Strong time and location verification, but missing key integrations like payroll.
Verdict: 6.3/10
Chronotek is primarily a time tracking and scheduling platform, but it also offers a range of other handy team management features, like a communication hub, HR management, job costing tools, and payroll reporting.
Chronotek’s features make it ideal for project-based work and industries where employees are distributed across locations—for instance, janitorial services, construction, and security operations. I like that the communication hub has a tool that translates messages into 35 languages.
However, while Chronotek is great for diverse teams, it’sunsuitable for global teams. The app isn’t available outside North America. Moreover, Chronotek is costlier than some other apps I’ve reviewed and doesn’t offer a free plan. Small businesses and startups with lower budgets should explore alternatives.
Key Features:
- Timekeeping. Employees can clock in and out of their jobs, and you can track their GPS locations and mandate voice biometrics or “TimeTilesTM” for verification.
- Scheduling. Create and assign shifts to team members, including breaks, travel time, and overtime hours—or offer open shifts that employees can opt for.
- Smart alerts. Get notified about missed jobs, late clock-ins, overtime, budget issues, GPS location mismatches, and more.
- Communication. Use a centralized communication hub for job-specific channels, private messages, and company-wide announcements.
- HR management. Manage all employee information—from documents to personal data—in one place.
- Payroll. Prepare payroll reports, spot and fix issues, and lock pay periods before exporting data for payroll.
| Pros ✅ • It’s great for field, frontline, and distributed workers • Location and voice verification prevents time theft • Smart alerts keep you updated | Cons ❌ • Available only in North America • Costlier than some alternatives • No third-party integrations |
Chronotek Pricing
Chronotek’s website mentions 3 price packages and lists the features included below.
| Starter1-10 employees | $14/month flat platform fee +$6/user/month fee | All features, including: • Roles • Payroll Preparation • GPS Location Tracking • Reports • Travel & Breaks • Profit Tracking • Scheduling • Documents • Communication • Left-Job Alerts |
| Professional 11-500 employees | $14/month flat platform fee +$6/user/month fee | • Same features as above |
| Enterprise 500+ employees | Starts at $2,500/month | • Same features as above |
I found this pricing structure very confusing. The Starter and Pro plans seem to have no differences other than the number of users they support. So, I wondered why these were listed as distinct pricing plans.
When I asked this question using Chronotek’s live support chat, I felt even more confused. The AI chatbot mentioned just 2 pricing plans:
“We currently offer two plans: Classic and Pro. Pro includes features like TimeTiles for ensuring employees are onsite when clocking in, advanced communication features, and push notifications for critical events.”
The chatbot priced the Pro plan at a $14/month base fee + 6/user/month fee, which is the same as the Starter and Professional plans mentioned on the website. But, it didn’t indicate pricing for the Classic plan, which I can’t see anywhere on the website. What’s worse—the chatbot had no knowledge about the Enterprise plan:
“The information I’ve found doesn’t mention an Enterprise plan or compare it to the Pro plan. We currently offer two plans: Classic and Pro.”
Without clear and accurate prices for the other plans, I can comment only on Chronotek’s Pro pricing plan, which seems relatively affordable, especially with the 20% discount for an annual billing commitment. It’s less costly than solutions like Timeero, Buddy Punch, and VeriClock, for instance. That said, it’s also costlier than various solutions—including Deputy and Connecteam.
| Team size | Chronotek (Pro) | VeriClock (Universal) | Deputy (Time & Attendance) | Connecteam (Advanced) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| View pricing | View pricing | View pricing | View pricing | |
| 10 Users | $59/mo | $60/mo | $45/mo | Free for life—All features and dashboards |
| 20 Users | $107/mo | $110/mo | $90/mo | $49/mo |
| 30 Users | $155/mo | $160/mo | $135/mo | $49/mo |
| 50 Users | $251/mo | $260/mo | $225/mo | $79/mo |
| Read our full VeriClock review | Read our full Deputy review | Learn more about Connecteam |
*Billed annually, as of 2025
Unfortunately, unlike platforms like Connecteam, Chronotek doesn’t offer a free plan for small businesses, which I think is a miss.
It does offer a 14-day free trial, which is better than some competitors—for example, ExakTime. That said, I had trouble signing up for the trial (more on that below).
Verdict: 6/10
Chronotek Usability and Interface
Signing up
Signing up for Chronotek’s free trial wasn’t easy. In addition to providing company and personal contact details, I had to select all the reasons I wanted to explore Chronotek. I was also asked to pick my preferred pay frequency, though weirdly, I could choose between weekly, bi-weekly, and semi-monthly only. There was no monthly option, which made me wonder if the payroll tool supports monthly payments.
