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Time Tracking & Attendance

DeskTime

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by DeskTime (Draugiem Group) · desktime.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Has read a great many pages claiming to be "BAG-konform" and wants to know which feature makes that true. Reads compliance claims for what they do not say: which module, at which tier, and whether the terminal in the photograph costs extra.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Capture in the real workplace

How this is scored

How time actually gets recorded across the workforces a buyer has — desk staff, field and site crews, shift and deskless workers — and what happens when the network is not there.

0 — One browser timer and nothing else; anyone away from a desk records nothing.

3 — Web plus a mobile app, but no offline capture, no shared terminal, and corrections are an admin task rather than a workflow.

5 — Web, mobile and at least one shared capture point (kiosk, terminal or badge), with offline capture that syncs, and a correction workflow with approval.

8 — Several capture paths including hardware terminals or badge readers, reliable offline handling, GPS or geofenced check-in where the vendor states its limits, and bulk correction with an audit trail of who changed what.

10 — Capture fits the workforce rather than the reverse: desk, deskless, field and shift models all first-class, offline as a designed state rather than a failure mode, and every correction attributable, reasoned and reversible.

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The Skeptic

Desk capture is well covered — automatic time tracking, manual time tracking and a downloadable desktop app — but the offline claim is 'calendar apps to help you track offline time', which is retro-filling, not capture that syncs. I found no public information on a mobile app, shared terminals or badge readers, and no correction workflow with approval appears anywhere on the captured page, so deskless and field workforces are unevidenced. 1

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Working-time law & audit record

How this is scored

Whether the record satisfies the German recording duty (BAG 2022, § 3 ArbSchG) and the ArbZG rules around it — breaks, maximum hours, rest periods, retention — and whether it survives being inspected.

0 — Hours are summed and nothing else; no break handling, no limits, no retention statement.

3 — Break deduction exists but is a flat rule; no daily maximum or rest-period checks, and no stated retention period.

5 — Configurable break rules, warnings on the 8/10-hour daily maximum and the 11-hour rest period, and per-employee reports covering the recording duty.

8 — The ArbZG rules are modelled rather than approximated: break and rest enforcement with documented exceptions, overtime and time-account rules, the two-year retention handled by the system, and an export built for an inspection.

10 — The vendor treats the record as evidence: tamper-evident entries with full change history, retention and deletion executed per statute, documented handling of on-call, standby and travel time, and published guidance mapping features to the ArbZG sections they serve.

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The Skeptic

The pages claim GDPR compliance, encryption and ISO 27001/27701 certification, but working-time law is absent entirely: no break handling, no daily maximum or rest-period checks, no retention statement, and not a word about the German recording duty. For a buyer asking which feature makes a compliance claim true, the honest answer is that no working-time claim is made at all. 1

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Absence & shift planning

How this is scored

Vacation, sickness and the shift or duty roster — the half of attendance that decides whether the time data means anything.

0 — No absence handling; vacation lives in a separate calendar or spreadsheet.

3 — Vacation requests with approval, but entitlement is manual, carry-over is not handled and there is no rostering.

5 — Automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, an absence calendar, and basic shift planning with availability.

8 — Public-holiday calendars per location, pro-rata entitlement, substitution and swap workflows, shift templates with qualification and rest-period checks, and coverage warnings before publication.

10 — Planning and recording are one system: rosters that respect statutory rest and the works agreement, absence that reflows the plan automatically, and forecast-versus-actual reporting a team lead can act on.

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The Skeptic

Shift scheduling and an absence calendar are named features alongside attendance management, so vacation and rosters exist in the product, but the captured pages say nothing about how entitlement or carry-over is computed, sickness recording, holiday calendars or coverage warnings. Named features without stated mechanics land this between thin request handling and a working planning module. 1

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Project, cost-centre & billing

How this is scored

Whether recorded time can carry the allocation an agency, workshop or professional-services firm needs — project, task, cost centre, billable status — through to an invoice or a client report.

0 — Attendance only; no project, task or cost-centre dimension at all.

3 — A free-text note or a single project field, with no rates, no billable flag and no per-project reporting.

5 — Projects and tasks with a billable flag and per-project reports, plus a rate per person or per project.

8 — Multi-level structure (client, project, task, cost centre), rate cards by person, role and project, budget tracking with warnings, and an invoice-ready export.

10 — Time becomes revenue without re-entry: approval before billing, rate rules that survive a rate change mid-project, client-facing reports, and a maintained handoff into named accounting or invoicing systems.

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The Skeptic

Project tracking, reports and exports are named, but the captured pages give no rates, no billable flag, no cost-centre or client structure, and no per-project reporting a services firm could invoice from. That is a single project dimension attached to tracked time, with the billing half of the criterion entirely unevidenced. 1

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Payroll handoff

How this is scored

How the recorded month reaches payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, an in-house system or the tax adviser — and how much of it is automated rather than retyped.

0 — No payroll path stated; the month leaves as a spreadsheet someone retypes.

3 — Generic CSV said to be usable for payroll, with no named system, no defined format and no handling of surcharges.

5 — A named payroll integration or a documented export format for at least one major system, covering hours, absences and overtime.

8 — Vendor-maintained integration with a named provider, covering night, Sunday and holiday surcharges, time accounts and mid-month changes, with a lock step before transmission.

10 — Payroll is designed for, not exported to: several named systems maintained, an auditable approval and lock, retro handling for corrections after the close, and the tax adviser given their own scoped access.

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The Skeptic

The only payroll-adjacent facts are generic 'Exports', an integrations page and API documentation; I found no public information on a named payroll system, a defined export format, surcharge handling or any lock before transmission. The month's journey to payroll is undocumented. 1

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether that is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting region unstated or non-EU, subprocessors not named.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option, but the contracting entity is non-EU or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but the subprocessor chain includes non-EU providers without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, data-centre certification published, and an on-premises or private-cloud option for buyers who need it.

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The Skeptic

The pages publish encryption in transit and at rest, GDPR compliance and ISO 27001/27701 claims, but say nothing about where data is hosted, the contracting entity behind it, or a single subprocessor — sovereignty attributes are on record as absent. A GDPR sentence is not a hosting region or a subprocessor list, and a buyer who must document their chain gets neither here. 1

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount — including terminals, modules and minimums — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-user headline exists, but hardware, modules or a minimum seat count are unpriced or unmentioned.

5 — Per-user prices public for the main tiers with the billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed piece (terminal hardware, planning module, payroll export) sits in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and module priced publicly with per-user maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table producing the annual invoice for a given headcount and module selection, including hardware, setup and renewal terms.

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The Skeptic

A free tier and a 14-day trial without credit card are public, but I found no per-user price for any paid plan, no billing period, no minimum term and no VAT treatment on the captured page. A buyer cannot compute even a rough annual invoice from what is published. 1

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European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU only ⚠ unverified 3/3 pts 3 Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (9)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page desktime.com Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Privacy policy — found from the homepage desktime.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Security / trust page — found from the homepage desktime.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Project, cost-centre & billing — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap desktime.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →