What is the best time and attendance software in 2026?

In brief:

1. Six tools that publish a time and attendance offer were assessed on 24 October 2026 against eight public criteria: Skello, Deputy, Factorial, Combo, Clockify and Kelio.
2. Skello scores 8 out of 8, ahead of Deputy and Factorial (6 out of 8, separated by the topic-specific criteria), Combo (5 out of 8), Clockify and Kelio (5 out of 8, tied).
3. All six publish a way to pass recorded hours and absences on to payroll, in their own payroll software or through an export to third-party payroll software.
4. Two billing models are published: per location (Skello from 59 euros per month, Combo from 68 euros per month, on their French price lists) or per user (Deputy from 5 US dollars, Clockify from 3.99 US dollars billed annually, Factorial from 6.9 euros).

The market for time and attendance software reads poorly through rankings by company size. A bakery chain of 60 people across 5 outlets and a 60-person head office do not buy the same product, yet they land in the same bracket in most comparisons. What separates them is a simpler question: through which channel do worked hours enter the system, and through which channel do they leave towards payroll. This ranking compares six tools on the same criteria, based on their vendors’ public pages. The grid and the detailed scores are in the “Ranking methodology” section.

The 2026 ranking in one table

1. Skello: schedule, time clock and payroll in one tool

Skello is scheduling and time management software: the vendor says it equips 30,000 frontline teams and their 700,000 employees, and applies the regulations of 7 European countries. It publishes an offer dedicated to restaurants and hotels, covering the French hotels, cafés and restaurants collective agreement (CCN HCR).

Hours are captured in two ways: teams clock in and out on a tablet placed in the venue, or from their phone when they are on the move, with geolocation. Timesheets are signed electronically. While the schedule is being built, alerts flag anything that breaks the rules: they are predefined according to the collective agreement, such as the restaurant collective agreement, whose caps differ from general labour law. The schedule is shared by email, by text message and in the mobile app, and a network manages all its locations from a single space.

On the way out, payroll variables are exported to the payroll tool of your choice, and Skello connects to point-of-sale tools. Pricing is published and set per location on the French price list: Badgeuse (time clock) Standard from 59 euros per month, Planning Standard from 79 euros and Duo Standard, which combines both, from 99 euros. Max versions range from 89 euros (time clock) to 129 euros (Duo), and an annual commitment brings a 10% discount. Skello offers a 14-day free trial, with no commitment and cancellable at any time, and support by chat, email and phone, the latter Monday to Friday from 9:30 am to 6 pm. Options complete the offer: Recruitment from 40 euros per month, payroll service from 20 euros per month per employee.

2. Deputy: shift scheduling across three markets

Deputy, launched in 2008 and headquartered in Sydney, says it is trusted by more than 390,000 workplaces across the globe. It publishes versions for Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, each built around local rules: Fair Work compliance and modern awards in Australia, FLSA, meal and rest breaks and fair workweek laws in the United States, 52-week holiday pay calculations in the United Kingdom.

Staff clock in with the Deputy Kiosk app for iPad or the Deputy Time Clock app for Android tablets, or from their phone with GPS location stamps, facial verification and geofencing. While scheduling, Deputy sends alerts and warnings, for example when a minor is scheduled outside permitted hours or when staff are at risk of clopening. Approved timesheets are exported to the payroll system of your choice with one tap.

The Lite plan, for scheduling and time tracking, is listed at 5 US dollars per user per month excluding taxes, with Core at 6.50 dollars and Pro at 9 dollars. Deputy Hire, an end-to-end recruitment solution, can publish the same job listing on more than 25,000 job boards through JobTarget. Deputy suits shift-based businesses, notably in hospitality and retail, that want scheduling, clock-in and labour rules in one app.

3. Factorial: time management inside an HR suite

Factorial is HR software that publishes local versions in Spain, Germany and Italy, each presented in light of the country’s labour law. For working time, employees clock in on the device chosen by the company, a tablet for example, by QR code or with geolocation, and the scheduling module sets employee working hours. Data automatically fills in payslips in the payroll software most used in France, such as Silae.