While I was largely OK with these extra steps, what happened after I submitted my responses disappointed me. Instead of having my free trial account ready to go, the website said I had to wait for a Chronotek team member to get back to me.
About 7 hours later, I heard back from a customer support agent asking for more information, and despite my prompt reply, they never responded.
Web portal
While I couldn’t test Chronotek’s features firsthand, I’ve relied on information and screenshots from its website, customer reviews, and YouTube videos to write a fair review.
Chronotek’s web interface has a modern design with a clean white and blue color scheme, easy-to-read font, and spaced-out text.
Features are also easy to find. The top bar has your company or workspace name, teams, and a search bar. Meanwhile, the left sidebar houses all key features, including payroll, time tracking, scheduling, jobs, and reporting.
When it comes to navigating individual features, some are easier than others. In a YouTube video by Chronotek, viewing and adding team members or pay types looked relatively straightforward. However, the payroll dashboard seemed cluttered and overwhelming.
Finally, I didn’t see anything on Chronotek’s website about supporting users with visual, hearing, motor, or other impairments.
Verdict: 7/10
Mobile app
While I couldn’t use the mobile app myself, I could access screenshots from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
The mobile app has a look and feel similar to the web portal: white and blue with a modern design. It has key features—such as teams, jobs, and messages—on the bottom bar. However, it seems more focused on job scheduling and time and location tracking, as it has fewer administrative and management features.
Here’s how the web portal and mobile app compare at first glance.
| Menu Item | App | |
| Web | Mobile | |
| Core features | ||
| Time tracking | ✅ | ✅ |
| Biometric voice recognition | ❌ | ✅ |
| GPS location tracking | ❌ | ✅ |
| Scheduling | ✅ | ✅ |
| Jobs | ✅ | ✅ |
| Communications | ✅ | ✅ |
| Analysis features | ||
| Reports | ✅ | ❌ |
| Payroll view | ✅ | ❌ |
| Management features | ||
| Smart alerts | ✅ | ✅ |
| Teams | ✅ | ✅ |
| Account management | ✅ | ❌ |
| Settings and customizations | ✅ | ❌ |
While I understand the mobile app is more for employee use, managers and admins in non-desk businesses are also often in the field or on the frontline, so I’d love to see the full range of management features available to them on the mobile app.
Unfortunately, the website doesn’t mention offline time tracking. Meanwhile, platforms Hubstaff boast about it, and rightfully so. That’s why I’m inclined to believe you can’t track time on Chronotek without an internet connection, which isn’t great for teams that work in low or no-connectivity locations.
Verdict: 7/10
Chronotek Core Functionalities
Here are Chronotek’s key features and functionalities.
Job scheduling
Chronotek lets you create and assign shifts or jobs to your team members based on their roles, availability, skills, and pay rates. It also enables you to set flexible shifts for team members to claim.
These are great—but standard—scheduling features. I wish Chronotek offered auto-scheduling like I’ve seen with Connecteam. This feature automatically accounts for factors like availability and skills and assigns shifts to workers without admin intervention.
That said, a few things set Chronotek’s offering apart.
Chronotek lets you set custom caution alerts for different shifts or employees. You might configure alerts to occur 15 minutes post-scheduled start time for frontline employees and 30 minutes for supervisors, for example.
The scheduling dashboard is in a calendar format, showing you real-time job coverage, upcoming job assignments, and total scheduled hours for the week or day so you can project labor costs accordingly.
Additionally, it highlights problematic shifts in different colors—for instance, if they’re unassigned or if the actual hours the employees worked didn’t match the scheduled hours.
However, some aspects of this feature confused me. For example, the dashboard shows you the starting time for each shift but not the end time. This makes it less intuitive than apps like Replicon or Shiftcare, as it’s harder to understand time slots at a glance.
Verdict: 7.5/10
Verified time and location tracking
Employees can use their Chronotek app to clock in and out of their mobile devices or via phone call using the landline on site, verifying their locations and IDs by biometric voice recognition.
You can also track employees’ live locations when they’re on the clock and set geofences to prevent them from punching time outside designated work zones.
I’ve seen GPS and geofencing capabilities in various time tracking platforms before, but Chronotek takes verification to the next level through its exclusive TimeTiles™ tool. These are physical devices you can place at work sites. Employees must tap into these with their smartphones to clock in, ensuring they’re physically present at their place of work.
