Time tracking software for SMEs: six questions, 21 providers

Question 1: does the software satisfy the record-keeping duty

The duty has existed since 13 September 2022. On that day the Federal Labour Court ruled (order 1 ABR 22/21) that employers have to introduce a system for recording working time, derived from section 3(2) no. 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, following the judgment of the European Court of Justice of 14 May 2019 (C-55/18).

The much-cited amendment to the Working Hours Act, which is to prescribe electronic recording, so far exists only as a ministerial draft. Anyone advertising a "duty from 2026" is selling a legislative plan as applicable law. The duty already applies, regardless of it.

For the selection that means: software has to record the start, the end and the duration of daily working time, document corrections traceably and know the limits of the Working Hours Act: at most eight hours a working day, exceptionally ten (section 3 ArbZG), breaks from six hours (section 4 ArbZG), eleven hours of rest between two shifts (section 5 ArbZG).

In some industries section 17 MiLoG comes on top: the start, the end and the duration have to be recorded within seven days of the work and kept for two years. Affected are the economic sectors named in section 2a of the Act to Combat Undeclared Work, among them construction, catering, passenger transport, haulage, the fairground trade, forestry, building cleaning, exhibition construction and the meat industry.

• Project time tools such as awork, Clockify and Toggl Track count hours against tasks but check no maximum working time, no rest period and no break requirement.
• At Ordio, legally compliant time recording starts only with the Plus package; the Starter package does not include it.
• At Shiftbase the basic legal check sits in the Enterprise package, and the full check for breaches costs 0.50 euros per person per month as an add-on.

Question 2: what does the software really cost

The entry price on the home page is rarely the price the business pays. Five patterns keep recurring in the market, and all five push the figure up.

An example with the same scope of features makes it tangible: 15 people, one site, time recording with leave and overtime, plus a roster.

• Module pricing: Crewmeister charges for time recording, the leave planner, the shift planner and the DATEV connection separately. TimeTac and ZEP likewise.
• Base fees: TimeTac 19.50 euros a month per company, HRworks 60 to 300 euros, Planday 25 euros from the Plus plan, clockin 10 euros with fewer than five users.
• Mandatory support: Papershift includes basic support at 39 euros a month as a compulsory part of every package, with a one-year term.
• One-off fees: Kenjo from 400 euros for setup and 600 euros for the DATEV connection, MEP24 249 to 999 euros activation, HRworks 1,550 to 4,480 euros setup, Shiftbase 150 to 575 euros for guided onboarding.
• Terms: the price quoted often applies only with annual or two-yearly payment. At clockin the monthly price is 10 % above the 24-month price, at Ordio 16 % above the annual price.

Question 3: where does the data sit, and who operates it

The server location and the operator are two different questions, and in the market they regularly get collapsed into one. A data centre in Germany does not remove the data from US law: providers with a US parent are subject to the CLOUD Act and to surveillance powers under FISA 702, regardless of where the servers stand.

How solid such assurances are was answered under oath by Microsoft's legal chief in France before the French Senate on 10 June 2025. Asked whether French data would never go to US authorities without consent, Anton Carniaux said: "Non, je ne peux pas le garantir."

Three patterns appear in the comparison: location Germany with a German operator, location Germany with a US operator, and no information at all. The third pattern is more common than you would expect.

• Germany, German operator: MetronHR (Hetzner Online GmbH, Nuremberg and Falkenstein).
• Germany, US operator: Crewmeister (Amazon Web Services, Frankfurt am Main), awork (Microsoft servers in Germany), Clockodo (Microsoft Azure, Frankfurt and Berlin).
• Germany, operator not named: Timebutler (data centre near Frankfurt), timr (servers in Germany, ISO 27001), ZEP (several German data centres), TimeTac (main servers in Germany, further ones in the EU).
• EU with no country named: Papershift ("EU hosting"), Factorial ("in the EU"), Shiftbase ("European servers"), Personio (AWS in the EU).
• Outside Germany or not named at all: Planday (Microsoft Azure via the Irish Microsoft entity), Sage (SageID via AWS Dublin, system administration via Azure Dublin), HRworks (AWS Dublin), Kenjo ("ISO 27001 certified servers", no country), askDANTE ("our servers, in a data centre"), Clockify (predominantly the USA).

Question 4: does the month-end close come out ready to use

Where payroll is done outside the business, what decides it is not whether software can produce files. They all can. What decides it is the state the figures arrive in at the tax practice. Raw clocking times have to be turned there into target hours, a balance and premium categories, and that work is billed by effort.

Two questions therefore get further in a conversation with the tax adviser than any question of format: are night, Sunday and public holiday hours reported separately under section 3b EStG? And is the month settled before the file leaves the building? Without the first the practice recalculates, without the second it checks twice.

MetronHR delivers a monthly overview per person as Excel or CSV: target hours from the stored working time model, hours recorded, the balance, premium hours separated into night, Sunday and public holiday, plus days of leave and sickness. The period can be locked beforehand; corrections afterwards run as a change request, which is decided and recorded.

• The payroll handover is not included in the base price everywhere: at Crewmeister the DATEV connection is an add-on module from 0.60 euros per user per month, at Kenjo implementation costs a one-off 600 euros, at Ordio the export belongs only to the Pro package (169 euros per site per month), at Papershift only to the Professional package (9 euros per person), at ZEP the interface is added in the price calculator.
• Sage runs payroll itself rather than handing it over; the payroll module costs from 39 euros a month.
• At MetronHR the monthly overview is in both plans, Team and Professional. The change history of time entries sits in Professional.

Question 5: the app, the terminal and the people without a desk

In trades, care, catering and retail the majority do not work at a computer. What decides it then is how people clock: with an app on their own phone, at a tablet on the wall, or at permanently installed hardware with a badge.

A mobile website is not the same as an app. Timebutler, for instance, is optimised for smartphones and tablets but names no native app in the App Store or on Google Play, and that very point appears as criticism in OMR reviews. For desk teams it makes no difference, for field work and building sites it does.

For terminals the cost models differ: TimeTac sells its own hardware from 29.90 euros a month, askDANTE likewise. MetronHR, Crewmeister, clockin, Shiftbase and Ordio use an existing Android tablet.

Question 6: is time alone enough

Time recording is the occasion but rarely the whole need. As soon as a business hires, contracts, leave entitlements, documents with expiry dates and the joining process come with it. Anyone keeping those subjects alongside in folders and spreadsheets maintains master data twice.

The providers split clearly here: pure time recording (Clockodo, Crewmeister, TimeTac, timr, awork, Clockify, Toggl Track), time plus a personnel file (clockin, Timebutler, askDANTE with an add-on, Papershift, Ordio), and full HR suites (Personio, HRworks, Kenjo, Factorial, Sage, MetronHR).

Only a few offer onboarding as a process with tasks, owners and deadlines: Personio, HRworks, Kenjo (from Growth), Factorial, Shiftbase (HR Pro add-on) and MetronHR. Client-linked hour packages with renewal and carry-over are offered in the whole comparison only by MetronHR.

• All 23 providers with prices and sources
• What MetronHR costs

When MetronHR is the answer to the six questions

Four patterns emerge from the six questions in which the answer is the same. Where a different need is to the fore, the last row leads to the individual comparisons, in which every third-party figure carries its source and the date it was retrieved.

• All individual comparisons with prices and sources
• What MetronHR costs