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Time Tracking & Attendance

Hubstaff

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

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

by Hubstaff · hubstaff.com

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Hubstaff: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Hubstaff: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Hubstaff at a glance

Vendor
Hubstaff
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Hubstaff 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. Hubstaff scores highest on project and billing at 7-8: per-person bill rates, hour and budget limits with real-time over-budget alerts, and invoices generated from tracked time with locked line items that cannot be billed twice. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 20 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 21 Oct 2026. all sources

Hubstaff alternatives, European ones first →

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

The Payroll Officer

Weighted verdict

Turns the recorded month into an payroll run and answers for it. Cares about surcharges for night, Sunday and holiday work, time accounts that reconcile, and corrections that arrive after the close. Treats "export to CSV" as an admission that the handoff was never designed.

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

Scored by The Payroll Officer

Panel median The Payroll Officer This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Payroll Officer
Capture in the real workplace 2 of 5 2 of 5
Working-time law & audit record 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Absence & shift planning 2 of 5 2 of 5
Project, cost-centre & billing 4 of 5 3.5 of 5
Payroll handoff 3 of 5 2.5 of 5
European sovereignty 0.5 of 5 0.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 0 of 5 0 of 5

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 Payroll Officer

Apps cover Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and the browser, with GPS and geofenced automatic start/stop plus reminders for field crews, and approvals that lock the recorded day. But I found no public information on a shared kiosk or terminal for site crews, on offline capture that syncs, or on bulk corrections with a named who-changed-what trail — editing happens in the timesheets view and the approval trail carries the weight. Several capture paths, yes, but none of them shared or offline. 1 2 3 4 11 12

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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 Payroll Officer

Breaks appear as a payroll policy alongside overtime limits, and the vendor's own guidance is US state overtime law — I found no public information on daily maximum or 11-hour rest checks, on a stated retention period, or on any mapping to the German recording duty. An approval trail and audit logs are a start, but a record that cannot show rest enforcement and retention will not survive an inspection. 2 5 12

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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 Payroll Officer

Shift creation with recurring patterns, timezones, minimum hours and grace periods, a calendar that filters by scheduled shifts, time offs and holidays, and attendance statuses of On Time, Late, Missed and Abandoned — the roster half is genuinely there. I found no public information on automatic vacation entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, per-location public-holiday calendars, or swap and substitution workflows; absence here is a request to track, not an entitlement engine. 3 7 8

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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 Payroll Officer

Internal and client work stay separated, bill rates sit on team members, non-billable time is a toggle, budgets alert before overrun, and invoices are generated from tracked time with locked lines that cannot be billed twice — approval before billing and client payment via PayPal included. I found no public information on cost centres or role-based rate cards, which is what keeps the allocation one level short of the full structure a professional-services firm bills from. 1 2 3 9 10

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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 Payroll Officer

The month reaches named systems — Deel, Gusto and Remote as HRIS syncs, QuickBooks for time — and timesheet approvals lock the date range before anything is paid, which is more than a bare export. But I found no public information on night, Sunday and holiday surcharges, no DATEV or Lohn und Gehalt is named, the generic path is a CSV timesheet, and corrections arriving after the close are not addressed; that earns the named-integration level and no more. 8 10 11 12

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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 Payroll Officer

The contracting entity is Netsoft Holdings, LLC and the captured pages state that customer data is retained in the United States, with GDPR compliance and the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework offered as the stated safeguards. I found no public information on an EU hosting option, a named data-centre provider, or any subprocessor list — for a payroll record that means data leaving the EEA on assumptions. 2 8 11

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Pricing transparency

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 Payroll Officer

I found no public information on per-user prices, billing period, minimum term or VAT treatment — the pages carry a 14-day trial without credit card, plan names such as Team and Enterprise gating invoicing and payroll, and a one-time $100 integration credit. A buyer cannot compute the annual invoice for their headcount from what is published. 4 9 12

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 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 Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Hubstaff

Is Hubstaff European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Hubstaff is based.

Where does Hubstaff store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

Does Hubstaff have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Hubstaff?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates TimeTac (3.5/5), clockodo (3/5) and ZEP (3/5) highest among the other 25 Time Tracking & Attendance products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is TimeTac (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Hubstaff alternatives.

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 (12)

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

  1. 1 Vendor page hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Security / trust page — found from the homepage hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Working-time law & audit record — found from sitemap hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Working-time law & audit record — found from sitemap support.hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap support.hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Project, cost-centre & billing — found from sitemap support.hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Project, cost-centre & billing — found from sitemap hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap support.hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap support.hubstaff.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →