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.

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The Operations Lead v1.0 · The Payroll Officer v1.0 · The Works Council Advocate v1.0 · The Agency Owner v1.0 · The Field Supervisor v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 15 Sep 2026

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

The Operations Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs a 200-person operation with office, workshop and field staff, and has to record all of them since the BAG ruling. Wants capture that fits each of those groups and a roster that reflects reality. Unmoved by a beautiful desktop timer that half the workforce cannot use.

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

Scored by The Operations Lead

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 Operations Lead

The only capture path evidenced is the Memory app on web and desktop, tracking page titles and timestamps of active apps, and the vendor's pitch is to 'forget timers and manual input' — that's anchor zero for my workshop and field crews, dressed up as AI. There is no mobile app, no shared terminal, no offline capture and no GPS in the evidence; the AI review-and-approval flow and 'one-click approve' are the only workflow elements lifting it slightly above nothing for anyone away from a keyboard. 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 Operations Lead

Beyond an 'Overtime & undertime' reporting line and a 'Locked time' feature there is no break handling, no daily-maximum or 11-hour rest checks, no change history and no retention statement for working-time records — the only retention number on file is backups destroyed after one week, which is not a § 3 ArbSchG record. Nothing here maps to the BAG duty, and I would not put this in front of an inspection. 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 Operations Lead

The planning features are project-hours planning — 'Planning', 'Planned time', 'Workspace capacity', 'Capacity management and reporting' — not a duty roster for shift crews. There is no vacation request, entitlement calculation, carry-over, sickness recording or holiday calendar anywhere in the evidence, so my absence half stays in a spreadsheet; that is anchor zero with capacity charts bolted on. 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 Operations Lead

This is Timely's home ground: projects with billable rates, cost rates, a project dashboard, tags and an Invoices feature, plus task-level structure via the $5-per-person Tasks add-on. It falls short of an 8 because there is no evidenced budget tracking with warnings, no rate cards by role, and the integration list names project tools but not one accounting or invoicing system. 1 2

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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 Operations Lead

No payroll path is stated anywhere: the integrations are Harvest, Toggl, monday.com, calendars and Azure AD — no DATEV, no Lohn und Gehalt, no documented export format, no surcharge handling. The month would leave as downloaded data someone retypes; the API access is a developer project, not a handoff, so this barely clears anchor zero. 2 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 Operations Lead

The hosting is at least named and regioned — ISO 27001-certified AWS in Europe — and the contracting entity is Timely AS of Oslo, EEA rather than EU, with Stripe processing cards. But the subprocessor list is absent and ownership unknown, so I cannot tell my works council who sees the data; that lands between the anchors — solid standard EU-region hosting, but no published subprocessor chain. 3 2

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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 Operations Lead

The pricing page names Starter, Unlimited and an Enterprise tier that is flatly 'contact sales'; the only number in evidence is the Tasks add-on at $5 per person. No per-user price for the main tiers, no billing period, no minimum term or VAT treatment in the evidence, so I cannot compute the annual invoice for my 200 seats from public pages. 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.

Legal entity	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
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

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 15 Sep 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data residency. Storage rests on AWS EU regions under the vendor's configuration; AWS is a US-headquartered company and no excerpt addresses non-EU transfers.
Weak sourcing — Subprocessors, Legal entity. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

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.

25 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
9 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
9 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
5 integrations facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
4 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
3 hosting facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
3 support facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 subprocessors facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 data fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us

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Sources (14)

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

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