Connecteam time tracking app review 2024

Written by: Neil Powell

Time tracking apps that allow for good time management is a must-have tool for most modern businesses. From simple tracking of work hours to offering insights into time management and helping improve team productivity, time tracking apps can fullfil several functions for companies. They allow for smart payroll processing since team leaders and managers can view live feeds of worker locations and activity levels.

Time-tracking apps offer features like notifications, geofencing, integrated communication tools, dedicated time tracking capabilities, and rich reporting tools to benefit companies and businesses. In this Connecteam time tracking app review 2024 we will examine in more detail the key features, pricing, and pros and cons of the app.

Pros:

✅ Valued for cost-effectiveness and simplicity.
✅ Provides a wide range of features alongside exceptional support.
✅ Users appreciate the vast selection of features from task management to time tracking.
✅ The interface is user and developer friendly.
✅ Customer support is responsive and beneficial.
✅ Suits various industries including SMEs, field service, construction, and HR.
✅ Includes a helpful free plan with essential features.

Cons:

❌ Concerns over GPS reliability, with a fix expected soon.
❌ Temporary service disruptions due to occasional updates.
❌ Advanced features come at a higher cost, potentially straining small business budgets.
❌ Confusion around pricing plans and included features.
❌ Technical issues, such as problems with the built-in camera in Forms.

Table of Contents

Pricing and Plans

Free plan: For small business or those just starting out, the free plan lets you experience Connecteam’s platform without spending a penny. You get a free, fully customisable instance on Connecteam along with a unlimited user hub, basic chat, automatic shift scheduling and vacation/off time, call lists, time clock, time-off requests, tasks and much more.

Basic Plan: For small businesses and entrepreneurs ready to take the next step, the Basic plan provides an additional level of access to Connecteam’s built-in features. The Basic plan starts at $29/month (for the first 30 users) and includes advanced task management, communication tools and reporting features. The Basic plan is made for a small to medium business looking for affordable priced software.

Advanced Plan: A more advanced and extensive solution, the Premium plan is the best choice for companies requiring richer functionality and higher-level features, such as advanced reporting, advanced analytics, greater customisation and enhanced support. It includes all the features of the Basic Plan. The Premium plan starts at $49/month (for up to 30 users).

Expert Plan: The Expert plan is the one for the enterprise, and will be most appealing to organizations that employ a large number of people, or that have more complicated operations, as it contains everything in the Advanced plan, with priority support, an API to create custom integrations, and an assigned onboarding manager. Starts from $99/month (first 30 users).

Enterprise Plan: Large enterprises and organizations who have custom needs can enjoy all Connecteam’s features through the Enterprise solution, designed to meet their exact needs via full customisation, dedicated support and integrations.

The price of each plan depends on the number of the users and the features they get.

Key Features

Time Tracking

Using Connecteam, you can have your work hour tracked precisely, no smartwatch required. A simple tap on a mobile device for clocking in, and again on a mobile device to clock out. It is easily adoptable, and benefits come directly to you from your phone, right where you may spend most of your time working.

(Source: Connecteam)

Geofencing

Now, Connecteam’s geofencing feature lets you dramatically transform the way you track work hours and boost field employee productivity. For starters, you can segment your work sites by drawing a virtual boundary around each. You can then leverage this geofence for a variety of purposes.

Connecteam will log the time your employees enter and exit these work sites (and any other zones you might draw), automatically calculating your payroll and ensuring your employees aren’t clocking in before they leave the house, or clocking out when they’re still on location. This adds tremendous efficiency to your payroll and other reporting/closing processes but also ensures every minute worked is counted for.

Geofencing enhances the way your remote or on-site teams operate and helps you get a pulse on your job sites as well as your whole organization. Geofencing works for you, regardless of where your employees are based: it enhances your attendance policies, enforces compliance with labor laws, keeps your team accountable and safe, and much more besides.

With Connecteam’s geofencing, you’re always on the pulse of every job site. You’re always informed about who’s where and, what’s more, you’re always updated about when your team members enter or exit any one of the virtual fences you’ve created. In short, Connecteam geofencing is a smart, automated solution that helps you maximize operational efficiency and meet the shifting demands of a dynamic workforce.

