clockodo vs ZEP

clockodo

Capture paths run from browser and desktop apps to iOS and Android with offline entry that syncs automatically, plus a punch clock that keeps running through project changes — and a shared time recording terminal appears exactly once in a features list, with no detail and no price. Corrections have a real workflow (retroactive entries, a split function for missed breaks, edit locks with digital signatures) and every edited entry carries a change annotation, but we found no public information on badge readers, geofenced or GPS check-in, or bulk correction with attribution.

ZEP

Browser, two app lines and a hardware terminal are all named, and both apps document offline capture that syncs automatically; GPS per stamp event is documented with the explicit note that it does not restrict stamping to a fixed radius — the vendor saying what the feature does not do. What I miss is the correction side: the help pages show an administrator mode that edits employee times, and I found no public information on a correction workflow with approval, bulk correction, or an audit trail of who changed what.

clockodo

The "gesetzeskonform nach BAG-Urteil" claim rests on configurable break rules (full or sliding deduction with a cutoff date), a break-enforcement setting in company settings, and warnings to both employee and employer when working times are not kept — yet no captured page names the 8/10-hour daily maximum or the 11-hour rest period, and retention is addressed only as a generic privacy-policy deletion rule rather than for the working-time record. The vendor's own help centre concedes the automatic break deduction books no break period, so an inspection would not show when the employee actually paused; the employee must record breaks themselves. A change annotation on edited entries exists, but nothing evidenced is tamper-evident, and we found no public information on on-call, standby or travel time.

ZEP

The homepage says times are tracked 'rechtssicher' and ZEP Clock lists 'Gesetzeskonforme Einstellungen', while the help pages actually specify configurable break rules, individual working-time models and per-employee reports. I found no public information on daily maximum-hour warnings, rest-period checks, a stated retention period, or a tamper-evident change history — and 'gesetzeskonform' without the named rule behind it is a label, not a feature.

clockodo

Absence is the strong half: ten absence types from vacation to quarantine, approval configurable per type with supervisor release, automatic entitlement with carry-over, country-specific holiday calendars, a team calendar and Outlook/Google synchronisation. But the shift or duty roster — half of what this criterion asks — is absent from every captured page: we found no public information on shift planning, shift templates, substitution or swap workflows, or coverage checks. Approved absences flow into a shared calendar and the payroll preparation, not into any plan that reflows around them.

ZEP

Vacation is genuinely handled: pro-rata entitlement with a worked calculation example, employment periods with their own quotas, sickness and other absence categories, an approval workflow with statuses and notifications, and shareable calendars. The planning side is percentage-based resource scheduling with overload warnings and cleanup of scheduling on absence days — I found no public information on shift templates, qualification or rest-period checks, per-location holiday calendars, or swap workflows, so this reads as capacity planning, not duty rostering. One blemish: after a contract change, entitlements are recalculated manually rather than automatically.

clockodo

Recorded time carries client, project, subproject and service with a stored hourly rate and lump sums, hour and money budgets with warnings before a project turns loss-making, and interval budgets in the top tier. Billing is a designed handoff rather than an export: invoice drafts arise from project times without retyping and pass by click to the named tools Lexware Office, sevdesk and easybill, with timesheet approvals under edit locks and digital signatures. We found no public information on cost centres, role-based rate cards, a per-entry billable flag, or how rates are treated when they change mid-project.

ZEP

This is the vendor's home ground: projects and tasks carry a billable flag, price groups hold rates per project and employee assignment, planned revenue is computed from scheduled hours, and released invoice items are billed automatically into XRechnung and ZUGFeRD documents with maintained DATEV and Lexware exports. Cost centres come from project or employee master data, documented for the expense handoff. I found no public information on budget warnings beyond planned-versus-actual totals, role-based rate cards, or client-facing reports, which keeps the record short of the top.

clockodo

There is a named DATEV Lohn & Gehalt connection, documented in German and English help pages with client and consultant numbers, personnel-number type and wage-type assignment, and absences stand ready for preliminary payroll. The fine print does the deciding: the export is available exclusively for hourly wage earners, and surcharges — or any employee who has stored surcharges — are excluded from it, so night, Sunday and holiday surcharges do not travel this path. We found no public information on time-account export, mid-month changes, or a lock step before transmission.

ZEP

The interfaces page names DATEV Lohn & Gehalt and LODAS, Personio receives ZEP time bookings, and the absence module promises workflows through to payroll — payroll is named, in other words. But the documented export covers travel expenses from an internal-cost perspective into financial accounting, not wage types, and I found no public information on how night, Sunday or holiday surcharges, time accounts or mid-month changes reach the payroll format. A named payroll interface with an undocumented payload is exactly the promise a buyer must test in a trial, not on a page.

clockodo

The contracting entity is Clockodo GmbH with a German register entry, product pages state data is stored on German servers, and the privacy policy names its processors — Mittwald in Espelkamp, HubSpot Germany, PayPal in Luxembourg, Stripe in the USA — with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework cited as the basis for the American one, which clears non-EU processing being named with a legal basis. It stops short of the full picture: we found no public information on ownership, published data-centre certification, whether the processor list is complete, or an on-premises and private-cloud option.

ZEP

The vendor states hosting and development in Germany, daily backups in multiple German data centres, and ISO 27001 covering ZEP and its cloud hosting partners. Who those partners are is the open question: I found no public information on a named data-centre provider, a published subprocessor list, or the contracting entity's jurisdiction beyond a German copyright footer naming ZEP GmbH. Germany by self-attestation is real but unverified, which sits mid-table for me.

clockodo

All three tiers carry public per-user net prices with VAT treatment stated, monthly and annual billing, cancellation at any month's end, no base or setup fee, and single users free permanently — the software invoice is computable from the pricing pages alone. Two pieces stay in the dark: the time recording terminal named among the capture paths has no price on any captured page, and from 20 users the vendor invites an individual offer, so a larger buyer cannot compute their annual invoice from public pages.

ZEP

All three tiers carry public per-user prices — 'Ab 2€ pro User', 'Ab 7€ pro User', 'Ab 18€ pro User' — with monthly billing and monthly contract adjustments stated. The captured pages name the add-on modules and the hardware terminal that the capture story depends on as purchasable but show no price for either, and teams above 25, 50 or 100 users move to individual offers. A price calculator is mentioned; I found no public information on whether it includes terminal hardware, setup, VAT treatment or renewal terms.