10 Reasons Why Buddy Punch is the Ideal Time Tracking Tool for Small Businesses

A work check-in app can help your business:

Increase employee accountability. For example, with Buddy Punch (our work check-in app), you can use automation to limit employee punches to a certain location or device. Tools like Facial Recognition take this a step further. How it works is by giving employers the ability to require employees to take a photo each time they punch in and out. The app then compares these new photos with the ones on file (which are usually protected as sensitive information) to ensure the correct employee punched in at the correct location.

Increase payroll efficiency. For example, our work check-in app automatically calculates regular hours, time off, overtime, and more – which is great for business owners and human resource departments looking to save time. It also integrates with popular payroll providers such as QuickBooks, Paychex, SurePayroll, and others. In addition, we offer a plethora of time off tracking features, ranging from in-app time off requests, to paid and unpaid time off balance reports.

To help you in your search for the best work check-in app, this article will first discuss our product, Buddy Punch. Then, we’ll list several other work check-in apps that may suit your needs.

Best Work Check-In Apps

Brief Overview: How Our Work Check-In App Works

In this section, we’ll provide a quick, high-level overview of how our work check-in app works. (Following that, we’ll discuss Buddy Punch’s accountability and payroll features at length.)

Like most smaller businesses, we first used manual methods of timekeeping to manage our employees, but after attending a webinar and opening a dialog with our team members during performance reviews, we realized that paper spreadsheets and templates were inconvenient for all involved and hurting our profitability. So we decided to take the next steps and look into a time tracking tool that could help us monitor our team members, keep them off social media, and encourage their productivity. Ideally, all while being easy for anyone of any demographic to use.

But we didn’t find anything that fit our managerial style, and didn’t want to pay a subscription for a subpar tool. That’s when we decided to build our own, and Buddy Punch went into development.

Fast forward to now, with business owners using Buddy Punch to enjoy benefits such as:

1. Employees having multiple options to punch in and out. They can do so from an app that’s available for mobile (e.g., Apple iPhone and Android), tablet (e.g., iPad), or computer.

2. Our work check-in app automatically calculating regular hours, time off, overtime, and more. (Meaning no more time-consuming and tedious manual calculations.)

Per the below screenshot, you can download this information via Excel or PDF.

Increase Employee Accountability via Geofencing, IP Address Locking, Photos on Punch, and More

Disclaimer: the federal gov dictates that all business owners – from retail businesses to medical professionals – are responsible for paying their employees for hours worked. That means that checking your team members for their eligibility to be paid for the hours they claim to have worked falls on you.

Luckily, Buddy Punch offers a plethora of accountability-related features to make sure time worked is accurate and legitimate. They’re turned off by default, and you can either activate one or several of the below features, depending on the specific needs of your business.

If you’d like to restrict employee check-ins to a specific location for performance management, then simply activate our Geofencing feature, enter the relevant address (e.g., 123 Park Avenue), and specify a radius around that location (e.g., 500 feet).

This will restrict employee punches to within 500 feet of 123 Park Avenue. If someone attempts to submit a punch outside of your designated Geofence location, then an error message will be displayed:

Depending on the needs of your business (e.g., multiple worksites), you can set up multiple Geofences, rather than just one.

IP Address Locking is most commonly used by in-office businesses who want to limit punches to a central Wi-Fi network or a specific device (such as a tablet or desktop computer).

With Photos on Punch, employees are required to take a photo each time they punch in and out.

The photo should include a clear image of their face and surrounding background. That way, you can ensure that the correct employee punched in at the correct location.

As pictured below, you can quickly review all the photos at once via a central dashboard. This allows you to check who’s clocking in without being face-to-face.

Other Features to Increase Employee Accountability

Interested in exploring additional features to increase employee accountability? We offer GPS Tracking, Facial Recognition Punching, PIN Punching, Punch Limiting Rules, and more.

Note: Sign up here to try Buddy Punch for free and/or request a personalized one-on-one demo call.

Increase Payroll Efficiency via On-Demand Payroll Reports, Payroll Provider Integrations, Time Off Tracking, and More

Buddy Punch offers a plethora of features to increase payroll efficiency. We’ll explore just a few of them below.

As we’ve written, our work check-in app automatically calculates regular hours, time off, overtime, and more. (Meaning no more time-consuming and tedious manual calculations.)

Per the above screenshot, you can download this information via Excel or PDF.

Instead of transferring employee hours to your payroll provider manually (which is not only time-consuming, but error-prone), set up an integration that does the work for you faster and more accurately.

We integrate with:

Buddy Punch can significantly increase the efficiency of your time off tracking process.

For example, employees can send time off requests via our easy-to-use app. They can also view paid and unpaid time off balance reports, and this information is updated in real-time. You can even enable a self-service approach to time off, allowing workers to be automatically approved for their requests.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Click here to explore all our time off tracking features.

If this is pertinent to your business, we cover how to create time off accrual rules in this help doc article.

Note that many other features have an accompanying help doc article that covers the setup process and best practices. We can also help via live chat or a personalized one-on-one demo call.

Explore All of Buddy Punch’s Features

Click here to see a list of all of Buddy Punch’s features, some of which include:

• Time clock with multiple punch options
• PTO tracking
• Overtime calculations
• Payroll integration
• Geofencing
• Facial recognition punching
• GPS tracking
• And more

Online Reviews Highlighting Buddy Punch’s Ease-of-Use and Excellent Customer Service

As of this writing date, Buddy Punch has 810 reviews and 4.8 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

We’ve placed a major emphasis on ensuring Buddy Punch is intuitive and easy to use for both employees and employers (even new employees!). Learn more about this tool through our Knowledge Base, which has many answers to common FAQs. In addition, we pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service. The median first response time via live chat is 54 seconds, and anyone you’ll chat with is well-versed in the software.

Below is a small sampling of reviews that touch on Buddy Punch’s ease of use and customer service. Click here for the full list.

“Minimal training for end-users (employees or managers). The back end (admin) features are just as simple and intuitive. We wanted a product that was simple to use, cost-friendly, and allowed us to customize — all of these areas were met. Very impressed!” Read the full review.

“The area I am most impressed with is with their support — they respond quickly, accurately and offer real solutions.” Read the full review.

“We signed up for the trial period, and our employees were impressed immediately. They were able to start… immediately with zero training or assistance, which was a priority for us. The system is also very easy to use from an administrator end.” Read the full review.

“The chat staff has been super helpful to me every single time I have messaged them. They assisted me to get the software ready for a trial run which was very helpful! Every chat session was emailed to me for future reference.” Read the full review.

“The team is responsive, and eager to assist. Any questions we’ve had, whether using the free trial, or after we signed up as a customer, have been answered quickly”. Read the full review.

Take Buddy Punch for a Spin

Sign up here to try Buddy Punch for free (no credit card required) and/or request a personalized one-on-one demo call.

Connecteam

Connecteam offers an extensive range of features and functionality, some of which include:

• Time tracking
• Employee scheduling
• Task management
• Communication tools
• And more

It’s one of the best work check-in apps. Connecteam is available in the App Store as well as the Google Play store. As of this writing date, Connecteam has 153 reviews and 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

“We have a couple of employees who do not do computer stuff and they are able to view updates and chats on the mobile app. There is so much more to this than first expected and all has been good so far. We are just starting to use the Task Management feature which is going to be a game-changer for us with making communication seamless between our field techs and our in-office sales and retail people.” Click here to read the full review.

Clockify

Clockify offers an extensive range of features and functionality, some of which include:

• Time tracking
• Timesheet management
• Project tracking
• Reporting and analytics
• And more

It’s a great check-in to work app. As of this writing date, Clockify has 4,183 reviews and 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

“We can also create task names and see where we are at in its realization and time we spent on it. It can also be used in groups, as users can be linked in teams. It’s such a powerful tool at the end of the day, as it allows us to see how to be more efficient in terms of time/task.” Click here to read the full review.

OnTheClock

OnTheClock offers an extensive range of features and functionality, some of which include:

• Time tracking
• Employee scheduling
• PTO tracking
• Reporting and analytics
• And more

It’s a great check-in at work app. As of this writing date, OnTheClock has 514 reviews and 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

“I love the ease of clocking in using my mobile device. As someone who has always had to punch in on a computer, I know firsthand that computers sometimes take their time opening and connecting to the internet for you to do anything. That’s never fun, especially when you need to clock in. This has been a great product to use instead.” Click here to read the full review.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff offers an extensive range of features and functionality, some of which include:

• Time tracking
• GPS tracking
• Employee monitoring
• Reporting and analytics
• And more

It’s a great app to check in and out of work. As of this writing date, Hubstaff has 1,269 reviews and 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

“It allows us to easily calculate the hours worked by our remote team whilst ensuring the team is focused and easily shows us how much is owed at the end of the month. Vital tool for outsourcing.” Click here to read the full review.

Honorary Mention: Axiom Medical’s Checkin2Work App

Axiom Medical’s Checkin2Work app is specifically designed to provide workplace safety for healthcare providers. It’s fantastic in that regard. It’s as if they asked themselves what’s new when it comes to protecting the work environment and made sure to build that into an app. For example, you can send visitors a questionnaire to get additional information about any symptoms they may be experiencing before they come in-person to get COVID-19 testing. In this regard, it preserves public health for workers dealing with the remaining impacts of the pandemic.

Take Buddy Punch for a Spin

Sign up here to try Buddy Punch for free and/or request a personalized one-on-one demo call.