The 9 Best Time and Attendance Software Solutions in the UK

With remote and hybrid working still common in Britain, a reliable time and attendance solution is critical to ensure you’re on top of your staff’s pay and working hours. Just over a quarter (28%) of UK workers carried out their jobs from home and another workplace in the final quarter of 2022, according to the ONS.

Based on our meticulous research, we’ve found that Factorial is the best time and attendance solution for UK businesses. Its intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it easy to stay on top of hours, working locations, overtime, and more, while its employee app enables your team to clock in and out, and track breaks, from remote locations.

In addition to Factorial, we were also impressed by eight other providers in our market analysis – one of which may serve you better depending on your needs. In this article, you’ll find out all of our top picks, ranked – complete with pros, cons, and pricing information. You’ll then be equipped to choose the one most suited to your business.

The best time and attendance software for UK businesses

We compared the leading time and attendance software solutions on the market, analysing the features and the benefits.

Our top nine time and attendance software providers are Factorial, Blip by BrightHR, Kelio, Planday, Advanced, Actin Time, TimeTrex, Replicon, and Chronicle Online.

You’ll find our top time and attendance software reviews below, which include the pros and cons, key functionalities, unique selling points (USPs), and pricing info (where it was publicly available).

If you’re short on time, you can start comparing time and attendance quotes with us – right here, right now. Our free 30-second questionnaire lets us get to know your exact software requirements, which we’ll use to pair you with one or more leading time and attendance system suppliers.

Once you’re matched, those providers will be in touch, offering tailored time and attendance software quotes and advice. Again, our form is free, and takes less than a minute – ideal if you just want to get straight down to business. Hit one of the buttons below to dive in!

What is time and attendance software?

Time and attendance software tracks your employees’ hours as they arrive at and leave work. It’s one of the best pieces of workforce management software available to businesses, allowing you to streamline your time-keeping and absence pay processes.

The data that your time and attendance software collects feeds straight into your payroll and HR systems. This ensures you’re paying staff the right amount and eases the organisation of your rota. Time and attendance software also enables you to stay on top of employee taxes and holiday pay, and avoid unwanted employee absenteeism costs.

Time and attendance software is usually cloud-based, meaning it’s accessible from your browser, rather than on a pre-installed system. This makes the software super mobile – you can manage staff records and juggle shift patterns anywhere you have internet access.

For a complete time and attendance system, you’ll also want to consider what a clocking-in device can do for you. It’s a machine that allows your staff to physically check in, using either a card, fob, or their own biometric data. The best facial recognition attendance systems fall under this category, as do fingerprint clocking-in machines.

In this article, we won’t focus on the hardware side of the system. Instead, we’ll dive deep into the pros and cons of the best time and attendance software.

1. Factorial

Best overall time and attendance system

Factorial’s time tracking system is modern and adaptable to flexible working. Its employee portal is an intuitive smartphone app that your team can use to clock in and out remotely (you’ll receive a notification when they do), log breaks, and edit their records for accuracy – all of which you can monitor on the go. To enable your employees to clock in and out, you can simply generate and print QR codes to place at your workplace for your team to scan with their phones – in other words, there’s no need for potentially pricey clocking in machines.

Helpfully, instead of treating your team members like one homogeneous group, you can use Factorial to customise each individual’s time tracking experience. You can create custom groups and assign different permissions to each one, build unique policies for people with different working patterns (such as those who work hybrid or from home), and monitor clock-ins/outs at different working locations. We also like Factorial’s data-driven reports, which enable you to compare each person’s real hours to their expected hours, and check out overtime hours (which can be instantly reflected in your payroll).

What’s essential to understand is that Factorial’s time tracking platform is only available in combination with its wider HR packages, so if you already have HR software that you’re not keen to switch from, you’ll be better off considering a standalone time and attendance product such as Actin Time or Timetrex (though we’d encourage you to ensure it can integrate smoothly with your existing HR setup).

Factorial pricing

The cheapest way to use Factorial time and attendance is to choose Factorial’s cheapest base HR plan, Business, and add the Time Tracking module – altogether, this starts at £34.50 per month for ten users (plus £3.45 for each additional user).

Alternatively, you could opt for Factorial’s Operations Hub on the Business plan, which includes time tracking along with other HR processes including payroll. This starts at £41 per month for ten users.

