TSheets does not exist as a brand any more. Intuit bought it in 2017 and renamed it QuickBooks Time in 2020, and the product has been sold as part of the QuickBooks stack ever since. That is the first reason people go looking for TSheets alternatives: the tool they signed up for is now priced, packaged, and upsold as a QuickBooks add-on. The other two reasons are simpler. It costs roughly ~$10 per user per month plus a base fee, and it is more app than a five-person shop needs. Here are seven alternatives worth a look in 2026, what each one is actually good at, and where each one is worse than QuickBooks Time.
What is TSheets (QuickBooks Time) now?
TSheets was a GPS time-tracking app for small businesses, best known for letting field crews clock in from a phone against a job or project code. Intuit acquired it in 2017 and rebranded it QuickBooks Time in 2020. If you search for TSheets today you land on QuickBooks Time: it is the same product line, not a discontinued one.
What it does, in one list:
- Mobile clock in and out with a GPS stamp on every punch.
- Job, project, and cost-code tracking, so hours land against the work they belong to.
- GPS breadcrumb trails through the shift, not only at punch time.
- Mileage tracking in the mobile app for vehicle reimbursement.
- Timesheet approvals and overtime alerts, with direct sync into QuickBooks Payroll.
- Geofencing and project tracking on the higher Elite tier rather than the entry plan.
What it is not: a scheduling app. There is basic shift assignment, but no open-shift broadcasts, no swap workflow, no PTO-aware scheduling. And there is no free plan, only a trial.
TSheets reviews: what users like and what they don’t
Read enough buyer feedback across review sites and the same themes come up. We are summarizing the pattern here rather than quoting individual reviews or scores, since those move constantly and are easy to cherry-pick.
What people consistently like
- The QuickBooks handoff. If you already run QuickBooks Payroll, hours land in payroll without a CSV step. This is the single most praised thing about the product and it is a real advantage.
- Job costing that actually works. Contractors, electricians, and service companies get labor cost per job without building a spreadsheet.
- Field-crew tooling. GPS trails and mileage tracking matter when your crew is in trucks all day.
- Maturity. It has been shipping for well over a decade. The reporting is deep and the mobile app is stable.
What people complain about
- Price for small teams. A per-user fee plus a monthly base fee means a five-person shop pays a lot per head. The base fee does not shrink with your team.
- Feature tiering. Geofencing, the feature many people buy a GPS time clock for, is on the Elite tier rather than the entry plan.
- QuickBooks gravity. The product is increasingly designed for people already inside the Intuit stack. If you run payroll in ADP or Gusto, you get less of the value and pay the same.
- Complexity. Job codes, service items, and approval layers are useful if you need them and a lot of setup if you do not. A café with eight staff does not need a cost-code hierarchy.
- Weak scheduling. Teams that publish a weekly roster end up running a second tool for it.
TSheets alternatives at a glance
| Best for | Starting price | GPS | Scheduling | Free plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ClockOut | Small hourly teams that also schedule | $3/employee/mo | ✓ | ✓ | 2 employees, forever |
| Homebase | Single-location retail and restaurants | $24-30/location/mo | ✓ | ✓ | 1 location, up to 10 employees |
| Connecteam | Deskless teams wanting chat and forms too | Flat fee per 30 users | ✓ | ✓ | Up to 10 users |
| Clockify | Project and client billing | Per user, paid tiers | Paid tiers | Limited | Unlimited users |
| Buddy Punch | Paid time clock with broad payroll integrations | $4.49/user/mo annual | ✓ | ✓ | 14-day trial only |
| When I Work | Scheduling-first shift teams | ~$2.50/employee/mo (scheduling) | ✓ | ✓ | Trial only |
| ClockShark | Construction and field service job costing | ~$8/user/mo + base fee | ✓ | ✓ | Trial only |
Prices are published list prices as of August 2026 and change often. Check the vendor’s pricing page before you decide. “Scheduling” means shift scheduling for hourly staff (recurring shifts, open shifts, swaps), not project planning. For reference, QuickBooks Time itself starts at ~$10 per user per month plus a monthly base fee, with geofencing on the Elite tier at roughly double that per-user rate.
1. ClockOut: the cheapest like-for-like swap
Who it is for: shops, clinics, cafés, retail floors, and small crews of 2 to 50 people who want a GPS time clock, a shift schedule, and clean payroll exports on one bill.
ClockOut is built around the punch. Employees clock in from a phone with a GPS stamp on every punch, or from a shared tablet running kiosk mode with a four-digit PIN. Geofences are on the $3 Starter plan, not held back for a premium tier. Scheduling lives in the same app, so every punch is compared against a shift and the misses (late arrivals, missed clock-outs, skipped breaks, creeping overtime) collect in one exception inbox instead of scattering across reports.
- Free: up to 2 active employees, forever, no card. GPS punches, basic scheduling, pay estimates, CSV export.
- Starter, $3 per active employee per month: geofence enforcement, kiosk mode, multi-location, recurring schedules, open shifts and swaps, PTO, overtime alerts, timesheet approvals, exception inbox.
- Pro, $5 per active employee per month: payroll runs with lock and export, ADP / Gusto / QuickBooks CSV formats, configurable compliance rules, scoped roles, PDF reports, API access.
Better than QuickBooks Time: price (a 10-person team is $30 a month on Starter versus roughly $120 on QuickBooks Time Premium), geofencing included from the entry paid plan, real shift scheduling, kiosk mode, offline punch capture that syncs when the phone reconnects, and exports formatted for ADP and Gusto as well as QuickBooks.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no job or project costing, no cost codes, no mileage tracking, no GPS breadcrumb trail through the shift, and no direct API sync into QuickBooks Payroll (the export is a ready-to-import CSV, so it is one extra step). It is also a web app and PWA rather than a native app store download.
Full head-to-head: ClockOut vs TSheets (QuickBooks Time). Free plan detail: the free time clock overview.
2. Homebase: best for one busy store
Who it is for: single-location retail and food service that wants hiring, onboarding, scheduling, and the time clock under one roof.
Homebase is the most widely used time clock on main street, and its pricing model is the reason. Paid plans are billed per location rather than per employee, so a busy store with 25 staff pays the same as one with 8. The free Basic plan covers one location and up to 10 employees.
Better than QuickBooks Time: a real free plan, proper shift scheduling, hiring and onboarding tools, and flat per-location pricing that gets cheaper per head as the store grows.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no job or project costing, no mileage tracking, and per-location pricing punishes multi-site operators with small teams at each site. Payroll is a separate add-on product.
Price: free Basic (1 location, up to 10 employees); Essentials from ~$24 per location per month billed annually, ~$30 monthly, as of August 2026. See ClockOut vs Homebase.
3. Connecteam: best if you want more than a clock
Who it is for: deskless and distributed teams (cleaning, home care, security, delivery) that also want chat, forms, checklists, and training in the same app.
Connecteam is a workforce super-app. The time clock has GPS, geofencing, and kiosk mode, and the scheduler is mature. Paid plans are a flat fee per block of 30 users per feature hub, so the per-head cost drops as you approach 30 and steps up when you cross it.
Better than QuickBooks Time: a free plan for up to 10 users, in-app chat and forms, stronger built-in compliance configuration on entry tiers, and much better economics if you are close to 30 users on one hub.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no cost-code job costing in the QuickBooks Time sense, no mileage tracking, no native QuickBooks Payroll sync, and you pay for modules you may never open.
Price: free up to 10 users; paid hubs are a flat fee per 30 users (the entry Operations hub has run around ~$29/month for up to 30 users), as of August 2026. See ClockOut vs Connecteam and Connecteam vs When I Work.
4. Clockify: best free option for project work
Who it is for: agencies, consultancies, and freelancers who bill clients by the hour against projects.
Clockify is a timer first and a time clock second, and it is genuinely free for unlimited users. Projects, clients, and billable rates are its core model, and the reporting is aimed at invoicing rather than payroll.
Better than QuickBooks Time: free for unlimited users, far better client and billable-rate reporting, and much simpler to set up if you never touch QuickBooks.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: GPS and kiosk features sit on paid tiers, shift scheduling is limited, and it is a poor fit for a crew that punches at a physical location on a rota. No mileage tracking.
Price: free for unlimited users; per-user paid tiers add GPS, kiosk, approvals, and scheduling-lite. See ClockOut vs Clockify.
5. Buddy Punch: closest paid feature match
Who it is for: teams that have already decided to pay for a time clock and want broad payroll integrations without the QuickBooks lock-in.
Buddy Punch overlaps heavily with both ClockOut and QuickBooks Time: GPS clock-in, geofences, kiosk mode, scheduling, and payroll exports. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, and the lower tiers carry a seat minimum, so the effective entry price for a very small team is higher than the per-user rate suggests.
Better than QuickBooks Time: lower per-user price, geofencing without jumping to a premium tier, real shift scheduling, and payroll integrations that are not centered on one accounting vendor.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no free plan, seat minimums on lower tiers, no mileage tracking, and job costing is not its focus.
Price: Standard from ~$4.49 per user per month billed annually (~$5.49 monthly) as of August 2026, with seat minimums on lower tiers. See ClockOut vs Buddy Punch.
6. When I Work: best if the roster is the job
Who it is for: shift teams where publishing the weekly schedule is the main management task and the time clock is secondary.
When I Work built its reputation on scheduling, and it is still one of the strongest schedulers aimed at small business. The catch is packaging: the entry plan covers scheduling, and time clock / attendance is a separate module, so the true per-employee cost for a time-clock buyer is higher than the headline.
Better than QuickBooks Time: genuinely better scheduling (open shifts, swaps, availability, conflict handling) and a lower entry price for the scheduling piece.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no free plan, no job costing, no mileage tracking, and the module split means you are assembling the equivalent feature set from two line items.
Price: no free plan; scheduling-only entry plan from ~$2.50 per employee per month, with the time clock module priced separately, as of August 2026. See ClockOut vs When I Work and the best When I Work alternatives.
7. ClockShark: best for job costing on crews
Who it is for: construction, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and other field-service companies that need labor cost per job and per task.
ClockShark is the closest philosophical match to what TSheets used to be before Intuit: a field-crew time clock built around jobs and tasks rather than around an accounting suite. GPS clock-in, job and task selection at punch time, crew clock-in (one lead clocks in the whole crew), scheduling, and QuickBooks integration are all there.
Better than QuickBooks Time:job costing that is the centre of the product rather than a tier feature, crew clock-in for foremen, and a scheduler that is more usable than QuickBooks Time’s shift assignment.
Worse than QuickBooks Time: no free plan, pricing that is in the same neighborhood rather than well below it, and the QuickBooks Payroll integration is an integration rather than a native sync. It is also overbuilt for any team that does not bill by the job.
Price:no free plan; per-user pricing that has run around ~$8 per user per month plus a monthly base fee, as of August 2026. This one moves more than most, so check ClockShark’s pricing page before budgeting.
How to pick, by team size and use case
Four questions get most teams to an answer without a spreadsheet.
- Do you bill by the job? If labor cost per job or per client is how you price work, stay with QuickBooks Time or move to ClockShark. Nothing else on this list replaces cost codes.
- Do you publish a weekly schedule? If yes, pick a tool where the schedule and the clock are the same product: ClockOut, Homebase, Connecteam, When I Work, or Buddy Punch. QuickBooks Time is not a scheduler.
- How many people, how many sites? Under 25 people at one or a few sites, per-employee pricing (ClockOut, Buddy Punch) is cheapest. One busy store, per-location pricing (Homebase) wins. Right around 30 deskless workers who also need chat, Connecteam wins.
- Where does payroll run? QuickBooks Payroll and nothing else? Weigh the native sync seriously. ADP, Gusto, or a bookkeeper? The sync is worth nothing to you and you are paying for it.
Switching from TSheets (QuickBooks Time)
The migration itself is short. The mistakes are all in the sequencing, so do it in this order.
- Export your timesheets first, before you cancel. Pull a CSV of every completed pay period. None of these tools import another vendor’s punch history, and federal recordkeeping rules expect you to keep time records for years. Store the file somewhere that is not one person’s laptop.
- Export the employee roster. Names, emails, phone numbers, pay rates, and job titles. Most alternatives accept a CSV import, which turns setup from an afternoon into a few minutes.
- Rebuild locations and geofences. Re-enter each work site and draw the geofence with a slightly generous radius for the first two weeks. If the new tool supports flagging instead of blocking out-of-bounds punches, start in flag mode so a bad GPS fix never stops someone from starting a shift.
- Run both tools for one full pay period. Punch in both, then compare the totals per employee before you cut over. One overlapping pay period costs a few dollars and catches every rounding rule, overtime threshold, and break setting you got wrong.
- Do one dry-run payroll export.Take the new tool’s export file all the way into ADP, Gusto, or QuickBooks as a test import. Discover the column mismatch in week one, not on payday.
- Tell the team before day one. One short message with the date, the link, and their PIN or login removes most of the first-morning chaos.
For the pricing side of the decision, our plans and pricing page lists what is in Free, Starter, and Pro with no asterisks.