Employee Time Tracking Software Cost in 2026: QuickBooks Time, Deputy, or Build Your Own

Employee time tracking software costs $2 to $12 per user per month off the shelf in 2026 (QuickBooks Time, Deputy, When I Work, Homebase), or $15,000 to $120,000 or more to build a custom system, depending on how much of the labor operation it has to run besides the clock.

Most small businesses don't need to build one. This guide covers what the major off-the-shelf tools actually cost once you add up the base fee and the per-user price, what buddy punching and time rounding cost a business that has neither, and the point where a custom build, tied into payroll and job costing, starts to make more sense than another per-seat subscription.

Employee Time Tracking Software Cost at a Glance

Read these as ranges, not quotes. Per-user vendors scale with headcount; Homebase scales with locations instead. A custom build is a one-time cost with no per-seat line at all, which is where the math flips once a team gets large enough.

QuickBooks Time Cost

QuickBooks Time (the product formerly called TSheets) is the default choice for businesses already running payroll through QuickBooks, because the time data flows straight into payroll without an export step.

Premium runs about $20 a month base plus $10 per user; Elite adds project costing and GPS tracking for about $40 a month base plus $12 per user. A 10-person crew on Premium lands around $120 a month; the same crew on Elite is closer to $160 a month, or roughly $1,400 to $1,900 a year.

The appeal is the payroll connection. The limits show up once the business needs pay rules QuickBooks Time doesn't model cleanly, like different overtime thresholds by role, or job costing that has to tie back into a CRM or ERP rather than just payroll.

Deputy and When I Work Cost

Deputy and When I Work both charge per user with no base fee, which makes them cheaper than QuickBooks Time for a small team and more expensive than it for a large one, dollar for dollar.

Deputy runs roughly $5 per user a month for scheduling and basic time tracking, up to about $12 per user a month for the tier that adds time and attendance, task management, and performance tools. When I Work is built around scheduling first; shift scheduling alone runs about $2.50 to $6 per user a month, with the time and attendance module priced on top of that.

Both integrate with QuickBooks, Gusto, and ADP for payroll export, which covers most small businesses without any custom work.

Homebase Cost

Homebase prices by location instead of by employee, which makes it the better deal for a single-location shop with a lot of part-time staff. The free tier covers basic scheduling and time tracking for one location; paid tiers run roughly $30, $70, and $120 a month per location as you add payroll, HR tools, and team communication features. A business with unlimited employees at one location pays the same as a business with five employees at that location, which is the opposite of how per-user pricing works.

What Buddy Punching and Time Rounding Actually Cost

Here's the shape of the problem these tools exist to fix, with assumptions you can swap for your own numbers.

Take a 15-person hourly crew, each one rounding their clock-in or clock-out by an average of 6 minutes in their own favor, whether that's genuine clock drift, a habit of clocking in from the parking lot, or an occasional buddy punch for someone running late. Six minutes a day, 5 days a week, 15 people, is 7.5 hours of paid time a week that nobody actually worked. At a loaded labor cost of $22 an hour, that's roughly $8,600 a year, before counting a single disputed timesheet or a manager's time spent reconciling one.

Adjust the inputs (crew size, minutes rounded, hourly cost) and the shape holds: the leak is small per person per day, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed, and it compounds into a real number by the end of the year. Any of the tools above closes most of that gap just by replacing a paper timesheet or an honor-system punch clock with a verified clock-in.

What a Custom Time Tracking Build Costs

A custom build makes sense when time data has to do more than sit in a timesheet, usually because it feeds payroll, job costing, or an ERP you already run and depend on.

What pushes a build toward the top of that range: job costing that splits hours across cost codes or projects, multi-state overtime and break rules, geofencing or GPS verification for crews in the field, and workflow automation for things like a manager alert when someone's about to hit overtime or a missed clock-out that needs a flag instead of a silent eight-hour shift on the books.

Off the Shelf, or Build Your Own?

For most hourly teams, the honest answer is Deputy, When I Work, or QuickBooks Time, picked based on whatever already runs payroll. The per-user cost is low, the apps are good, and the integration work is done for you.

Building starts to make sense when three things line up: the pay rules are specific enough that a generic tool fights you (multiple job codes, prevailing wage, overtime that varies by role or jurisdiction), the time data needs to flow into a custom ERP or CRM you already run instead of standing alone, and the headcount is large enough that per-user fees stop looking small. A 40-person crew on Deputy's higher tier runs close to $5,800 a year in licensing alone, every year, forever; a $35,000 to $70,000 build has no per-seat line and gets cheaper on a per-employee basis every time the team grows.

Custom isn't the cheaper option by default. It's the better option when the workflow around the clock, not the clock itself, is what's actually costing you money.

How to Get a Time Tracking Estimate You Can Trust

1. Write down your actual pay rules: shift differentials, overtime thresholds, job codes, anything that varies by role or location.
2. List every system time data needs to reach: payroll, an ERP, a CRM, a billing system for client-facing job costing.
3. Decide whether field crews need geofencing or GPS verification, or whether an office-based team just needs a clean clock in and clock out.
4. Get a fixed price for that written scope, not an hourly estimate. Hourly quotes for internal tools are how $20,000 becomes $50,000.
5. Ask what a disputed timesheet or an edited punch looks like in the audit trail. If the answer is "we'd have to check with IT," that's a feature, not an afterthought.

The Short Version

• Off-the-shelf time tracking costs $2 to $12 per user a month (or $0 to $120 per location for Homebase), and covers most hourly teams well.
• QuickBooks Time wins on payroll integration if you're already on QuickBooks; Deputy and When I Work are cheaper per user; Homebase wins for a single location with lots of part-time staff.
• A small, unmonitored gap in clock accuracy adds up fast: a 15-person crew rounding 6 minutes a day each costs roughly $8,600 a year at $22 an hour.
• Building your own costs $15,000 to $120,000 or more and wins once pay rules get specific, time data has to feed an ERP or CRM, and the team is large enough that per-seat fees stop being small.

Keep reading

• Custom ERP Development: When Off-the-Shelf Doesn't Fit
• Build vs Buy Software: How to Decide
• Automate Manual Data Entry: What It Costs to Stop Retyping the Same Data
• Get a fixed estimate for your project

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0ARCH builds custom internal tools including time tracking, job costing, and labor reporting tied into the payroll and ERP systems you already run. Fixed estimate, you own the code. Text us with what is slow today.