2. Blip by BrightHR

Best for flexible clocking in options

Like Factorial, BrightHR’s time and attendance platform – named Blip – is purely app-based, so you won’t need to invest in clocking in machines. It offers a few ways to clock in and out, namely QR code scanning at your premises, geofencing at remote locations, and photographing at unregistered locations. With geofencing, you set up a virtual GPS barrier around your known work spots, and your team members receive automated reminders to clock in or out via the app when they enter or leave one of these areas. With photographing, your team members simply clock in and send a snapshot of today’s workplace, giving them the flexibility to work in places you’re not familiar with.

Blip’s real-time updates are super handy, enabling you to see who’s in, who’s not working, and who’s on a break at any given moment. You can also ask it to send automated notifications to those staff members who tend to be a little forgetful, reminding them to log their hours.

Also like Factorial, Blip isn’t available as a standalone product – it comes exclusively as part of BrightHR’s wider HR software suite. However, if you are a BrightHR user, it’s very easy to set Blip up: simply download the app and log in using your BrightHR account.

Blip by BrightHR pricing

While we do know that Blip itself is free, it’s only free for those who use BrightHR. We can’t advise on how much BrightHR costs because the company prefers to offer personalised quotes to each potential user, rather than advertise set price plans.

3. Kelio

Best for its range of versatile products

Kelio, a Bodet subsidiary, has spent about three decades fine-tuning and perfecting its software – and it shows. Kelio’s user-friendly and intuitive interface underpins the software’s versatility. Besides time tracking, Kelio also takes care of job costing, planning, and personnel administration, too. Reporting is pretty straightforward, while you can customise pretty much everything to your business’ setup.

With Kelio’s “digital badge” feature, you can replace physical swipe cards with a secure email linked to an employee. Workers can easily clock in and out using NFC or BLE (technologies also used for contactless payments) on their smartphones. This is convenient if your workforce is prone to losing key cards or you regularly hire external personnel.

Also, through its X7 machine, employees can also effectively clock in with their hands – its efficiency helped Kelio top our best fingerprint clocking-in machines list. For a thorough look into Kelio, head to our Kelio review.

Kelio pricing

Kelio’s pricing isn’t transparent, so it’s tough to know exactly what your ongoing costs will be, which could potentially be expensive. However, if you want a service that won’t stretch your wallet, we’d recommend taking a look at Planday.

4. Planday

Best for employee collaboration

Unlike most of the other time and attendance software solutions here, Planday doesn’t require a physical clocking-in machine to operate. Rather, your staff can simply check in for work via their smartphones, using Planday’s slick, user-friendly app. Shift planning is a breeze, with colour-coded, drag-and-drop rotas helping you stop up any gaps in the staff calendar.

Planday’s reporting features will help you drill down into the metrics that matter, while a chat tool will let you keep in touch with your employees and connect them with each other. This helps staff let management know about any lateness or absence.

However, the sad bit is that it doesn’t let you auto-populate rotas, so if you’re looking for a supplier that covers this, we’d encourage you to direct your gaze towards Advanced, which has a feature known as Auto-Rostering.

Planday’s geofencing technology allows your staff to sign in for work when they get close, and add notes to inform of any issues or lateness

Planday pricing

You should be aware the Plus plan is billed annually because contracts are a minimum of 12 months. On the other hand, you can buy Starter month-to-month, and cancel at any time.

In addition to the features on the Starter plan, the Plus plan gives you:

• Staff management features, such as contracted hours and scheduled leave
• Kiosk iPad app (Punch Clock station)
• Revenue reporting (including labour costs)

If you’re not sure whether Planday is suited to your needs, you could try the software  for free with a 30-day free trial on the cheapest two plans.

5. Advanced

Best for employee self-service tools

Advanced (formerly Mitrefinch) works with you to understand your business’ needs, and tailor a software package that’s a snug fit for the size and nature of your workforce. You can adapt Advanced’s time and attendance software in almost limitless ways, with a variety of scheduling and rota functions. You can avoid having too many employees away on holiday simultaneously, and track unusual shift patterns with ease.

Advanced’s range of software products – including HR, payroll, and modules for workforce and absence management – are all split out, so you’ll only pay for the specific features you need. Its tailored solutions helped it rank highly in our best clocking-in systems list.

With its Auto-Rostering tool, you’ll get access to roster templates, skills mapping, and an employee trade board, which can help you save time and money. The provider also empowers your employees to take their calendars into their own hands – they’ll have the ability to view their data and request time off in real time. You can read more about it in our Advanced Time and Attendance System Review.

Advanced pricing

Advanced (like many other providers) isn’t transparent about its rate, so if you want a solution that you know is cheap and user-friendly, we’d recommend looking into Planday.

6. Actin Time

Best for integrating with external software

Actin Time is a great option if you’re looking for a workforce management system that can double as an army knife for integrations. It can be easily integrated with softwares like Sage, Pegasus, Earnier, IRIS, ADP, CIPHR, MoorePay, and more. Therefore, it’s likely Actin Time will melt seamlessly with your pre-existing payroll software infrastructure, which not only saves you headaches but also money.

Actin Time is compatibile with several systems, which means its likely to merge seamlessly with your pre-existing payroll software. This is great news as it reduces the chances of you having to spend money signing up with a different payroll provider.

It also has generous customer support. It offers free time and attendance advice, and 100% hand-holding experience from the offset. However, the initial set up and customisation can be a bit clunky at the start, so if you’re looking for a provider that is known for a sleek interface, we’d say to look at Kelio or Replicon.

Actin Time pricing

Like many of its competitors, Actin Time only provides prices via quotation, so you’ll need to contact its sales team to find out how much you’d pay for it.

7. TimeTrex

Best open source time and attendance software

The best thing about TimeTrex is completely open source. This means you can mess around with the code, using it as a blank cheque upon which to write the unique requirements of your team. You’ll need to be fairly tech-savvy, of course – but, for the right type of business, the flexibility that open source time and attendance software provides is truly liberating.

TimeTrex’s industrious, no-frills approach means it’s easy to grasp, massively speeding up the onboarding process. TimeTrex should tick most of the boxes for small UK businesses because it offers all the essential payroll, scheduling, and leave management functions you’d expect. The downside is that TimeTrex lacks a polished interface, so if this is a definite for you, Replicon or Kelio might be the answer.

TimeTrex pricing

As it is open source software, TimeTrex is provided free of charge.

8. Replicon

Easiest time and attendance software to use

Replicon’s smooth user experience (UX), industry-specific feature roll, and litany of effusive customer reviews make it one of our top time and attendance software picks. Having said that, Replicon is quite expensive, so if you want something more affordable, take a look at Planday.

Replicon packs a wide range of time and attendance software products and pricing plans. Because of this, it offers benefits for businesses of most sizes and industries. Its prices are a little tough to get your head around initially (see below for what we mean here!), but at least you’ll know exactly what you can expect to pay from the get-go.

Replicon pricing

Replicon is slightly pricier than the other options analysed on this list. Its cheapest plan allows you to work an operation of five users for $30 per user, per month, having to put down an extra $5 per additional user (keep in mind, its prices are only advertised in USD).

You can choose to upgrade to TimeAttend Plus ($12 per user per month) or Workforce Management ($19 per user, per month), which tend to be the most popular options due to a larger suite of features.

Overall, we’d recommend the TimeAttend Plus package for small businesses because it provides the most value for money. With it, you’ll get a fair share of features, including Automatic Timesheet Routing and TimeOff Booking, without having to shell out for the more expensive Workforce Management.

Replicon also offers two separate tools that are designed for monitoring employee absence, TimeOff Plus and TimeOff Enterprise, which cost $6 per user per month and $8 per user per month, respectively.

9. Chronicle Online

Best for data visualisation and reporting

Chronicle Online’s savvy software solution lets you track time and attendance data in real time, while you can generate hour and payroll reports – and stay on top of wage bills – in a matter of clicks. Crunching your business’s key data is simple, and the engaging graphs and charts this software produces are as simple to export as they are to understand.

Chronicle Online is completely cloud-based, allowing you to access information about your staff from anywhere in the world. It also works with any app, in any browser – all you need is an internet connection. This helps you stay on top of your staff’s attendance patterns and avoid unwanted employee absenteeism costs.

The down side is that Chronicle Online’s programs are not as customisable as other providers, so if you want a time and attendance solution that you can set to your very specific set of needs, Replicon or Actin Time are likely to suit you better.

Chronicle Online pricing