With so many verification tools, I worried users would have to sift through all the GPS, time, and TimeTiles data to find red flags. But Chronotek does this for you by sending real-time alerts for infractions, such as employees leaving geofences, early or late clock-ins or clock-outs, TimeTiles bypasses, and location mismatches.
It also keeps a record of these as visual maps on employees’ time cards, which even shows you overtime, under-time, and employees’ breaks and meal times. This helps you vet time entries before approving them for payroll.
Chronotek goes above and beyond with its travel time calculations and alerts. It uses the GPS map functionality to measure how long employees take getting from one job to another and alerts you of any discrepancies between stated and actual travel time—a great way to prevent time theft.
Overall, this feature impressed me. The main thing missing was the ability to track time offline. I also didn’t see anything about the ability to add manual time entries.
Verdict: 9/10
Payroll
While I’m unsure if Chronotek has built-in default overtime rates, I know it lets you allocate custom pay codes to specific types of jobs, overriding the employee or job’s default pay rate.
For example, you can create a pay code called “OT Sunday” and input the overtime pay rate for this code. This way, when employees are assigned to a shift with this pay code, Chronotek automatically feeds the new rate into payroll reports, so you don’t have to update these reports manually.
While I find this super handy, I wish I could add a multiplier—for instance, 3x the base rate—rather than a fixed rate for each pay code. VeriClock has this, and it reduces the number of custom pay codes you must create.
Chronotek also lets you create 3 types of pay profiles—hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors—and customize which types of paid time off (PTO) apply to each category so this can be factored into employees’ payroll reports.
Once time cards for the pay period are ready, you can review, edit, lock, and approve them from your dashboard. You can then select employees and export payroll reports in batches to use with your payroll provider.
This is where I found Chronotek’s website misleading. It lists payroll as a feature, but it doesn’t have built-in payroll functionality. Instead, it helps you prepare accurate payroll reports you can use with external payroll solutions.
Unfortunately, based on my chat with the support chatbot, Chronotek doesn’t have any direct payroll integrations at this time—unlike most time-tracking software.
Verdict: 5/10
HR management
Employees can use the app to view their PTO balances and request leave, while admins can view and approve requests from their own dashboards.
You can also manage your employees’ data—including hiring dates, personal and emergency contact information, job roles, certifications, and other documents—with Chronotek’s employee database and document management features. The platform sends you alerts when documents or certifications are expiring to help you stay compliant.
Further, Chronotek helps you create and manage your company’s skills database. In addition to creating custom roles, teams, and departments, you can also align roles with specific skills. This is useful for scheduling employees who have the necessary skills for certain roles or jobs.
Many time tracking and scheduling platforms—for example, Toggl Track—don’t offer HR management, so I was pleased to see this. That said, I wish Chronotek went the extra mile with built-in training tools and a knowledge base, like Connecteam does.
Verdict: 8.5/10
Communications
Chronotek has a central communication hub that offers 3 types of internal communication tools.
- Team and job boards let employees message each other in group settings for specific teams or job types. This channel-style communication ensures messages are organized and relevant to those who receive them.
- Direct messaging allows for 1-to-1 interactions between you and your team members—or between employees themselves.
- Announcements let you send important notices to your entire company. You can even add a “must-read before next clock-in” option to ensure employees read it before they can punch into their next shift.
I was impressed that you can attach files and that messages can be translated into 35 languages, which is great for overcoming language barriers.
However, I would’ve liked to see more communication tools—such as the polls offered by Connecteam and Homebase—to further encourage open and honest 2-way communication.
Verdict: 8/10
Integrations
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see anything on Chronotek’s website about third-party integrations. What’s worse, its AI chatbot told me there are none.
“We don’t currently offer direct integrations for project management, CRM, or other systems, nor do we have an API available. Our focus is on providing comprehensive operational control within our own system.”
This gives the platform minus points in my book, especially considering it’s not a comprehensive, all-in-one solution that offers everything in-house. Apps like Timely have many more impressive integrations.
Verdict: 1/10
Chronotek Security Features
I found Chronotek’s privacy policy and information about its security features pretty cryptic.
According to the policy, Chronotek implements “industry leading services and best practices,” but it doesn’t specify which security certifications or mention compliance with international security standards like ISO 27001 like Clockodo and other apps do.
Here’s what I learned:
- Chronotek lets you set custom roles and permissions for users to ensure only authorized personnel can access employee data.
- The mobile app requires 2-factor authentication to log in.
- GPS tracking is available only while employees are clocked in and with their consent, preventing companies from getting into legal trouble.