Geofencing can ensure employees are where they need to be, at the time they need to be, and allows you to set up unlimited custom zones as often as needed for shifts and locations – creating unique geofence radiuses and blocking entry at certain times and into certain areas. Attendance can be approved or rejected outside zone areas, making it easy for employees to do their job while increasing workplace accountability (Source: Connecteam)

Task Management

Connecteam’s task management tool gives you the power to simplify your daily operations, manage your time more effectively, and boost team productivity. You can easily create, assign, and follow tasks in real-time, so everyone involved knows what must be done, where and when. You can also set deadlines, prioritize tasks, and track statuses while work is in progress – all on the same tool.

At any given time, you can see what everyone is working on, allowing you to plan and allocate tasks efficiently, avoiding a situation where one person is overloaded with work. You can also add instructions and attach files, and make sure that your team has everything they need to complete their assignments with maximum efficiency. You’re also always notified in real time, making sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Communication Tools

With Connecteam’s communication tools, especially the live chat feature, you can change the way you coordinate and communicate with your team, giving you a dynamic way to communicate. Using the live chat, you can communicate with one team member at a time or create multiple group chats. So whether you need to ask a question in a pinch, give positive feedback or respond to a query, you can do it all within a few seconds.

Similarly, files, links and images can be shared within the chat, whether you have a detailed conversation to have or a decision to make quickly. In conclusion, the live chat feature offered by Connecteam is an extremely useful tool in your overall communication toolkit.

It has its own calendar so you can record upcoming events and set alerts and reminders for yourself and other family members so that everyone knows what is happening and when.

(Source: Connecteam)

When it comes to integration with other platforms (such as email or other project management tools) it could be broader, so that you could work across different platforms without having to constantly switch from one app to the other. Every now and then, your team members will want to tap into past communications to retrieve information based on a certain topic. This can and should be done through a better filtering option and search feature.

Reporting and analytics

The reporting and analytics features in Connecteam’s mobile app give you real-time visibility into your team’s operations, performance and efficiency, so you can spot trends, drill down to get specifics and make improvements. You can create detailed reports for everything from individual and team performance to attendance, task completion, compliance and much more.

With Connecteam’s easily customisable analytics dashboard, you can zoom in on the core metrics that matter to you, whether that’s employees’ time on task, shifts and scheduling efficiency, or patterns of message communications. Adapting the system to the specific needs of how you operate gives you relevant information that can be immediately translated into management practice.

Real-time data is one of the most useful features of Connecteam’s analytics, especially if your team works in an environment where conditions change quickly. If your dashboard is updated in real time, you can make on-the-fly decisions based on cutting-edge data. And if something goes wrong, you can change strategies without much delay.

Despite Connecteam’s powerful analytics, there is room for improvement as the data can sometimes be too unwieldy for the user and cause some to become ‘drowned’ in the information. If Connecteam were to simplify the interface, users could easily access and digest previously opaque data, and in doing so, improve the user experience.

With automated reports you can get real-time updates on employee attendance (Source: Connecteam)

With customizable reports you can find out how many hours staff are spending on their jobs and on each specific project, analyze trends in attendance and leave, and track overall employee satisfaction. And if you want to automate the creation of reports, then go ahead: Connecteem will create them for you, delivering you the relevant information automatically to your inbox.

How does connecteam compare to its closest competitors?

When comparing Connecteam with its closest competitors, Deputy, When I Work, and TSheets, Connecteam stands above in some parts and might trail behind in others. Arguing that companies shouldn’t have to use five separate apps to plan a shift, schedule a job, communicate with a team, manage tasks and gather data from the field.

Connecteam brings communication, scheduling, task management and reporting together on one platform that allows companies to streamline multiple operational needs together on one integrated, easy-to-use app. Connecteam offers an intuitive interface that appeals to people who aren’t tech-minded, and the company’s objective is to ensure your team gets up and running in minutes.

On the flip side, apps such as Deputy or When I Work focus mainly on scheduling and time management, and tend to have more advanced tools in those exact areas. With Deputy, for example, you can use a more sophisticated scheduling tool that might automatically generate the ideal staffing for a shift based on their skills, availability and labour cost – a big deal if you care more about optimising your workforce management and cutting costs.

