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 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

Memory tracks 'any web and desktop app' and that is the whole capture story: no mobile app, no shared terminal, no badge reader, no offline mode appears anywhere in the evidence, so field, site and shift workers record nothing. The one-click approval of AI timesheets is review of AI suggestions, not a correction workflow with an audit trail of who changed what. 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 Skeptic

Not one break rule, daily maximum, rest period or retention period for working-time records is in the evidence — the 'GDPR ready / ISO 27001' badge is a data-protection claim wearing a compliance costume, and the only retention figure anywhere is backups destroyed after one week, which serves the vendor, not an ArbZG inspection. 'Overtime & undertime' and 'Locked time' are report features, not enforcement of limits. 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 Skeptic

'Planning', 'Planned time' and the Tasks add-on are project and deliverable scheduling, not absence management — vacation entitlement, carry-over, sickness and holiday calendars are absent from every page captured. No rostering function is even hinted at. 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 Skeptic

This is the one criterion the product actually dresses for: billable rates, cost rates, project dashboard, tags and invoices are all named features, with tasks as a priced add-on — that meets 'projects and tasks with a billable flag, per-project reports and a rate'. But there is no evidenced client/cost-centre hierarchy, no budget warnings, and 'Invoices' is one word in a feature list with no export into a named invoicing system behind it. 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 Skeptic

No payroll system, no DATEV, no export format, no surcharge handling — the month leaves as a generic 'download your data' and an API that someone else has to build the payroll bridge for. The evidence is silent where this criterion needs it most, and silence here means retyping. 1 3

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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 entity is Timely AS of Oslo — EEA, not EU — and the evidence itself concedes there is no imprint or registry extract behind that inference. Hosting is 'AWS servers in Europe' with no country named, and the subprocessor chain is 'unknown' apart from Stripe processing cards; no published subprocessor list exists in the captured evidence. 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 Skeptic

The pricing page yields exactly one figure — the Tasks add-on at $5 per person — while the main tiers carry feature lists with no prices and Enterprise is 'Contact sales'. No billing period, no VAT treatment, no minimum seat count, so a buyer cannot compute an annual invoice from what is public. 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 →