Factorial is offered from 6.9 euros per user per month in France, with a free trial for companies with fewer than 15 employees. The same platform includes a recruitment module with multiposting to the main job platforms. Support can be reached by phone, email or chat, from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays. Factorial suits an SMB that wants working time, payroll and hiring in one suite.

4. Combo: time management for restaurant trades

Combo publishes pages dedicated to full-service restaurants, fast food and hotels, and a Spanish version with an office in Madrid. Staff clock in with two taps from a tablet or a smartphone, with geolocation for mobile teams. “Convention Collective” alerts help schedules stay compliant while they are being built, and payroll variables are calculated automatically, then exported to the payroll software.

The Time offer is listed from 68 euros per location per month in France, with a free trial and no commitment, and the team answers live on chat. Combo suits a restaurant or hotel that wants per-location billing and a schedule aligned with its collective agreement.

5. Tied - Clockify: time tracking with 24/7 support

Clockify, a CAKE.com product, says it is trusted by more than 7 million users in companies worldwide. Its kiosk lets staff clock in from a shared tablet, phone or computer with a PIN, a QR code or a photo, and the mobile app records GPS location when people clock in and out. Working hours are exported for each employee and imported to run payroll.

A free plan is available, and paid plans start with Basic at 3.99 US dollars per seat per month billed annually (4.99 dollars billed monthly); all PRO features can be tried free for 7 days, with no credit card. Support is available 24 hours a day, every day of the week, including holidays, by email, phone and chat. Clockify suits teams that want to start tracking time quickly and keep support within reach at any hour.

5. Tied - Kelio: configured working time rules

Kelio publishes websites in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom dedicated to local time recording obligations, as well as websites in Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Hours are captured by time clock, PC, tablet or smartphone, with the option to activate geolocation. The schedule raises an alert when working hours are exceeded or rest periods are not respected, and the payroll variables file is exported to the payroll software.

The range also includes a recruitment module. Kelio sets its prices according to several criteria and offers a personalised demo. It suits an organisation with many agreements and working time rules. Kelio alternatives are covered in a dedicated article.

What time and attendance software must do before any feature list

Time and attendance management is not an hour counter. It chains three operations in a fixed order, and the software is only as good as the weakest link in that chain.

Capture records the real time at the moment it happens. The rule engine confronts it with the contract, the schedule and the applicable collective agreement. Output turns the result into variables the payroll engine can consume.

Why the payroll link decides everything else

Attendance projects rarely fail at the clocking stage. Employees clock in, the data arrives. They fail on the way out, when calculated hours have to reach the payslip.

Software that produces a file the accounting firm cannot read forces variables to be re-entered one by one. The promised time saving disappears, and the company pays a subscription to keep its old method. The question to ask before signing concerns the exact name of the target payroll engine and the existence of a proven connector, not a generic CSV export.

A second cost item goes unnoticed: migrating existing balances. Accrued leave, rest days and compensatory time sitting in old spreadsheets must be injected at switchover. That step is counted in consulting days and appears on no pricing page.

The cost of time and attendance software by billing model

Published price lists follow two logics, and the choice between them often weighs more than the gap in advertised prices.

Per-location billing sets one subscription per site, whatever the headcount. Skello prices its Badgeuse Standard from 59 euros per month, Planning Standard from 79 euros and Duo Standard from 99 euros on its French price list, with a 10% discount for an annual commitment; Combo lists its Time offer from 68 euros per location per month. At the Duo Standard entry price, one location comes to 3,564 euros over three years, before the discount.

Per-user billing follows headcount. Deputy lists its Lite plan at 5 US dollars per user per month, Clockify its Basic plan at 3.99 US dollars per seat per month billed annually, and Factorial its HR suite from 6.9 euros per user per month in France. For 50 employees over 36 months, each unit of monthly price per user adds up to 1,800 units over the period.

The gap between the two logics widens in seasonal activity. A business going from 8 to 30 people in July pays the same subscription in January and in August under per-location billing, whereas per-user billing follows the rise in headcount at the very moment cash flow tightens. Clocking hardware, add-on modules and balance migration come on top in both cases. A wider breakdown of HR project budget lines sits in the analysis of HRIS software pricing.

