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
Clockify alternatives
Free timesheets cost nothing until an hour goes unbilled.
- Free for two seats
- No card
- Your Clockify export imports as-is
Updated October 3, 2026. Clockify details reviewed September 7, 2026 from public materials — check them against its own site before you decide.
workmonitor.
versusClockifyWhere 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 Clockify winsA free tier for unlimited users
The difference that matters
Timers record what people remember. WorkMonitor bills what they worked.
Captured hours instead of typed ones, budgets that show margin as it burns, and invoices and payroll from the same approved time — the part that usually lives in a spreadsheet.
The real product — not a screenshot. Click a tab.
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Northlight Studio · sample
Timesheets
Submitted hours against recorded hours
194.5hours awaiting approval across 5 timesheets
1 flagged1 approved
PERSONPERIODSUBMITTEDRECORDEDGAPSTATE
- AKAria K.24–30 Aug38.538.5—Submitted
- RPRavi P.24–30 Aug47.541.0+6.5SubmittedTimesheet Detective · Hours spike47.5 h is 1.2× the trailing norm of 39.0 h — 8.5 h above baseline. It flags, it never decides.ApproveReject
- JMJon M.24–30 Aug40.039.8+0.2Submitted
- SDSara D.24–30 Aug36.036.0—Submitted
- TVTravis V.17–23 Aug32.532.5—Submitted
- LMLena M.24–30 Aug39.539.5—Approved
5 awaiting a decision · corrections keep the original entry, so the sheet stays append-onlyApproving locks the week's entries
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 are on a free plan for the whole company. Why would we start paying?
If the hours are only ever read internally, you probably would not — that is a real answer and free is hard to beat. The moment they leave the building the calculation changes: a client questioning an invoice, an auditor asking how the number was produced, a dispute over a timesheet nobody can reconstruct. Free timesheets are cheap until one of them is challenged.
Reports & digests — scheduled delivery to email and Slack
What a manager gets, in one platform
- Projects, clients, tasks & budgets (rate cards, burn)
The shortlist
The 5 Clockify alternatives managers shortlist
WorkMonitor first, because this is our page. The other Clockify 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
Your Clockify history comes across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. The importer carries a mapper for Clockify exports, so the CSV you already have is the CSV we take — and it lands on the same ledger as everything captured after it.
What the importer reads from a Clockify export
emailuserstart datedate- date
duration (h)durationtime (h)- minutes
project- project
task- task
descriptionnote- note
Durations arrive as a clock duration like 1:30:00 and are parsed into whole minutes. First matching header wins, so a renamed column still lands.
After the import
Where your Clockify 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.
Projects — budget burn and margin, live
When Clockify is the better answer
Budget is the binding constraint and a free tier for unlimited users decides it.
If that is the deciding requirement, buy that instead.
Questions
Clockify alternatives: what managers ask
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- Can I import my Clockify data into WorkMonitor?
- Yes, with a mapper rather than by hand. The importer reads email or user for the person, start date or date for the day, and duration (h), duration or time (h) for the length, parsing clock durations into minutes, with project, task and description carried across.
- Does WorkMonitor have a free plan?
- Two seats, free permanently and without a card. It is a genuinely free tier rather than a trial, but it is two seats — not unlimited users, which is the honest difference worth weighing here.
- What is the best Clockify alternative once free time tracking stops being enough?
- The point it stops being enough is usually money: hours nobody entered, invoices built by hand, a payroll that does not reconcile. WorkMonitor captures the hours, carries approved time into invoices and payroll on one rate engine, and shows each project’s margin while it is running.
- What do I get for paying that a free timesheet does not give me?
- Hours captured rather than typed, corrections that append with an author and a reason, approval that refuses a self-approval, budgets that show margin as it burns, a payroll run that has to balance before export, and a certificate a client verifies without an account.
- Can WorkMonitor produce invoices from tracked time?
- Yes, on Business — approved hours seed the invoice through the same rate engine that feeds payroll, so the two cannot disagree, and a finalized invoice seeds a verifiable certificate for the client.
- How hard is it to switch from a free tool?
- The import is one CSV with a preset behind it, so the history comes across on the first pass. The larger cost is agreeing internally what gets captured — which is why capture policy is per team and per region rather than one global switch.
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.