Buddy Punch review:
What 24 real conversations revealed

Buddy Punch offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. You can create your account with your Apple or Google account, or by entering your name and email address and assigning a password.

Buddy Punch asks whether you want to create a new organization for your business or join an account made by your employer. After that you fill out an online form with your company name, time zone, and number of employees.

The next step is setting up pay periods. Choose a frequency from the dropdown (weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly), then set the pay period start date. Once set, the pay schedule appears on the right side of the screen.

Then you select how employees punch in and on which devices: username and password, 4-digit PIN, or QR code, on desktop, mobile, or tablet. You can pick more than one. If you're unsure, click 'I'm not sure yet' and change it later.

Next you add employee names and email addresses. You can tick a box to assign their email as username and send a welcome email, or skip and do it later.

Two invitation details are easy to miss until they bite. Resending a welcome email resets that worker's password, so a worker who lost the original and asks for another one also loses any credentials they had already saved. And there is no bulk resend in the normal admin flow. Support can run a mass resend, but it is not a self-serve button.

For a larger crew you can upload a CSV instead. The template covers username, first and last name, email, password, and time zone. Check the 'send welcome emails after import' box before you run it. It is unchecked by default, which means a bulk import can create your whole crew in the system without telling any of them.

You can also hand this step to Buddy Punch. A chat box appears with instructions to send the completed Employee Upload template, and they email your employees their login credentials.

Last, you pick the features you want: punch time clock, scheduling, time off, job codes and project tracking, GPS on punches, GPS tracking during shifts, alerts, punch restrictions, payroll, time card approvals, manual timesheet entry, and single sign-on with API.

You can select more than one and change them anytime.

Before you reach the dashboard there are short tutorial videos on the core features and a welcome message you can reply to. We liked the quick, straightforward five-step process, and having Buddy Punch send employee credentials off the back of the upload template is a nice touch.

Two more quirks are worth catching during setup rather than on day one. Usernames are shared across Buddy Punch's entire customer base, so a predictable naming convention can collide with names another company already took. And administrator accounts cannot track their own time, so a working owner who also needs a timesheet needs a second account.

The web dashboard is straightforward. It is easy to follow, with the main time tracking data in the center and the other features discoverable from the menu tabs.

For a product whose whole pitch is simplicity, this is where that pays off. There is very little to configure before the thing is usable.

We noticed some minor lagging when scrolling or switching to new tabs. On the whole though the mobile dashboard has a clean, organized, minimalist look. The dashboard itself only displays today's schedule and which employees are in and out.

The mobile app also lets you view and approve time cards and time off, and build your team's schedules. It is a narrower version of the web app rather than a full match, which is a theme that recurs in the customer reviews we read.

Buddy Punch has two GPS layers and they do different jobs. Basic GPS records a location at punch events only: clock in, clock out, and job switches. It is included on every plan and costs almost nothing in battery. Real-Time GPS tracks the full route while a worker is punched in and draws a breadcrumb trail for the day. It is included at Advanced or sold as a $2 per user add-on below that, and tracking stops at punch out.

Geofencing is strict. An admin sets a radius around a site and assigns it to specific workers, and a punch outside that boundary is blocked outright. Buddy Punch describes the enforcement as all or nothing for an assigned worker unless an IP address lock is layered on top. That is a clean control at a fixed site with reliable signal. It is less forgiving for a crew that starts at the yard, moves between sites, or punches in a dead spot. Walk a real boundary at a real job before you make it a payroll rule.

Two limits matter if you expect the location record to settle a dispute. GPS data is view only across all plans, with no export path. And the GPS Activity Report holds advanced GPS data for 30 days. If an argument with a worker or a GC surfaces two months later, the trail you wanted is already gone. Confirm both before the trial ends if you plan to lean on location history for wage claims or back charges.

The app offers several ways to log in. Employees can use Google or Apple credentials, Face ID, a QR code, a PIN, or facial recognition.

Administrators enable the setting for a specific login method. For QR code login you send each employee their own unique code, which they save on their device.

Whichever method the team uses, they log in at the start of the shift and out when it is over, then submit their time report to a manager for approval.

Two controls sit underneath the punch methods and get little attention. Device locks restrict punching to approved devices. IP address locks restrict web punches to approved networks. Both take a few minutes to configure and layer per worker alongside GPS rules, which makes them a better fit than a geofence for an office, a shop, or a yard.

Buddy Punch offers more sign-in options than most products at this price. The login screen carries username and password, Google, Apple, Sign In with Face ID, QR code, PIN code, and facial recognition. For a crew that forgets passwords, that range removes a common support call.

One distinction is worth getting right, because it is easy to read the wrong way. Face ID and facial recognition sit on the login screen. They authenticate a worker into the app. They are not a check tied to the punch itself, and the login screen carries a Remember Me toggle, so a worker who stays signed in can punch without verifying again.

The per-punch identity control is the photo. Buddy Punch can require a camera or webcam photo at punch time, and managers and admins review those images alongside the timecard. That is the feature to test if buddy punching is the problem you are solving, because it attaches an audit trail to the punch record instead of gating the app.

Worth knowing before you rely on it: across the 812 customer reviews we read, camera and photo requirements came up 12 times as a friction point, with workers describing permission prompts on every login and the photo step slowing down the punch.

Drag-and-drop functionality lets you build a staff schedule in minutes, on web or mobile. Once it is done you can push notifications to employees about upcoming shifts, and adjustments take a few clicks.

Two things to check against your own operation. Scheduling is a paid add-on at $1 per user per month, included from the Pro tier up rather than in the base plan.

And in our conversations, scheduling depth was where contractors pushed back hardest. One specialty contractor said flatly that "the schedule sucked completely."

One limit to know if you want the field picking up work: workers cannot self-claim open shifts. A manager has to assign them. That suits a supervisor-controlled crew and gets in the way if you wanted people claiming available hours on their own.

Payroll is easier when it is wired into the time tracker. Buddy Punch offers automatic payroll tax filings and payments, which saves time on complex deposits and calculations.

You review employees' hours and time off from the payroll dashboard, then sync employee time and submit it with a quick import.

Buddy Punch Payroll is a separate module at $8 per user per month plus a $49 base fee, on top of your plan. If you would rather keep your existing payroll provider, the integration route is covered below.

Buddy Punch connects with Zapier, QuickBooks timesheets, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Paylocity, PayPlus Software, SurePayroll, and Workday. Through Zapier it can be configured to reach a much wider set of apps.

The list is genuinely broad for a tool at this price, and it covers the payroll systems most small contractors already run. Their integrations page also lists Deltek and ViewPoint on the construction side. What is missing is Sage, Foundation, and Procore, so if your job costing lives in one of those, the data has to leave the system another way.

One reliability note from our conversations. An engineering contractor reported a defect where the QuickBooks sync corrupted vacation balances, was told to correct it by hand each cycle, and ended their evaluation over it.