Best time tracking software for NZ businesses

One of the most fundamental, yet often overlooked aspects of business management is time tracking. Getting it right isn’t just about logging hours. It’s about building a foundation for accurate payroll, operational efficiency and sustainable growth.

Manually tracking time with paper timesheets or spreadsheets is a common practice for many growing businesses and while it might seem straightforward, this approach is often riddled with issues. Modern time tracking software offers a powerful alternative. It automates the entire process, from clocking in and out to calculating pay, freeing up valuable time and resources. 

Our guide is designed to help you understand the landscape of time tracking software in New Zealand and find the perfect solution for your business. We’ll explore the essential features, review the top options available and support you in building a clear path to making an informed decision.

Download the guide by filling in the form on the right. 

Why time tracking matters for your business

Effective time tracking is more than an administrative task. It’s a strategic tool that provides the clarity and control needed to run a successful business. For New Zealand SMEs, implementing a reliable system offers benefits that extend across the entire organisation, from ensuring legal compliance to empowering a more productive and flexible workforce.

Plus, accurate time records are a legal requirement. Under the Employment Relations Act 2000, employers must keep detailed wage and time records. Failing to do so can lead to significant penalties, not to mention the stress and cost of dealing with disputes. A robust time tracking system automatically creates a record of hours worked.

Beyond keeping records, time tracking provides invaluable insights into your business’s productivity. It helps you understand exactly where your team’s time is going. You can see how many hours are spent on specific projects or tasks, identify which activities are most profitable and spot opportunities for improvement. This data empowers you to make smarter decisions about resource allocation, project bidding and operational workflows, ultimately boosting your overall efficiency.

Finally, the nature of work is changing. With more businesses embracing hybrid or fully remote models, managing a distributed team presents new challenges. Time tracking software with mobile capabilities allows employees to clock in and out from anywhere, giving you real-time visibility.

How we evaluated the best time tracking software

To help you navigate the market, we’ve established a clear set of criteria to evaluate the best time tracking software for New Zealand businesses. Our goal was to identify solutions that not only meet the basic requirements of time and attendance but also add genuine value to growing organisations. We focused on the factors that matter most to local employers.

First and foremost, we prioritised software that was built in line with employment legislation. New Zealand has specific employment laws that software must accommodate. This includes everything from calculating public holiday pay to managing different types of leave. We looked for platforms that are built with these local nuances in mind.

Ease of use was another critical factor. A time tracking system is only effective if your team actually uses it. We assessed each platform from the perspective of both employees and managers, looking for intuitive interfaces, straightforward workflows and minimal friction. The best software makes it simple for employees to clock in, submit timesheets and request leave, while providing managers with the tools they need to approve hours and build rosters without extensive training.

Integration with payroll is a non-negotiable feature for modern businesses. The ability to seamlessly transfer approved hours to your payroll system saves countless hours of administrative work and dramatically reduces the risk of errors. We evaluated how deeply each platform integrates with payroll, giving higher marks to all-in-one systems that combine time tracking, HR and payroll in a single platform.

Finally, we considered the overall value for businesses. This isn’t just about the price tag. It’s about what you get for your investment. We looked for solutions that offer a strong return by improving efficiency and providing scalable features that support your business as it grows. The best options provide more than just a single function, offering a suite of tools that work together to simplify your entire employee management process.

Best time tracking software options

Choosing the right software can feel overwhelming, so we’ve curated a list of the top contenders for New Zealand businesses. Each of these platforms offers a strong set of features but they excel in different areas. To help you find the best fit, we’ve broken them down by their key strengths.

Here is an at-a-glance comparison of our top picks.

Feature	Employment Hero	QuickBooks Time	Deputy	TimeClock Plus
Primary focus	All-in-one Employment Operating System	Time and project tracking	Rostering and shift work	Time and attendance
Integrated payroll	Yes, has its own payroll features	Integrates with QuickBooks	Integrates with others	Integrates with others
Mobile app	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Scalability	High	Medium	Medium	High
Best for	Growing SMEs	Businesses using QuickBooks	Shift-based industries	Complex rule environments

Best for small to medium businesses

For small to medium businesses, the ideal time tracking software is affordable, easy to implement and scalable. You need a tool that solves your immediate problems without creating new ones. The key is finding a balance between powerful features and simplicity.

Employment Hero is an excellent choice for small to medium businesses looking to lay a strong foundation for growth. It combines time tracking, rostering, leave management and payroll into a single, user-friendly platform. This integrated approach means you don’t have to juggle multiple systems. 

And, as your business grows from a small team to a larger organisation, the platform scales with you. You can use modules for performance management, recruitment and employee benefits when you need them. The mobile app makes it easy for employees to manage their time and the seamless flow of timesheet data into payroll simplifies one of the most complex administrative tasks.

Other options like QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) are also popular with small to medium businesses, especially those already using QuickBooks for accounting. Its strength lies in its deep integration with the QuickBooks ecosystem, making it a natural fit for tracking time against jobs and projects for billing purposes. However, it may require separate systems for other HR functions.

Best for employees and teams

For any software to be successful, your team needs to embrace it. A system that is clunky, complicated or difficult to access will lead to frustration and poor adoption. The best platforms prioritise the user experience, making time tracking a seamless part of the workday.

Employment Hero stands out for its employee-centric design. The mobile app is clean, intuitive and allows staff to clock in and out, view their rosters, submit leave requests and check their payslips all from one place. This level of self-service empowers employees and reduces the number of queries that managers and HR have to handle. 

