ClockShark Review: Is It The Right Choice For Your Business?

What Is ClockShark?

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ClockShark is cloud-based GPS time-tracking software that keeps track of your entire crew, provides insights into their performance, and helps you manage your human resources, jobs, and workflow.

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ClockShark is meant for teams of all sizes working remotely or on various job sites. It is most widely used in field services and construction, real estate and healthcare services, or, to sum up, in teams that spend much of their working hours in the field. 

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But what exactly is ClockShark used for, and how will it fit your business needs?

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To find answers to these questions, let’s take a deeper dive into ClockShark’s main features.

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ClockShark Review: Features Walkthrough

For this review, we’ve decided to sign up for a free trial and check out the software and its features, and research customers’ reviews.

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This is what we’ve found.

How Do You Add Employees to ClockShark?

Adding new employees to ClockShark is easy and doesn’t require much time. Besides entering the name, email address, and phone number, you must also set the base pay rate and choose the overtime rules that apply. 

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If your employee works in a specific location or department, you can define it here. 

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When adding an employee, you can also choose to

• Give them timesheet editing options 
• Enable GPS tracking for an employee
• Require GPS tracking for clocking in and out
• Allow clocking in using the web or Kiosk
• Give managerial permissions to the time clock, timesheets, PTO, and schedules, or access to view schedules, locations, reports, etc.
• Allow them to add and edit customers, jobs, and tasks or view quotes & invoices and add and edit them.

Time Tracking

One of ClockShark’s main functionalities is capturing and keeping track of employee time more efficiently. 

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The software lets employees clock in and out of their working hours using their mobile devices, laptops, or desktop computers or via a Kiosk. ClockShark’s Kiosk can be installed on a mobile or tablet and comes with a facial recognition feature that you can use to prevent buddy punching.

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Besides clock-in and out entries, ClockShark’s time clock also gives you an opportunity to keep track of employees' breaks, ensuring your crew is well-rested and accountable. The app lets you clock in and out, even offline, and syncs data when the connectivity is back.

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You can, for example, set ClockShark to remind your employees to take their breaks after 4 hours of work, and once they are on the break, remind them to continue their work after 30 minutes.  

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When used on mobile devices,  iOS and Android,  ClockShark’s time clock is straightforward and user-friendly, letting you choose the job or task you want to punch into and add notes or attachments to your entries. You can also switch between jobs and tasks easily without clocking out and back in.

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Besides being able to clock in and out each worker individually, ClockShark also offers a CrewClock option, allowing a crew leader to punch their entire crew or several employees at once. This option can come in handy when an employee has no phone or when in a hurry, you just need to clock everyone in and out without a hassle.

ClockShark’s Clock Out Questions are a great add-on to the time clock feature, as they let you gather relevant information at the shift’s end and receive notifications if things don’t go as planned. However, to access Clock Out Questions functionality, you must subscribe to a pricier plan.

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With the data it gathers, ClockShark lets you have accurate and reliable timesheets ready for exporting to payroll software, as you no longer have to rely on outdated hardware clocks, paper timesheets, or spreadsheets. 

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GPS Tracking - Does ClockShark Track Your Location?

Besides capturing employee time at work, ClockShark also has GPS location tracking capability, allowing you a glance at your employee’s whereabouts when working.

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ClockShark records employees’ locations whenever they punch in or out from work, as well as when they leave for their breaks and arrive back.

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ClockShark also records a few more GPS points during each working hour to ensure better workplace accountability.

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We’ve tested out the Clock shark’s GPS tracking feature to see how well it performs when it comes to ensuring your employee’s whereabouts during their shifts. 

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ClockShark does a great job when it comes to recording employees’ locations during their punches and ensuring they are at their workplace when these actions happen. However, it seems that an average 15-minute pause between GPS points ClockShark captures still leaves room for letting certain unwanted behaviors pass unnoticed.

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However, if an employee's persistent unwanted behavior happens regularly, we guess it would be difficult to keep it hidden for a long, even with this frequency of GPS recording.

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Who’s Working Now

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ClockShark lets you see all your currently available employees at a single real-time tracking dashboard - Who’s Working Now.

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On this screen, you get a visual representation of your workers' locations on the map, as well as data ClockShark gathered, such as when they’ve clocked in and what job or task they are currently working on.

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You can easily access the most recent location and replay employees’ locations from the start of their shifts.

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Geofencing

Geofencing often goes hand in hand with GPS tracking, giving users even more functionality.

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In ClockShark, you can set geofenced locations when creating jobs. 

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If you choose to enable GPSFence, you can set the virtual perimeter of your choice, with the minimum being 100m.

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You can use geofencing to send clock-in and out reminders to your employees when they enter or leave the geofenced zone. Also, you can define which employees can clock in and out of the job and restrict tasks that can be used with the geofenced job.

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ClockShark’s geofencing also lets you see whether your employees’ punches were out of the bounds of the virtual boundaries.

