations, even when some employees are on leave. 

The break tracking feature is quite useful for ensuring that employees take meal breaks and rest periods during workdays, but it could be made even better by making breaks mandatory, and providing proof for both employer and employee that breaks were indeed complied with. 

The reporting options are great and I love that there are so many options to present data with filters and there’s even an option to create custom reports. 

However, Clockify has very serious issues with its clunky Android app and is plagued by frequent bugs. The software’s offline versions on both web and mobile also have some undesirable inconveniences, such as very limited functionality and the risk of losing data, which make it less than ideal for teams on the go. 

The lack of biometrics such as facial recognition is also a miss for Clockify Kiosk. It could have really enhanced security and prevented time theft for businesses.

But listen, given Clockify’s affordable pricing and wide variety of features, the software is a very viable time tracking solution for most businesses. 

If users can overlook the issues in its Android app and the other deficiencies I’ve discussed, I’d recommend that they give it a whirl and perhaps try the free plan to see if it would fit their workflows.