ClockShark review:
What 166 real conversations revealed

Setting up ClockShark was very straightforward. It's free to create an account and you don't need to put a credit card down for the 14-day free trial. You add some basic info about yourself, then company details including your industry and company size. You're also immediately prompted to download the mobile app, though you can skip that and come back to it later. After entering a mobile number, you land on the ClockShark home page.

ClockShark doesn't have a step-by-step tutorial walking you through its tools. We liked that — it let us jump right in and start exploring. The app does embed pop-up videos on certain parts of the site explaining how to perform specific tasks. The first thing we did was add a few different kinds of jobs (roofing installation, plumbing, flooring, and so on). It would be nice if some of this were pre-populated, but it only took a moment to add.

For support, there's a prominent 'Chat with an Expert' button in the bottom-right of the web dashboard. If live chat can't help, they follow up by phone — they texted to say they'd call within the next business day, and they actually called (twice). A same-day call during onboarding would have been more helpful, but the follow-up was still useful for working through issues.

Overall, onboarding was easy. It's not incredibly robust, but it lets you learn by doing and reach out for help when you need it.

The first thing you notice about ClockShark's website is that it's clean and simple. The most important features — timesheet, schedule, and the clock-in/out button — sit on the main page. The rest are separated into tabs: Time (Schedules, Timesheets, Time Off), Work (Customers, Jobs, Tasks, Quotes, Invoices), Reports (with CSV export), and Admin (People, Settings).

The effectiveness of this interface depends on the user. If you don't mind clicking around a bit to get where you need to go, you'll probably appreciate ClockShark's simplicity.

You can download the mobile app early in onboarding, which matters because ClockShark caters to construction and field-service businesses. But it takes the simplicity of the desktop UI one step further — when you first log in, a single clock-in button is essentially all you see. That's great for punching in quickly, but the app otherwise feels bare bones.

It does have useful features: you can view employee timesheets, schedules, and an employee map, and add quotes (but not invoices) to customers. When you assign shifts you can attach job type, tasks, notes, date, and time; any further detail has to be added on the desktop dashboard, and employees get notified when their shift begins.

Reporting is reserved for the desktop version, which is expected. The one thing materially missing is the ability to input time-off requests — there's no PTO tab in the app, which seemed an odd omission. You'll need to access the website to submit, view, and approve PTO.

If you're tracking your own time, a clock starts as soon as you punch in. Below the clock you see your current shift and recent activity; to the right, ClockShark gives an at-a-glance look at your weekly timesheet and schedule in a calendar layout.

Job and task detail can get fairly deep. You can create a general job and add the project stage, customer information, address, and description, and colour-code jobs for easy viewing on the calendar. Each job can be paired with a task, and tasks carry financial details like billable rates, tax rates, and invoice descriptions.

After clocking in, employees can add notes and attachments so coworkers get a better idea of what happened during the shift. All hours tracked upload onto the timesheet after clocking out.

The Time scheduling panel uses the near-universal visual calendar to show who's working on which day, and you can toggle between day, week, 2-week, and month views. Adding a shift is simple — you can assign the same shift to multiple employees and select job/task details from one menu. The daily, weekly, and 2-week views give each worker their own row, so it's easy to drag shifts onto any worker. You can also switch from 'employee view' to 'jobs view' to focus on a single project, or add a shift by clicking a day in calendar view. Shifts are employee-based, which works fine for small teams — but moving a 6-person crew means dragging six individual blocks.

In the timesheets section you can view and approve timesheets from the previous pay period, see a summary of every employee's punches for the week, and click through for shift detail.

The Time Off section has two parts: Policies and Requests. Policies let you set the PTO accrual rate, which employees it applies to, any waiting period, whether PTO carries over, and a maximum balance. Once a policy is set, you can see each employee's accrued PTO at a glance, and employees can submit requests for approval in the Requests tab — though you must create a policy first.

The Work tab keeps detailed information about customers and jobs. In Customers you can add as many customers as you work with, categorise them as businesses or individuals, store address, contact info, and notes, and mark them Active or Inactive so their details stay in your database even when you're not currently working together.

In Jobs you create job types using all that detail and pair them with customers to stay organised; you can edit any job's details at any time. Tasks are intended for job costing — trades like plumbers or electricians can use tasks with preset billable hours so every project is billed accurately, or you can create one general task and assign it to everyone if all employees are paid the same rate.

Quotes provide an easy way to send job quotes to clients by email, and clients can sign and return them. Invoices can be sent directly to clients too — and because you can click '+ Unbilled Time' to pull in employees' hours worked, you can invoice a project accurately against tracked time.

ClockShark lets you create detailed reports for virtually any feature, all in PDF format. The Reports tab presents a list of options: Quick Summary, Job, Employee, Task, Quotes and Invoices, Time Tracking, Financial, and CSV Export. For each, you can run a Summary report (a high-level overview) or a Detailed report that includes employees, job costs, specific tasks, and more, depending on the focus you choose.

The reports themselves are bland — essentially a list of information on a PDF, not pleasing to the eye. The saving grace is CSV export: you can pull the data out to build your own charts or graphs if you need to present it later or analyse it for new opportunities.

ClockShark has an intuitive way of integrating with other apps, including popular payroll tools like QuickBooks, ADP, and Gusto. If your team already relies on QuickBooks, it's worth understanding how timesheets sync to confirm the integration goes deep enough for your payroll workflow. To start, go to Admin > Integrations, where you'll find nine apps to connect with — click 'Connect [App]' and sign in.

There doesn't appear to be any way to integrate with apps outside this list; you'd need to raise that with their support team. The main downside is that the integration list isn't comprehensive, especially for construction. The only construction-specific app that stood out was Sage — good for contractors, but not the most popular option in the space.