I was disappointed to see nothing about GDPR and HIPAA compliance, which apps like Timeero and Connecteam offer.
Verdict: 4/10
Chronotek Reporting & Analytics
While I couldn’t access Chronotek’s portal, here are some reporting capabilities I learned about from the website and online videos.
- Payroll dashboard: See detailed information on pay, overtime, special pay rates, PTO, and more by employee or by job. Payroll reports are exportable in formats compatible with ADP, Paychex, Paycom, and PDP.
- Costing report: View real-time data on labor costs, travel, overtime costs, profit predictions, and more across different jobs, customers, or locations.
- Travel and mileage reports: Automatically capture travel time between job sites.
Overall, the number of reports available seems limited. For instance, there aren’t ready-to-use time and attendance reports. I couldn’t find mention of reports on billable vs. non-billable hours, either. Further, there don’t appear to be employee engagement analytics for the announcements tool.
I’m also disappointed at the lack of customization options available.
Verdict: 5/10
Chronotek Customer Support
Chronotek offers customer support in the following ways:
- Live chat
- Phone
On the surface, this seems sufficient. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best experience. I was in conversation with Chronotek’s support agent via email about setting up a trial account and never heard back.
Additionally, the live chat option is an AI chatbot. It can answer basic questions but not explain essential information about the pricing plans. I wish I had the option to chat with a human agent.
It’s also worth mentioning that the chatbot could be incorrect about the pricing, lack of integrations, and more—it could be operating off outdated information, for instance. Still, since this is one of the primary forms of support, potential users (like me) will assume it’s reliable.
Verdict: 5/10
What Are Chronotek’s Review Ratings from Review Sites?
(As of February 2025)
Capterra: 3.8/5
G2: 4.5/5
Software Advice: 3.8/5
GetApp: 3.8/5
Google Play Store: 3.4/5
iOS App Store: 4.3/5
TrustRadius: NA
Chronotek App Review
Chronotek is a timekeeping, scheduling, and communication platform. It offers an impressive suite of time and location verification tools, and I really like its smart alerts.
However, some things felt amiss for me.
For example, according to the chatbot, the platform doesn’t have any direct integrations—not even for payroll (despite Chronotek being advertised as a payroll solution). There are also less costly solutions available. Businesses needing an all-in-one solution at a lower cost should explore alternative platforms.
Connecteam: The Better Chronotek Alternative
I think Connecteam is the best Chronotek alternative. It’s an all-in-one work management tool with a user-friendly interface, full-featured mobile app, and great customer support.
Here are Connecteam’s key features.
GPS time clock
Connecteam’s employee time clock lets employees punch in and out of their shifts or jobs with a single click from their smartphones or a shared kiosk. I like the flexibility of adding manual entries when needed. You can track employees’ GPS locations when they’re on the clock and even set geofences and overtime limits to prevent time theft and buddy punching.
Time logs are automatically converted to timesheets, which you can review, edit, and approve easily from your dashboard.
Importantly, unlike Chronotek, Connecteam has direct integrations with multiple popular payroll providers—including QuickBooks Online, Gusto, and Paychex—for seamless and accurate employee payments.
Job scheduling
Connecteam’s staff scheduling tools let you create and assign shifts or jobs to employees based on their locations, preferences, availability, and qualifications.
I love its auto-scheduler, which does this for you. Connecteam also offers open shifts for employees to pick up and easy shift swapping to ensure business isn’t disrupted by last-minute changes.
Communication tools
Connecteam’s online team chat lets employees connect in 1-to-1 or group settings. In addition to sharing text, you can share files, photos, videos, GIFs, and audio notes—putting it a notch above Chronotek.
The updates feature lets you post company-wide announcements and ask employees to confirm they’ve read them. Further, you can create surveys and polls to gather feedback, which Chronotek doesn’t offer.
PTO, compliance, HR, and document management
Connecteam’s time off management lets employees view leave balances and request PTO from the app. You can create custom leave types, approve requests, and more.
And Connecteam’s team documents feature lets you gather employees’ documents, licenses, and certifications. You can also set expiration alerts and collect e-signatures.
Great value for money
You can access all this and more starting at just $29/month for up to 30 users. Unlike Chronotek, there’s also a free plan for small businesses and an easy 14-day free trial for everyone.
FAQs
Does Chronotek offer a free trial?
Yes, Chronotek offers a free 14-day trial but no free plan.
Is Chronotek HIPAA compliant?
Chronotek’s website doesn’t mention HIPAA or GDPR compliance.