TSheets (now called QuickBooks Time) is the best choice for tracking time and is a particularly solid bet when it comes to compatibility with your financial management software, such as QuickBooks. This one is particularly useful if tracking time accurately and/or having your money kept safely in one place is a priority for your business.

But what Connecteam has over them is in its pricing structure (it’s always good to find a solution that doesn’t cost a fortune!), particularly for small to medium-sized businesses, as well as it being truly mobile-first in its design. Its also worth mentioning their top notch customer service.

It adds up to an impressive suite of useful tools and a very affordable pricing model. Where the platform could be improved would be in better user experience/interface for certain features, and in providing deeper integration with externally provided HR, payroll and other financial systems, areas where some rivals currently perform better.

Customer Support

Critiques are consistently excellent, with their promptness and eagerness to help the user. You will, at the very least, get a quick, helpful response whether something goes wrong or you just have a question. Moreover, they’re constantly updating the app according to their users’ requests, which tells you the app developers really care about their users’ needs.

Capterra gives Connecteam a rating of 4.8/5

Trustpilot gives Connecteam a rating of 4.9/5

Conclusion

It is evident that Connecteam is among the top all-in-one employee management solutions, as it offers an extensive range of all-round tools, which are designed to make it easier for employees to stay connected, manage projects easily, and enhance employee engagement. The reason to consider Connecteam is because it is an all-in-one platform that provides a wide variety of applications in a single user interface, which is useful to businesses needing to manage more than one task.

Connecteam’s affordability is also a factor: it offers immense value for small to mid-sized businesses. Its shift scheduling feature is unique, but you also get a task management function, an online store, employee training modules with certificates and more. In fact, you can access all of these features for a mere three to four dollars per person per month.

The mobile-first approach is also a major advantage. Field teams or remote workers with minimal technical contacts will be able to utilise the same tools as your office desk workers from their mobile phones – which Connecteam prioritises over desktop access.

However, while Connecteam might have as many good-to-great features as the generalist competitors, it likely won’t have the deep feature specialisation that you’ll find in a platform tailored to intense scheduling or deep financial integrations.

Businesses with lots of need for very specialised tools will need to layer on more integrations or other services. Basically, if you’re looking for quite an extensive, simple-to-implement, affordable, operational efficiency increasing, worker engagement centric, all-in-one digital solution for your organisation, then Connecteam is seriously a contender for your attention.

It doesn’t necessarily have a high end feature that catapults it into the top slot over others, but we feel it balances affordability and features, such that it’s suitable for medium to small businesses looking to operate more efficiently, create greater buy-in among workers or both. Obviously, how suitable it is depends on how well its features all match up with your business’ unique requirements, which you’ll need to test out in a trial run, before pulling the trigger.

Connecteam is best suited for…

Small to medium-sized businesses looking for an affordable employee management solution.
Companies with remote or deskless workers needing efficient communication and scheduling tools.
Organizations seeking to streamline task management and track employee progress in real-time.
Enterprises aiming to improve team engagement through integrated recognition and reward systems.
Managers who desire a mobile-first approach to manage teams on-the-go.
Organisations that wish to combine multiple management software systems into an all-in-one tool for ease and cost savings.
Industries such as construction, healthcare, retail and hospitality, which are composed of deskless or field workers.
HR departments looking for efficient onboarding, training, and compliance management features.

Connecteam is not suited for…

Large complex enterprises that likely already have an organisational structure that is so customised it requires many more bells and whistles than Connecteam.
Organisations that have broad, integrated suite software already in place for employee management and who are not seeking to switch or consolidate platforms.
Companies looking to manage more complex projects with greater analytics ability and reporting.
Organizations with a strong preference for desktop-based management solutions, given Connecteam’s mobile-first approach.
Industries without much use for deskless workers or remote teams to begin with, such as network engineers or lawyers working from home, and so have no need for the full suite of Connecteam features.
Companies that want open-source options – platforms they can customise heavily to suit their specific IT and operational needs.
Businesses that prioritize face-to-face interactions for team management and communications over digital tools.
Organizations in highly specialized sectors that require industry-specific solutions not covered by Connecteam’s features.