Clockify is one of the most popular time tracking tools in the world. It's free to start, works on any device, and tracks hours competently. For office-based teams — agencies, consulting firms, software developers — it's an excellent choice.
For field service contractors running HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, or cleaning crews? It's the wrong tool.
This isn't a hit piece. Clockify is a good product for what it was built for. The problem is that it wasn't built for what field contractors need — and the gap between what Clockify does and what a field operation requires is significant.
What Clockify Actually Is
Clockify is a time tracking platform built primarily for knowledge workers who bill by the hour. Its core loop is: start a timer, stop a timer, add it to a project, export to a spreadsheet or payroll system.
That loop works perfectly for a freelance designer, a law firm associate, or a marketing agency tracking hours per client. The interface is clean. The free tier is genuinely useful. The reporting is adequate for most use cases.
Clockify's core strength: making it easy to track hours for desk-based workers. Full stop.
What Clockify Offers Field Service Teams
Time tracking: Clockify can track hours for field workers. Techs can start/stop a timer on their phone. This part works.
GPS tracking: Available on Clockify's Pro tier. It records location, though it's not designed around job-site verification — it's the same GPS layer that office workers use to log remote work. It works, but it wasn't engineered for multi-stop field service days.
Project tracking: You can create "projects" in Clockify that roughly map to jobs. With enough manual configuration, a field service company can use projects as a proxy for work orders.
Reporting: Clockify's reports show hours by person, project, and date. For field service cost analysis, you'd need to export and manipulate the data in a spreadsheet.
Integrations: Clockify integrates with Slack, Jira, Asana, and other office productivity tools. QuickBooks integration is available.
Where Clockify Falls Short for Field Contractors
No dispatch board
The single biggest gap. When a new service call comes in, Clockify has no way to assign it to a technician. There's no drag-and-drop dispatch interface, no real-time crew map, no "assign to nearest available tech" workflow.
Field service without a dispatch board is a coordination problem. You're texting, calling, or using a whiteboard alongside Clockify — which means Clockify is solving one piece of a larger puzzle, not the whole thing.
No work order management
Clockify has "projects" — not work orders. A work order in field service is more than a time bucket. It includes:
- Customer address and contact information
- Equipment make, model, and service history
- Job status trail (New → Scheduled → En Route → On Site → Complete)
- Technician notes and photos
- Parts and materials used
- Digital signature capture
- Invoice generation
Clockify doesn't have any of this. You'd need a separate work order system — Jobber, Housecall Pro, or similar — running alongside Clockify, with manual data entry between them.
No estimate builder
In HVAC, plumbing, and electrical, the estimate is often the sale. A good estimate tool lets techs present Good/Better/Best options at the customer's home, capture a digital signature, and convert the approved estimate to an invoice with one click.
Clockify doesn't have an estimate builder. This is a gap that affects revenue, not just operations.
Per-seat pricing grows with your crew
Clockify Pro costs $7.99/user/month (paid annually). That might seem cheap:
| Team size | Clockify Pro monthly cost | |-----------|--------------------------| | 5 techs | $40/month | | 10 techs | $80/month | | 20 techs | $160/month | | 30 techs | $240/month |
At 20 techs, you're paying $160/month for time tracking only — no dispatch, no work orders, no estimates, no invoicing. ClockHQ Professional covers 15 techs at $149/month with all of those features included.
Screenshot monitoring
Clockify offers screenshot monitoring and activity level tracking — a feature designed to catch office workers using personal time during work hours. For field technicians working in customer homes and commercial buildings, this is:
- Irrelevant (they're not at company computers)
- Privacy-invasive (they're on customer property)
- Morale-damaging (it signals deep mistrust to employees who are representing your brand)
We want to be direct: ClockHQ will never offer screenshot monitoring. GPS verification serves the legitimate operational need. Surveillance of what workers are doing on personal devices at customer locations crosses a line we won't cross.
What Field Service Teams Actually Need
After working with hundreds of field contractors across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, and cleaning, we've identified the non-negotiables:
1. GPS clock-in tied to job sites, not just "working"
Every time entry should attach to a specific work order with GPS verification that the tech was at the job address. Not just "clocked in at 8am" — "clocked in at 8:12am at 1547 Oak Street, 0.2 miles from the scheduled site."
2. Dispatch that connects to time tracking
Dispatch and time tracking aren't separate functions in field service — they're the same workflow. When a job is assigned, the tech sees it on their phone. When they clock in, it ties to that job. When they clock out, the job closes. One seamless flow.
3. Work orders that capture the full job record
Photos, notes, parts, signatures, customer history — all attached to the work order that the time entry belongs to. This is what makes per-job labor cost reports actually useful.
4. Pricing that scales flat
As your crew grows, your software cost shouldn't grow proportionally. Per-seat pricing is an anchor on growth. Flat monthly pricing lets you add seasonal workers, expand to a second market, or hire freely without watching the software invoice climb.
5. No app store required
Every new tech who needs to download an app before they can clock in is a friction point. PWA-based tools that work from any phone browser onboard new crew members in under two minutes.
ClockHQ: Built for What Clockify Wasn't
ClockHQ is the direct answer to the field service gap that Clockify leaves open. We built it because we saw field contractors running Clockify for time tracking, Jobber for dispatch, and Excel for job costing — three tools, three subscriptions, and manual data entry between all three.
ClockHQ integrates all three into a single platform purpose-built for field service:
- GPS-verified time tracking on every clock event
- Drag-and-drop dispatch board with real-time crew map
- Work orders with photo documentation, notes, parts tracking, and digital signatures
- Good/Better/Best estimates that convert to invoices on approval
- Stripe-powered field payment collection before you leave the driveway
- QuickBooks payroll export — zero manual re-entry
- Flat monthly pricing — $79/month (5 techs), $149/month (15 techs), $299/month (unlimited)
- No app download required — works on any phone browser, offline included
- Zero screenshot monitoring — ever
Honest Assessment: When Clockify Is Still Fine
We said this wasn't a hit piece, so here's the honest version:
Clockify works for field service when:
- You're a solo operator or 1–2 person crew
- You primarily need to track your own hours for client billing
- You have a separate dispatch and work order system that you're happy with
- You're on Clockify's free tier and not paying for GPS
If you're a solo HVAC technician who handles your own scheduling, uses a different invoicing tool, and just needs somewhere to log hours — Clockify is adequate and free.
Clockify stops working for field service when:
- You have 5+ techs who need GPS-verified time entries
- You need dispatch and work order management alongside time tracking
- You're tired of manually reconciling three different tools
- Your per-seat Clockify bill is climbing as you hire
At that inflection point, a purpose-built field service platform that costs the same or less makes more sense than continuing to stack workarounds on top of a tool designed for office workers.
The Comparison in One Table
| | ClockHQ | Clockify | |---|---|---| | GPS time tracking | All plans | Pro tier | | Work order management | Built-in | Not available | | Dispatch board | Built-in | Not available | | Estimates & invoicing | Built-in | Not available | | Screenshot monitoring | Never | Available | | White-label | Pro & Business | Not available | | Pricing | Flat monthly | Per seat | | Mobile app | PWA (any browser) | Native app | | Offline mode | ✓ | ✓ | | QuickBooks export | ✓ | ✓ |
Compare ClockHQ and Clockify in detail →
Start a 30-day free ClockHQ trial → — no credit card, up and running in 30 minutes.