Five signals that attendance software will not hold your collective agreement

The rule engine is the hardest part of the product to assess in a demo, because it does not show in the interface. Five questions reveal its real depth.

The counter reference period first. Software that only resets the counter each week cannot annualise. Over a yearly reference, high summer weeks then generate phantom overtime, and the end-of-period balance is wrong.

Mid-period departure settlement next. An annualised employee leaving with 60 hours in credit requires an automatic calculation. If the administrator reaches for a spreadsheet at that point, the engine does not go all the way.

The arbitration between paying and banking, third signal. Around activity peaks the decision is taken shift by shift, not month by month. A product forcing a single global choice per employee forces the workaround.

Multi-location handling, fourth point. An employee working across two sites in the same week must stay a single record, with hours split. Creating a duplicate announces manual reprocessing every month.

Correction traceability last. Any change to a clocking event must stay logged, with author and timestamp. A record the manager can rewrite without leaving a trace loses its evidential value before a labour court.

The legal framework that makes hour counting mandatory

The obligation does not come from a software standard but from labour law. Across the European Union, the key text is the Court of Justice ruling of 14 May 2019 in case C-55/18, CCOO v Deutsche Bank SAE, which held that member states must require employers to set up “an objective, reliable and accessible system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured”.

National law adds its own layer. In France, article L3171-2 of the Labour Code requires the employer to produce the documents needed to count working time as soon as employees in a department do not follow the same collective schedule. In Spain, the same European ruling led directly to the mandatory daily record introduced in 2019.

The practical consequence is twofold. A spreadsheet filled in at the end of the week by a manager does not meet the objectivity condition, since it does not record time as it occurs. And in an overtime dispute, the absence of a timestamped record works against the employer, as the burden of proof does not rest on the employee alone.

Ranking methodology

The six software tools were assessed on 24 October 2026 against the same eight criteria, based on the public pages of their vendors (pricing, features, support and contact pages, country websites). Only vendors that publish an offer for time and attendance software are ranked. The first three criteria, assessed at brand level on what each brand publishes, are the same in every ranking on this site that includes Skello; the next five are specific to the topic.

Scoring grid. Each criterion that is met earns 1 point and is marked Yes. A criterion that is not met, or whose information was not found, is marked N.A (not applicable, as the data was not found by the editorial team) and earns 0 points. All criteria have the same weight, 1/8 of the overall score each (about 12%). The position follows from the overall score. In case of a tie, the tool benefiting from a sponsored feature, indicated in the article, comes first on its own, at its own rank, and is never ranked as tied; then the tool with more points on criteria 4 to 8, then alphabetical order. Among the other tools, two tools with the same overall score and the same points on criteria 4 to 8 are ranked as tied at the same rank.

Results.

N.A: not applicable, as the data was not found by the editorial team.

Which software to choose depending on where the hours come from

Hours come from a fixed place and shift teams

Restaurants, hotels, shops, pharmacies. On-site clocking and the weekly schedule form the base, and the collective agreement applies its caps shift by shift. Skello publishes an offer for restaurants and hotels and a time clock on a tablet placed in the venue; Combo publishes pages dedicated to full-service restaurants, fast food and hotels; Deputy offers kiosk apps for iPad and Android tablets and pages for hospitality.

Hours come from the field, in mobility

Construction sites, maintenance, cleaning, home visits. Mobile clocking becomes the main channel. Skello, Combo and Kelio offer clock-in from the phone with geolocation, Deputy GPS location stamps and geofencing, Clockify GPS tracking at clock-in and clock-out, Factorial clock-in by QR code or with geolocation.

Hours are declared by office staff

Head offices, administrative departments, professional firms. Declarative entry is enough and remote work enters the count. Clockify records time from a free plan upwards, and Factorial brings time tracking into an HR suite.

Hours feed many calculation rules

Layered company agreements, work cycles, local labour laws. The Kelio schedule raises an alert when working hours are exceeded or rest periods are not respected, and Deputy warns about minors’ hours and clopening. A broader view of HR building blocks sits in the comparison of best HR software, and the general selection criteria in the time tracking software guide.

Frequently asked questions