The 9 Best Time and Attendance Software Solutions in the UK

With remote and hybrid working still widespread in the UK, a reliable time and attendance solution is more important than ever to stay on top of staff pay and working hours. According to the ONS, around 28% of UK workers were practising hybrid working (splitting time between home and another location) in early 2025.

Based on our independent research, Factorial stands out as the best time and attendance solution for UK businesses. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to monitor hours, locations, overtime and more, while the mobile app allows employees to clock in and out and track breaks remotely.

We also evaluated eight other providers, each with strengths that may suit different business needs. In this article, you’ll find a detailed ranking of our top picks, including pros, cons, and pricing information, to help you make an informed decision and choose the solution best aligned with your unique requirements.

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, OneAdvanced, ActIn Time, TimeTrex, Deltek 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, a 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 is a comprehensive time and attendance platform designed to simplify workforce management for UK businesses. As part of a broader HR suite, it combines time tracking with other essential HR functions, giving managers visibility and control while empowering employees to manage their own schedules.

Key features:

• QR code-based clocking system
• Employee-focused, intuitive smartphone app
• Data-driven reports
• Customisable permissions, groups, and policies

Why is Factorial a good time and attendance platform?

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 with 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

Businesses can get started with Factorial with its entry-level Starter plan. According to the provider’s website, you can get started for as little as £5.40 per employee, per month.

However, Factorial’s pricing is available on request. So, to understand how much the software will cost your business, you’ll have to request a custom quote.

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. The best thing about Blip? It’s free for BrightHR users, making it a great value way for businesses to manage employee processes.

Key features:

• App-based platform
• Geofencing alerts
• Flexible check-in options, including QR codes
• Real-time employee insights

Why is Blip by BrightHR a good time and attendance platform?

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 they’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.

In April 2025, Blip released a Cost of Shift feature, which allows employees to view the projected costs of putting employees on a shift to help them make smarter financial decisions. This data-driven feature isn’t offered by major competitors like Factorial or Kelio, making BrightHR a great option for businesses serious about cost savings and financial transparency.

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.

Key features:

• Complex schedule management
• Automatic pay role computation
• Job costing and tracking activity

Why is Kelio a good time and attendance platform?

Reporting is 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. If you want a service that won’t put a strain on 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.

Key features:

• Location-based clock-in rules
• Automatic time rounding
• Timesheet reports for payroll processing

Why is Planday a good time and attendance platform?

Shift planning is a breeze, with colour-coded, drag-and-drop rotas helping you fill 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 OneAdvanced, which has a feature known as Auto-Rostering.

As of 2025, managers can also assign Access Levels (permissions) while creating a new employee profile in Planday. This helps to streamline the onboarding process and improve the way managers delegate tasks.

Planday pricing

Planday publicly displays its pricing in Euros, so we’ve converted the costs in the table to GB pounds.

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. OneAdvanced

Best for employee self-service tools

OneAdvanced (formerly Advanced) 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.

OneAdvanced’s range of software products — including HR, payroll and modules for workforce and absence management — is 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.

Key features:

• Streamlined employee-focused app
• Manual and automated staff scheduling
• Payroll and attendance data syncing

Why is OneAdvanced a good time and attendance platform?

You can adapt OneAdvanced’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.

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 OneAdvanced Time and Attendance System Review.

OneAdvanced pricing

OneAdvanced (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 a Swiss Army Knife for integrations.

It can be easily integrated with software like Sage, Pegasus, IRIS, ADP, CIPHR, Moorepay and more. Therefore, it’s likely ActIn Time will meld seamlessly with your pre-existing payroll software infrastructure, which not only saves you headaches but also money.

Key features:

• Advanced roster management
• Streamlined absence recording
• Integrations with Sage, Pegasus and IRIS

Why is ActIn Time a good time and attendance platform?

ActIn Time is compatible with several systems, which means it’s 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 a 100% hand-holding experience from the outset. However, the initial setup 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 Deltek 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

TimeTrex is an all-in-one solution that combines employee time and attendance tracking, payroll, job costing, and human resource management (HRM) into one single product.

Key features:

• Open-source code
• Biometric facial recognition
• Real-time reporting

Why is TimeTrex a good time and attendance platform?

The best thing about TimeTrex is it’s 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 need for you, Deltek Replicon or Kelio might be the answer.

TimeTrex pricing

TimeTrex offers a free package and has recently rolled out tiered pricing plans. Here’s how they compare:

8. Deltek Replicon

Easiest time and attendance software to use

Formerly known as Replicon before its acquisition by Deltek in August 2023, Deltek Replicon is a time tracking, project management and workforce management software.

Key features:

• AI-powered time tracking
• Real-time budget tracking and resource allocation
• Intelligent approval workflows

Why is Deltek Replicon a good time and attendance platform?

Its 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, Deltek Replicon is quite expensive, so if you want something more affordable, take a look at Planday.

Deltek 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.

Deltek Replicon pricing

Deltek Replicon is a US company that lists its prices in USD. A UK customer’s actual cost will depend on the exchange rate, VAT and whether Deltek invoices in GBP. However, we’ve converted the prices into GBP using a rough conversion rate of ($1 = £0.78) in November 2025.

Deltek Replicon is slightly pricier than many other time and attendance options analysed. Its TimeAttend Plus and Workforce Management plans are generally the most popular due to their comprehensive feature sets.

For small businesses seeking a balance of functionality and cost, the TimeAttend Plus package is recommended. It includes essential tools such as Automatic Timesheet Routing and TimeOff Booking, providing robust time tracking without the higher expense of Workforce Management.

Deltek Replicon also offers two separate plans for managing employee absences: TimeOff Plus and TimeOff Enterprise. These allow organisations to tailor absence management according to their size and specific needs.

Note that these figures are converted from USD using a rough rate of $1 = £0.78

9. Chronicle Online

Best for data visualisation and reporting

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.

Key features:

• Record work hours and manage overtime
• Use biometric options, like fingerprint and facial recognition
• Accept holiday and absences automatically

Why is Chronicle Online a good time and attendance platform?

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’ key data is simple, and the engaging graphs and charts this software produces are as simple to export as they are to understand.

The downside 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

Buying Guide: How To Choose the Right Time and Attendance Software

Finding the ideal time and attendance software isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. With so many options available, it’s important to weigh the factors that matter most to your business, like industry-specific capabilities or monthly costs.

• Cost and pricing structure: Some providers charge businesses per user, per month, while others will offer tiered or bespoke pricing plans. Calculate how much the system could cost you and whether there are extra costs to be aware of, to ensure you stay on budget. 
• Customer support: To avoid any hitches when using the software, finding a provider with reliable support is essential. Check whether providers offer training and onboarding assistance and if they let you reach out via a channel that suits you, whether it be phone support or a live chatbot.  
• Specific time and attendance features: Identify which time and attendance capabilities are a non-negotiable for your business, whether it be shift scheduling, leave management or biometric clothing. Then make sure the provider offers them at a tier within your budget.
• Remote access: Most time and attendance providers enable managers and employees to access the system from anywhere, and many offer employee-focused apps that let workers manage HR processes themselves. These functions will be especially useful for hybrid or remote teams.
• Third-party integrations: If you’re planning to connect the system with existing HR or payroll software, check whether providers offer seamless integrations with popular platforms like QuickBooks, Xero or Sage. Smooth integration will reduce manual data entry and help you avoid potentially costly errors.