workmonitor.
Best for teams that bill for their time and want captured hours, live project margin and a payroll run that balances before it is exported.
- No timers to forget
- One engine for invoice and payroll
- Margin, live
VSTime tracking · For managers and finance
Apploye alternatives
Past the budget tier: hours that bill, pay and prove themselves.
- Free for two seats
- No card
- Apploye history imports by CSV
Updated October 3, 2026. Apploye details reviewed October 2, 2026 from public materials — check them against its own site before you decide.
workmonitor.
versusApployeWhere WorkMonitor wins
- No timers to forgetHours are captured as the work happens, so the forgotten ones get billed too.
- One engine for invoice and payrollApproved hours bill and pay from the same rates, balanced to the cent.
- Margin, liveBudget burn updates as hours land — not when the invoice is drafted.
Where Apploye winsThe core package at a budget price
The difference that matters
Timers record what people remember. WorkMonitor bills what they worked.
Two seats free, then one per-seat price — and for it, invoices and payroll from the same approved hours, live project margin, and a certificate a client checks without an account.
The real product — not a screenshot. Click a tab.
AK
Projects
Run client work.
Search or ask…
Northlight Studio · sample
Projects
Budget burn and margin, live
TOTAL BUDGET
$486,5006 projects
BURNED
59%$286,200
HOURS TRACKED
2,382h
OVER 90% BURN
1project
PROJECTBUDGET BURNHOURSMARGIN
- AKBrand systemHarbour Foods · Fixed fee93%$78,100 of $84,000Over 90%648h12%
- JMNorthlight redesignKestrel Labs · Time & materials74%$45,500 of $61,500379h34%
- RPMobile app buildOrbit Retail · Fixed fee66%$84,500 of $128,000704h41%
- LMPackaging refreshHarbour Foods · Time & materials52%$19,800 of $38,000165h29%
- SDDesign retainerVela Health · Retainer41%$29,500 of $72,000246h46%
- TVData platform UXRidgeway Group · Time & materials28%$28,800 of $103,000240h38%
Burn is computed from tracked hours, so it is current rather than reconstructed at month end.6 projects · 5 clients
What it returns
What WorkMonitor returns on your own team
Your headcount and loaded cost, the subscription already subtracted.
$
Salary plus everything on top of it.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL RETURN
- Time recovered from idle and drift6% of paid time, back in the week$228,000
- WorkMonitor, 40 people at $10 a month−$4,800
Net, over a year
$223,200
Estimated net return $223,200 a year.
47.5×
the subscription, returned
1 mo
to pay it back
96
hours a week, across the team
Arithmetic on your figures at the calculator’s low-end assumption of 6% of paid time recovered — not a measurement of your team. Itemise it by region and add-on
A timer records what people remember. The invoice should carry what they worked.
workmonitor.vsTimer-based time tracking
6differences, worked through below
Hours that never get entered
With WorkMonitor
Captured as the work happens and attributed to the project, with idle split out rather than rounded in, so the sheet is drafted before anyone opens it.
Timer-based time tracking
Somebody forgets the timer or rebuilds the week on Friday from memory — and an hour nobody entered is an hour nobody bills.
From hours to invoice and payroll
With WorkMonitor
Approved hours seed the invoice and the payroll run directly, priced by one shared rate engine, so the two cannot disagree.
Timer-based time tracking
Export, reformat, paste into payroll or invoicing, then reconcile to find what got mangled on the way.
Project margin
With WorkMonitor
Budget burn and margin update as hours land, in hours and in money, so an over-running project shows while there is still time to act.
Timer-based time tracking
Discovered when the invoice is drafted, after the over-run has already been paid for.
Payroll errors
With WorkMonitor
A cent-exact pre-flight that has to balance before a run can be exported, with idle already split out of the hours it prices.
Timer-based time tracking
Spreadsheet arithmetic, found at audit as a recurring few pence — or a paid idle hour nobody caught.
Who signs off the money
With WorkMonitor
Multi-stage approval that refuses a self-approval rather than warning about it.
Timer-based time tracking
Whoever has the file, which is usually more people than anyone intended.
When a client disputes the bill
With WorkMonitor
A finalized invoice seeds a certificate the client checks themselves, without an account.
Timer-based time tracking
A line item and a total. The client accepts it or opens a thread about it.
The question we get asked
We picked a budget tool specifically for the lowest sticker price. Is WorkMonitor actually worth paying more for?
Two seats are free either way, so the comparison starts at the third person — and from there the question is what each seat returns. Here it buys hours captured rather than typed, invoices and payroll priced from the same approved time, project margin that updates as the hours land, and a certificate a client verifies without an account. If none of that reaches your revenue, the cheaper tool is the right call.
Payouts — a payroll run built from approved hours
What a manager gets, in one platform
- Projects, clients, tasks & budgets (rate cards, burn)
The shortlist
The 5 Apploye alternatives managers shortlist
WorkMonitor first, because this is our page. The other Apploye competitors in their own words, each with its own head-to-head.
QuickBooks Time
Time tracking and scheduling inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, with clock-in, GPS and direct payroll handoff.
WorkMonitor vs QuickBooks TimeDeputy
Shift scheduling, rostering and time clock for hourly teams, with award interpretation and labour-cost forecasting.
WorkMonitor vs DeputyConnecteam
An all-in-one operations app for deskless teams: time clock, checklists, training and internal communication on mobile.
WorkMonitor vs ConnecteamHomebase
Scheduling, time clock, hiring and payroll for small hourly businesses — retail, hospitality and local services.
WorkMonitor vs Homebase
Switching
Bringing your Apploye history across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. Export yours as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns. There is no dedicated Apploye preset yet, so expect to line the columns up once rather than not at all.
The columns your export needs to line up with
- date
- minutes
- project
- task
- note
Six columns, mapped once on the first import. Rows that cannot be normalised still pass through, so the importer reports exactly which ones need attention rather than rejecting the file.
After the import
Where your Apploye history lands
Imported hours sit on the same ledger as everything captured after them, so last quarter’s cost and margin read the same way as next quarter’s. Corrections append with an author and a reason rather than overwriting, which is what lets you answer why a number changed long after anyone remembers.
Certificates — verifiable without an account
When Apploye is the better answer
You run a small team or agency and want the core time-and-screenshot package at a budget price, with no interest in a proof layer or an audit trail beyond the basics.
If that is the deciding requirement, buy that instead.
Questions
Apploye alternatives: what managers ask
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- Can I import my Apploye data into WorkMonitor?
- Through the generic importer: line up Apploye’s export columns once — email, date, hours or duration, project and task — and the mapping is remembered for every import after that. There is no dedicated Apploye preset yet, so the first import carries the setup and the ones after it do not.
- What is the best Apploye alternative for a small agency that bills clients?
- One that carries the hours to the invoice. WorkMonitor captures time against the client and project, prices it on bill and cost rate cards, shows margin as it burns, and on Business turns approved hours into invoices and payroll — with a public certificate behind each finalized invoice.
- Does WorkMonitor track location for field staff?
- It records a location fix at the moment someone clocks in from the field, tests it against the radius of the job site you configured, and stores that verdict on the punch. It does not trace a route between punches, which is a deliberate difference from a tool built around continuous breadcrumbing.
- Does WorkMonitor include screenshots on every plan?
- Yes, including Free — at a 15-minute cadence on Free and faster on the paid plans, with retention growing from 30 days to a year on Business. The policy is set per team and per region: blurred, full or off.
- How does WorkMonitor score productivity without an activity percentage?
- By focus and deep-work stretches instead of counting keystrokes and clicks, because input volume rewards fidgeting and penalises reading, thinking and pair work. Every score opens into the activity that produced it, so a number someone disputes can be inspected rather than argued about.
- What does WorkMonitor cost a team leaving Apploye?
- Nothing for the first two seats. From the third, Pro is a per-seat monthly price for the full analytics core, and Business adds invoicing, rate cards, payroll export and the margin dashboard — no minimums, cheaper on annual billing, with the history brought across by the importer.
Ask AI
Ask anything about your team
Plain-language answers about your own workforce data, with the figures behind them. Pick a question to see how it reads.
Who's most at risk of burnout?
Pick a question above and WorkMonitor AI will answer from your team's real numbers.
Take these with you
The software is the easy part of a rollout
Here is what we would send a manager doing one for the first time: how to read a productivity number, what to say to a remote team before anything is installed, and a policy you can adopt as written.
Point it at one team for a week.
Create the account, put the agent on a handful of desks, and leave it alone. On Friday you read the week instead of reconstructing it: hours against their projects, focus and idle per person, and the timesheets already filled in.
Free for two seats. No card, and no sales call to sit through.