whats-best.ai

Time Tracking & Attendance

Timely

UK / wider Europe Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

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

by Memory AS · timelyapp.com

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

The Agency Owner

Weighted verdict

Bills forty people's hours to clients and lives on the gap between recorded and billable. Wants project structure, rate cards that survive a mid-project change, budget warnings before the overrun, and an export the invoicing system takes. Attendance compliance is the floor, not the product.

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

Scored by The Agency Owner

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 Agency Owner

The Memory tracker auto-captures every web and desktop app, which is exactly what I want across forty desks — but it is the only capture model evidenced: no mobile app, no offline behaviour, no kiosk or badge for site visits, so anyone away from a desk records nothing. 1 3

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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 Agency Owner

Nothing on breaks, daily maximums, rest periods, retention for inspection, or an export built for one — the only surfaces are 'Overtime and undertime' and 'Locked time' in the feature list, and a Norwegian vendor shows no sign of modelling ArbZG or § 3 ArbSchG. The seven-day backup destruction in the privacy policy is not a working-time retention story. 1 3

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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 Agency Owner

'Planning', 'Planned time' and workspace capacity exist, but they are about allocating billable work, not vacation entitlement, carry-over, sickness or a duty roster — no absence handling is evidenced at all, so vacation still lives in a spreadsheet. 1 2

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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 Agency Owner

Projects, tasks, billable and cost rates, a project dashboard and in-product Invoices are all evidenced, plus a review-and-approval step before any timesheet entry is shared — that covers most of my billing chain. But no budget tracking with warnings appears anywhere, and the rate granularity (per person, per role, per project) is unstated, so it sits above a plain project tracker and short of rate-card-and-budget control. 1 2 3

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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 Agency Owner

The evidence is entirely silent on payroll — no named system, no defined format, no surcharge handling; only a generic API and Zapier exist, which is a path I'd pay a consultant to build, not a handoff my bookkeeper can use. 1 2

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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 Agency Owner

ISO 27001-certified AWS hosting in Europe is stated and Stripe is the named payment processor, but the contracting entity is Norwegian with no registry evidence, ownership is unknown, and no subprocessor list is published — EEA is acceptable to me, undocumented is not. 2 3

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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 Agency Owner

A pricing page exists with plan names and one captured number — the $5-per-person Tasks add-on — but no per-user price for Starter or Unlimited, no billing period, VAT treatment or minimums, and Enterprise is contact-sales; I cannot compute my annual invoice for forty people from this. 1 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 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 5 Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited 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.

Sources (14)

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

  1. 1 Vendor homepage timelyapp.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing timelyapp.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy timelyapp.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service www.timely.com Checked 21 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Security / trust page www.timely.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Capture in the real workplace — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Working-time law & audit record — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Working-time law & audit record — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Absence & shift planning — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Project, cost-centre & billing — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Project, cost-centre & billing — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Payroll handoff — found from sitemap www.timely.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →