If you searched how much does a time clock cost, the honest answer is: it depends on whether you’re buying a machine, software, or both. Here’s a clear breakdown so you can budget.
Hardware (the machine)
- Basic punch card machine: low one-time cost, but ongoing paper and manual payroll labor
- Badge/PIN wall terminal: mid-range per device — and you need one per location
- Biometric (face/fingerprint) terminal: higher per device
- Tablet/iPad kiosk: use a tablet you may already own — often the cheapest path
Software (per employee, per month)
Cloud time-tracking software is usually billed per active employee per month. It’s where the real value is: automatic overtime math, payroll export, scheduling, and compliance records that paper can’t give you.
The hidden costs of doing nothing
- Buddy punching and inflated hours quietly add to payroll every week
- Manual timesheet entry eats a manager’s hours each pay period
- Overtime mistakes and missed breaks create wage-claim risk
For most small businesses, a tablet kiosk plus per-employee software pays for itself by eliminating those leaks — and replaces a separate scheduling and payroll-prep tool at the same time.
What ClockAll costs, exactly
One price per company, not per seat, so a team of nine costs the same whether they all work Saturday or none of them do:
- 1–3 employees — free, permanently. Not a trial.
- 4–5 — $5.99/month for the company
- 6–15 — $9.99/month
- 16–50 — $29.99/month
- 51–100 — $49.99/month
- 101–250 — $99.99/month
- 251–350 — $149.99/month
Above 350 people the pricing is worked out with you rather than off a page. Every tier includes the same features — face check, geofencing, scheduling, overtime and break rules, payroll export. There is no plan where compliance is the upsell.
Per-employee pricing adds up faster than it looks
Most time clock software is billed per employee per month, which sounds small and scales badly. Take any per-seat rate and run it out — at $4 per employee per month, purely as an example, a team of twelve is about $48 a month, or $576 a year — and the bill grows every time you hire, including for the seasonal person who works six weeks in December. Check the per-seat rate of whatever you are comparing and do that multiplication before you sign.
The same twelve people on a flat company price is $9.99 a month, $119.88 a year. The gap is not the headline rate; it is that one number grows with headcount and the other does not.
The cost of not having one, with real numbers
Buddy punching and rounded-up hours are the expensive part, and they are easy to size. Take one employee at $18 an hour who adds ten minutes a day — a late lunch, an early punch, a favour for a friend:
- 10 minutes a day × 5 days = 50 minutes a week
- 50 minutes × 52 weeks ≈ 43 hours a year
- 43 hours × $18 = about $780 a year, from one person
Across a team of twelve, even if only a third of them do it, that is roughly $3,100 a year — several times the software cost. This is why the honest comparison is not software price against zero; it is software price against what the current system already leaks.
The costs nobody quotes you
- Manual timesheet entry. An hour a pay period, twice a month, at a manager’s wage is real money and the least valuable hour they will work.
- Overtime mistakes. Getting daily overtime wrong in California, or missing a meal-break premium, costs more per incident than a year of software.
- Record-keeping. Federal law wants payroll records kept three years; New York and New Jersey want six. A shoebox of punch cards is not a record you can produce on request.
- Switching later. Hardware terminals tie you to one vendor’s ecosystem; a tablet you already own does not.
A realistic budget for a small team
For a typical small business, the practical setup is a tablet you already own as a kiosk plus per-employee software in the single-digit-dollars-per-month range — and often nothing at all for the smallest teams, since ClockAll is free for up to three employees. Compared with a dedicated biometric terminal for every location, that’s a fraction of the upfront cost, and it removes hours of manual payroll entry each period. The real question isn’t “what does a time clock cost” — it’s what not having one quietly costs you every pay run.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free time clock?
Free apps exist, but they usually stop at clock-in/out and lack overtime rules, payroll export, and audit trails — fine for a tiny team, risky as you grow.
What’s the best value for a small business?
A tablet kiosk (no special hardware) plus all-in-one software that also does scheduling and payroll prep.