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However, ClockShark’s geofencing does allow employees to clock in a geofenced job, even when they are not within the predefined area. There is no option to restrict an employee from clocking into a job if they are out of bounds.

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Besides flagging their entries in timesheets, you can also receive alerts whenever there is any out-of-bounds activity.

Employee Scheduling

Another feature often combined with time-tracking solutions is employee scheduling - a common pain point for businesses with field and mobile employees. 

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ClockShark addresses this issue with its Scheduling feature, which lets you schedule your employees’ shifts and assign them jobs and tasks effortlessly. 

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Scheduling with ClockShark lets you color-code your schedules so that you will see at a glance where your employees are working.  

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Adding new shifts is straightforward; all you have to do is add the date and time, choose the employee you’re creating a shift for, assign a job, and add relevant notes if needed. 

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You can also use drag and drop functionality to reschedule the shift quickly to another day or another employee. Shifts can be created as one-time or recurring events depending on your needs and whether it is a simple or long-term project.

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You can also set ClockShark to remind your employees to clock in or out of their scheduled shifts a certain time before their shift starts or end.

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However, there is a potential pitfall regarding the scheduling feature - the app does not notify employees automatically when new schedules are created, or the shifts have been updated - the scheduler needs to choose this option and send an email or push notifications to affected employees.

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Employees will find out about their new scheduled shifts or shift updates only when they check their schedules in the app. For better results, it would be helpful for employees to receive notifications about new shifts or changes when they are created.

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PTO Tracking

ClockShark can also help you manage and track your employees’ time off. It allows you to create custom time off policies, along with details such as carry-over rules and time off limits, and assign them to employees. 

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As all approved requests will show up in the schedule, assigning a shift to an employee will run much smoother.

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Job Management Features

ClockShark also offers features that can help businesses streamline their job management tasks.

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The job management feature allows you to create jobs with all relevant details.

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Except for the geofencing options we’ve already mentioned, you can use additional settings to track the labor budget and notify you if the projected hours reach a certain threshold.

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You can add clock-out questions, and images, upload files to your jobs, create quotes and invoices, and associate a job with a customer. You can also mark the stage of every job on your list so that whenever there is progress, you can easily see it at a glance. The conversations option lets your field service team discuss essential details about a job in a centralized place in real time.

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Another helpful feature is customer management which lets you organize and store all the data and records related to your customer in the same place, ensuring your employees easily access relevant information when needed. You can also have conversations about customers using the app, while employees can also add receipts, invoices, or pictures of a complete job.

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Reporting

ClockShark allows you to generate all sorts of reports that you can use for various purposes. In most cases, you can choose between a summarized report or a more detailed version that you can customize.

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• Quick Summary. This reporting option gives you a breakdown of labor by regular time, overtime, and double time, for a period of your choice. Quick reports can be summarized by the customer, job, task, or employee.

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• Job reports & Task reports summarized (hours per job/task per week)  or detailed. Detailed job/task reports include clock in and out times, breaks, daily and weekly totals, and a breakdown by tasks and employees. These reports can also include notes related to the job.

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• Employee Reports. Summarized reports give you the daily total hours spent on each job each week, more detailed ones will also show you clock in and out and break times.

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• Time tracking reports. Regarding time reporting, with ClockShark, you can generate employee timesheets that include employee hours and PTO daily and weekly. Furthermore, you can create reports on employee time off and timesheet alerts and generate responses to clock-out questions.

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• Quotes and Invoices Reports. ClockShark lets you generate reports on the total number and value of quotes and invoices, including a detailed breakdown for each quote/invoice.

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• Financial Reports. You can also generate all sorts of financial reports, such as taxes, payments, invoices/labor by the customer, and pay rates.

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Invoices & Quotes

ClockShark allows you to create and manage quotes and invoices from start to finish. 

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When it comes to invoicing, you can manage your customers and jobs, track detailed time, add billable time, and send invoices to your customers via email through the app.

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ClockShark allows you to create a job for a job and track its status - pending or accepted easily. If you need to collaborate with your team members on the quote, you can discuss it using the app, also.

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Integrations

To streamline your workflow, ClockShark offers integrations with Zapier and particular payroll and accounting software. 

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ClockShark connects to QuickBooks Online and Desktop, ADP Workforce Now®, ADP Workforce Now® Next Generation, RUN Powered by ADP®,  Gusto, Paychex, MYOBAccount Right, Xero, and construction time tracker and management tool - Sage 100.

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However, ClockShark only allows a single integration at a time, which can complicate things for customers that want to share their data with more than one app.

 If you have other connectivity needs, you can suggest integration to ClockShark, but you can’t count on using open API, as the app doesn’t support it.

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What Is the Cost of ClockShark?

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So, let us move on to another question that is probably on top of your mind - what is ClockShark's pricing?

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ClockShark has two pricing packages, Standard and Pro. The monthly charges consist of a monthly base fee that covers the administration and monthly price per user.

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Standard

ClockShark’s Standard is tailored to fit the needs of small businesses $40 monthly fee. 

The base fee includes 1 free admin.

