ClockShark Review 2024 – Features, Pricing, & Uses

ClockShark is a user-friendly, customizable GPS time-tracking app that helps small and growing businesses manage field-based hourly employees. Featuring job tracking, invoice management, and more, it suits managers wanting to track project costs and revenues in one app.

However, it lacks interactive analytics and time-to-invoice automation. Also, ClockShark pricing is steeper than some feature-rich competitors.

In this ClockShark review, we break down its pricing plans, top features and integrations, and how it stacks up against competitors. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. ClockShark Plans & Pricing
2. ClockShark Overview
3. Features
4. Integrations
5. ClockShark Customer Reviews
6. What Is ClockShark Good For?
7. ClockShark vs Top Competitors
8. Verdict - is ClockShark worth it?
9. How We Test HR Software
10. How to Choose the Best HR Software
11. FAQs

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. ClockShark Plans & Pricing
2. ClockShark Overview
3. Features
Show Full Guide
4. Integrations
5. ClockShark Customer Reviews
6. What Is ClockShark Good For?
7. ClockShark vs Top Competitors
8. Verdict - is ClockShark worth it?
9. How We Test HR Software
10. How to Choose the Best HR Software
11. FAQs

ClockShark Plans & Pricing

ClockShark offers two plans for a flat monthly fee plus a per-user charge (applied to active users only.) The Standard plan suits small businesses with basic scheduling and location-based time tracking needs. Meanwhile, Pro works for growing businesses requiring time off management, customizable tracking, and user permissions, plus multi-department controls.

While there’s no free-forever plan, you get a 14-day free Pro trial without adding credit card details. Overall, ClockShark’s plans are easy to understand, but their value for money is relatively low compared with competitors.

ClockShark Overview

Features

ClockShark stands out with its easy-to-use time clock, scheduling, and time off management features. Some features are customizable, such as time off policies and shift reminders. However, the software can be glitchy, and there are limited automations and in-app analytics.

One-click time clock

Employees can clock in and out of scheduled or unscheduled shifts with just one tap on desktop, mobile, and kiosk. You can also start and end breaks, and add time manually. Admins can automate clock-out questionnaires for specific locations or tasks, which is useful for, say, post-job hygiene checks and incident reports.

There are minor inconveniences, though. For example, you can’t clock in without selecting a job and task, and the app doesn’t remember your most recent selection. Plus, ClockShark asks if you’re sure you want to clock out—every time.

However, we liked that admins can clock in entire crews. This feature saves time for large teams (albeit with a higher time theft risk.)

Timesheets auto-generate using clocked time, and you can approve individual or multiple timesheets with one click.

Finally, GPS tracking lets you check, in real-time, that employees are in the right locations while clocked in. Additionally, you can use geofencing to auto-remind employees to clock in when they’re in a certain radius of their job location.

Drag-and-drop scheduling

Adding shifts takes just a few clicks. You simply assign a job, tasks, and employees and add shift notes. You can tick “repeat” but have limited options (daily, weekly, every other week, weekdays, and monthly). Plus, you can drag and drop shifts between days and employees. We also liked that you can customize when employees get clock-in-and-out app reminders.

While the interface is clear and intuitive, we found some software glitches. For instance, we couldn’t scroll up and down the “Add shift” window and had to start over.

PTO management

The PTO policy customization feature is highly customizable. You can create different policies for PTO, sick leave, and unpaid time. Plus, you can decide time off limits, set waiting periods, and limit carryover hours. We liked that you can include or exclude employees from specific policies. Effectively, you can personalize policies to each employee if you like.

Team members can request time off in a few clicks. You can approve or reject individual requests but can’t bulk-approve them. This could lead to significant admin, say, during the holiday seasons.

Job and task tracking

Tracking jobs and tasks helps you understand—and optimize—how your team spends time across activities. Plus, job-based time reporting also helps you bill clients more accurately.

We found creating both jobs and tasks quick and easy. There’s some useful customization, too, such as:

• Making tasks overtime exempt, billable, or non-billable and accessible only to specific employees. You can also add custom task codes, which your accountant will thank you for.
• Restricting employees and tasks for specific jobs. You can also automate email alerts when jobs exceed budgeted hours, assign clock-out questionnaires, and color-code jobs.

Client quotes and invoices

It’s easy to create quotes and invoices from scratch. In individual documents, you add a customer, an email address, line items, rates, and comments. ClockShark calculates totals for you. You can also add attachments.

Invoices are fairly customizable. You can add new sections and line items, plus tax and unbilled time. Optionally, the tool auto-generates invoice IDs. You can also track invoice status (draft, awaiting payment, past due, or paid).

You can generate quotes and invoices from the jobs section, but line items don’t auto-fill with clocked time. Automating time-to-invoice workflows would be a great improvement here.

Time and cost reporting

You can export detailed reports on jobs, tasks, individual employees, time, and labor costs, plus quotes and invoices. Filters help focus the data further. For example, you can filter jobs by employees and quotes by customer. We especially liked the invoice vs. labor report since it helps you estimate your project profitability.

That said, you can’t see any report tables or visualizations—such as graphs and charts—on ClockShark. You can only view reports as in-browser PDFs or CSV or PDF files. This is limiting for busy managers needing a visual bird’s eye view on their dashboards of, say, monthly labor costs or pending invoices.

Integrations

Both ClockShark plans give you access to a fair amount of integrations. You can integrate with:

• Paychex, Gusto, and Xero for payroll.
• QuickBooks and MYOB for accounting.
• ADP Workforce and RUN (powered by ADP) for workforce management and payroll.
• Sage 100 for contractor payments.
• Zapier for third-party automations (such as Slack notifications).
• Simpro for project management.

Compared with some time clock providers—say, Connecteam, which only integrates with four platforms—ClockShark offers a generous selection of integrations. This means you spend less time doing manual admin, like copy-and-pasting and managing spreadsheets, because employee data transfers seamlessly between platforms.

ClockShark Customer Reviews

ClockShark customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive, averaging around 4.7/5 from thousands of ratings on websites such as G2 and GetApp.

Positive reviews typically mention ClockShark’s:

• Customizable tasks
• Location tracking and reporting
• Responsive customer service
• Ease of use and setup

However, customers also offered suggestions for improvement, such as enabling team communication, offering more report customization, and fixing app glitches.

What Is ClockShark Good For?

ClockShark suits growing businesses that hire hourly employees across multiple locations. It’s also a good shout if you want to map project labor costs against invoice payments on one app. Plus, ClockShark lets you customize time off policies, set rules for tasks and jobs, and automate custom questionnaires at the end of shifts.

It’s also user-friendly for tech novices and experts alike. You can complete most tasks in just a few clicks—including creating shifts, approving timesheets, and downloading reports.

ClockShark vs Top Competitors

ClockShark vs Connecteam

Both ClockShark and Connecteam offer GPS-tracking time clocks, automated timesheets, scheduling, and time off management. However, ClockShark has a much higher per-user fee (starting at $8/user/month) than Connecteam (starting at $0.50/user/month) and doesn’t offer a free-forever plan.

Also, Connecteam includes extra features like auto-scheduling, employee training and onboarding, surveys, and an in-app chat and social feed. That said, you might choose ClockShark for its quote and invoice management, plus its cost vs. invoice profitability reports.

ClockShark vs Toggl Track

Toggl Track and ClockShark both provide one-click time clocks, timesheets, and client invoicing, but ClockShark additionally offers GPS tracking and geofencing, time off management, and scheduling. While Toggl Track integrates with Toggl Plan—offering scheduling and project management—ClockShark still offers greater shift and task customization.

However, Toggl Track provides in-app reporting, including chart visualization and smart insights highlighting profitable projects and employees. Overall, Toggl Track is the choice for productivity optimization. But you might still prefer ClockShark’s location-tracking capabilities, customizable time off management, and extensive integrations.

ClockShark vs Clockify

Both Clockify and ClockShark offer time and attendance tools—including location tracking and auto-generating timesheets—plus scheduling, project and task tracking, and client invoicing. However, Clockify additionally provides customizable analytics dashboards that let you visualize key metrics like labor cost per project or task breakdown per employee.

Plus, Clockify lets you bulk-edit data, forecast financial figures, and track labor costs in multiple currencies (versus ClockShark’s dollar-only tracking.) While Clockify’s starter plan starts at an affordable $3.99/user/month with no flat fee, it doesn’t include QuickBooks integration or GPS tracking. ClockShark is more expensive, but you might prefer its clock-out questionnaires, crew clock-ins, and multi-department tracking.

Verdict – is ClockShark worth it?

ClockShark is a worthy option for small and medium-sized businesses wanting location-based time tracking for hourly workers. Features, including time off management, shift scheduling, and invoice generation, are customizable and user-friendly. Customers also praise its helpful customer service.

That said, a lack of in-app interactive analytics, little workflow automation, and occasional app glitches don’t quite justify its larger-than-average pricing. Some competitors offer advanced reporting, auto-scheduling, and a work chat for a similar or lower price. Still, the ClockShark app might be for you if you require labor cost vs. invoice analysis, and clock-out questionnaires.

How We Test HR Software

Here’s what we consider when testing HR software like the ClockShark time-tracking app.

• Pricing – Subscriptions should be affordable to small and medium-sized businesses.
• Features – We prioritize strong core features, including one-click time tracking, automated timesheets, scheduling, and reporting. Great picks include extra functionality, such as time off management and GPS tracking.
• Integrations – Providers must have essential third-party integrations with payroll and accounting software. Bonus points for integrations with workforce management and project management products.
• Automation – We look for time-saving automations, such as rule-based employee reminders and auto-generating timesheets.
• Ease of use – We test time clock apps to ensure they’re easy to navigate.
• Third-party reviews – We include verified users’ likes and dislikes in our analysis.

How to Choose the Best HR Software

Here’s how to decide if ClockShark—or another time clock platform—is right for your business.

FAQs