There’s also an option to enable clock-in and out through a tablet kiosk at your place of work, which provides an easy central space. The platform’s focus on a positive employee experience helps drive high adoption rates.

Deputy is another platform known for strong user experience, particularly in shift-based environments. Its mobile app can be used for managing schedules, swapping shifts and communicating with the team. While its rostering capabilities are top-tier, businesses may need other tools to manage the full employee lifecycle.

Best for lawyers and professional services

Firms in professional services, such as law and consulting, have unique time tracking needs. It’s not just about recording attendance. It’s about accurately capturing billable hours against specific clients, projects or matters. This requires software with robust project tracking and detailed reporting capabilities.

For these industries, tools like QuickBooks Time are often a strong fit. Its ability to track time against different jobs and generate detailed reports is crucial for accurate client billing and project costing. Employees can easily switch between tasks and allocate their time accordingly, ensuring that every minute of billable work is captured. The integration with accounting software is a significant advantage for invoicing.

However, professional services firms are still businesses with employees. They also need to manage payroll, leave and HR compliance. An all-in-one platform like Employment Hero can also serve this sector well. While its project tracking might be less specialised than dedicated billing software, it offers the significant benefit of managing all employee-related functions in one place. 

Best for remote teams

Managing a remote or hybrid workforce requires a different approach to time tracking. You need a system that provides flexibility and fosters trust, while still giving you the visibility needed to manage your team effectively. The key is to focus on tools that support asynchronous work and empower employees to manage their own time.

Software with a strong mobile app is essential. It allows employees to clock in and out from their home office or any other location. Employment Hero, Deputy and QuickBooks Time all offer mobile experiences.

For remote teams, the best time tracking software is part of a broader toolkit that supports communication and collaboration. Employment Hero offers an advantage here by integrating time tracking with other HR features that are crucial for remote work, such as performance management, goal setting and employee feedback tools. This helps managers stay connected with their remote employees and focus on outcomes rather than just hours worked. 

Choosing the right tool for your team

Selecting the right time tracking software is a significant decision. The right tool can save you time, reduce costs and provide valuable insights, while the wrong one can create frustration and administrative headaches. To make the best choice, you need to look inward at your own business first.

Your business size is a primary consideration. A small business with 15 employees has very different needs from a medium-sized company with 150. Small businesses often prioritise simplicity and affordability, looking for a tool that can be set up quickly and run with minimal overhead. 

As you grow, scalability becomes more important. You’ll need a system that can handle more employees, more complex rules and a wider range of HR functions. An all-in-one platform is often a wise choice for a scaling business, as it provides a single source of truth and avoids the pain of migrating data later.

Your industry also plays a crucial role. A construction company with crews on multiple sites needs strong mobile and GPS capabilities. A hospitality business running 24/7 needs powerful rostering and shift management tools. A professional services firm needs granular project tracking for billable hours. Make a list of the industry-specific challenges you face and look for a platform that is designed to solve them.

Finally, think about your specific business needs and pain points. Are you spending too much time on manual payroll data entry? Is building rosters a weekly struggle? Are you worried about your compliance with the Holidays Act? Identify your top three to five problems and prioritise software that offers clear solutions for them.

Key features to look for

When you start comparing different time tracking platforms, the options can be dizzying. To cut through the noise, focus on the core functionalities that deliver the most value. These three areas are essential for any modern New Zealand business.

Payroll and HR integration

The single most impactful feature is deep integration with your payroll and HR systems. When your time tracking software operates in a silo, you are simply digitising one part of a broken process. You still have to manually transfer hours, which is where errors and inefficiencies creep in.

Look for a platform where approved timesheets flow directly into the payroll run without any manual intervention. This is the promise of an all-in-one system like Employment Hero, where time and attendance, leave management, payroll and core HR are all part of the same platform. This seamless connection ensures that pay calculations are based on accurate, manager-approved data, incorporating the correct pay rates, allowances and leave entitlements. 

Mobile and remote access

In today’s flexible working world, your team isn’t always sitting at a desk. Whether you have employees working from home, field staff visiting clients or teams spread across multiple job sites, you need a system that can accommodate them. Mobile access is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity.

A quality mobile app should allow employees to clock in and out with a single tap. It should also provide access to other important functions, like viewing their rosters, submitting timesheets for approval and applying for leave. For managers, the app should allow them to see who is currently working, approve timesheets on the go and manage leave requests from anywhere. This flexibility empowers your team and ensures that administrative tasks don’t fall behind just because someone isn’t in the office.

Compliance and record-keeping

Meeting your legal obligations as an employer in New Zealand is a serious responsibility. Your time tracking software should be a tool that helps you stay compliant, not one that puts you at risk. The system must be designed to handle the specifics of New Zealand employment law.

This means it needs to keep accurate, easily accessible wage and time records for every employee, as required by Employment New Zealand. A platform built for the local market will have these requirements baked into its core functionality, giving you peace of mind that your records are complete. 

Start simplifying time tracking today with Employment Hero

Choosing the right time tracking software is a step towards building a more efficient, compliant and productive business. While many options can solve a piece of the puzzle, a truly integrated platform provides a comprehensive solution that grows with you.

Employment Hero’s Employment Operating System is designed specifically for New Zealand businesses, combining time and attendance, rostering, leave management, HR and payroll into one seamless platform. Our system automatically syncs approved hours to our built-in payroll software, so you can run your pay run in minutes, not days.

Empower your team with our easy-to-use mobile app, allowing them to manage their time and access their HR information from anywhere. Build cost-effective rosters and gain valuable insights into your labour costs to ensure you’re working at maximum efficiency. 

Ready to see how our Employment Operating System can transform your business?