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In addition to the base fee, you must pay an additional $8 per user per month.

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The standard plan includes attendance and time tracking, GPS tracking, Job and task tracking, employee scheduling manager roles and approvals, and third-party integrations.

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So, let’s say your team has 20 employees. Your monthly ClockShark cost will be $200.

Pro

At the price of a $60 monthly base fee, plus + $10/mo per user, you can subscribe to ClockShark’s Pro Plan, which includes more robust time tracking, scheduling, and time off management features. As in the Standard plan, the base fee includes 1 free admin.

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Besides features in the Standard Plan, Pro Plan gives you access to paid time off (PTO) tracking, multi-department controls, advanced job costing controls, and clock-out questions.

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So for a company of 20 employees, your monthly expenses for using all  ClockShark has to offer will be $260.

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ClockShark Customer Service

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According to user reviews, ClockShark ranks high regarding the service they provide to its users. Its customer support is available by email, phone, and chat.

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Pro users can access a customer success representative for onboarding purposes, to get support with implementing integrations, data mapping, etc.

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ClockShark Review: Pros and Cons

We’ve tried to summarize the pros and cons of ClockShark, to help you understand how well it fits your business needs.

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So, what sets ClockShart apart from other time-tracking software on the market?

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Pros:

• Ease of use. ClockShark is praised for its ease of use, and we agree. Everything from signing up for a free trial to adding a new employee, clocking in and out, scheduling, and reporting runs pretty much intuitively. Using the mobile app as a time clock for field employees to punch their hours on the fly requires little onboarding, depending on your employees' previous experience with apps.

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• CrewClock. As we’re aware, the situation in the field can be quite unpredictable from time to time, and ClockShark’s CrewClock feature can help you deal with unexpected situations. Sometimes, when in a hurry to get the job done, clocking in and out the entire crew can be a lifesaver, allowing employees to focus on work ahead without worrying about their time cards.

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• Clock Out Questions. First introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a handy feature for teams that find it essential to gather data on certain occurrences during working hours.

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• Good Customer Service. As we’ve mentioned above, customers are satisfied with ClockShark's service and the response of their support team. 

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Cons:

• When recording employees' locations, the frequency of GPS tracking leaves much to be desired. Even though you can use it for more general tracking purposes,  the three GPS points ClockShark  gathers during an hour still leave room for various time theft schemes and other undesirable matters.

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• As fieldwork often goes hand in hand with business travel, businesses need to keep track of their employees routes and mileage to decrease costs and, in some cases, reimburse for mileage. ClockShark doesn’t track mileage, nor it tracks employees' routes. 

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• If you want more control over employee workplace attendance, you should know that ClockShark doesn’t allow setting  geofencing restrictions - employees can still clock in and out of a job, even when they’re outside the geofenced area. Timeero, for example, does allow placing such restrictions for an employee, improving their accountability.

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• Another important downside to ClockShark is that the managers or admins can’t edit employee time while employees are still on the clock. Even though this may not seem like a big deal at first, it complicates things for managers as they must wait for the shift to edit time cards, risking forgetting about the changes completely.

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• Even though ClockShark can be used as a scheduling software, it doesn’t send schedule notifications automatically when shifts are changed or added. While most of the time, communicating schedules can run smoothly the way things are set in ClockShark now; we can easily imagine a scenario when employees are not notified about their shifts due to unintentional human error.

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• ClockShark doesn’t allow sending mass notifications to employees, which can be a huge drawback when you must pass relevant information and ensure it reaches everyone.

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• ClockShark doesn’t allow creating custom breaks. You can create a single break and duration, but it will hardly satisfy requirements and ensure compliance with specific laws, such as California's.

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• While ClockShark allows integration with some software solutions, a huge drawback is that you can only use a single integration at a time. Many other software solutions, including Timeero, don’t have such limitations, ensuring a smoother workflow. Furthermore, ClockShark doesn’t support API, so you can’t connect it to the software of your choice easily.

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• When it comes to ClockShark’s pricing, some solutions offer the same or even more features for a more affordable price. In addition, the monthly base fee is the same regardless of the company’s size - whether you have five employees using the app or 100.

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ClockShark Review Wrap-Up: Is ClockShark the Right Choice for Your Business?

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The app serves the purpose it was created for well and in a simple manner.

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However, regarding the value you get for your money, other players in the market offer great additional features and even more benefits for a more affordable price. 

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Timeero, for example, gathers GPS points at a higher frequency and offers additional geofencing capabilities, such as segmented tracking.

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For more details on the importance of GPS tracking frequency, read our article 5 Best Employee GPS Tracking Apps: Tested and Compared and see how ClockShark and Timeero rank.

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Furthermore, unlike ClockShark, Timeero also tracks the mileage and the routes your employees take when out in the field and suggests routes with the shortest distance, ensuring greater accountability regarding mileage costs.  You can learn more about Timeero in our comprehensive review. Or, check out our ClockShark vs. Timeero article for a detailed comparison.

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