ClockShark vs TradesTimer
What ClockShark is
Time tracking and scheduling SaaS purpose-built for construction and field service crews.
Best for: Construction and field-service companies with a dispatcher and 5+ field employees, where crew scheduling and job costing drive the purchase.
Pricing at a glance
$40 per user / month (minimum)
Standard plan $40/month base plus $8 per user; Pro plan adds scheduling and job costing at higher per-user rates.
Verified 2026-04-15
$0 for five days Five-day app trial
Pro (US$6.99/month or US$49.99/year) provides continued tracking, timeline review, and encrypted cloud backup. Local store prices vary.
ClockShark strengths
- Strong job costing and budgeting workflows
- CrewClock group clock-in for vehicles of workers arriving together
- Native integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, ADP and other payroll systems
Considerations for self-employed tradespeople
- Monthly base fee plus per-user charges add up fast for sole proprietors
- Designed around 'the office' dispatching 'the crew' — single-operator flows feel tacked on
- Jobs and cost codes must be created before work starts to benefit from the reporting
- Cloud-hosted by design; location trails leave your device
Experiences with ClockShark
These quotes come from public discussions about ClockShark. Each quote links to its source.
My employer has recently moved from paper timesheets to digital. They chose the app ClockShark. They have mandated that we put it on our personal devices which was not received well by the majority. … they then changed the rules that we must allow it to precisely track our GPS location to be able to clock in and out.
TradesTimer stores individual history on your phone without an employer dashboard. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider.
Clockshark. Won't open at all. Stays on loading screen then crashes after several minutes. … This is a crucial app for me as it clocks me into work.
Background tracking reduces reliance on manual clock-ins. Check tracking status regularly and review recorded visits before billing.
needs help formatting the csv output from the app into something legible. Anybody else use Clockshark and have trouble with the awful output of time data to the csv?
The end product of time tracking is a number you can invoice. TradesTimer's output is a plain-text billable-hours summary you can paste anywhere.
Why I built a ClockShark alternative
At the electrical contractor where I ran the back office, nothing could be tracked until I'd set it up: job numbers created, POs entered, the guys told what to clock into. When I fell behind — busy week, new job landed mid-morning — their hours had nowhere to land and we cleaned up the mess at invoice time. Geofence systems like ClockShark bake that same dependency in: somebody has to draw the fence before the hours count.
ClockShark is a crew product: geofences drawn per jobsite, schedules, an admin dashboard. For a foreman with eight guys it earns its seat fees. For a solo operator visiting five new addresses a day, pre-drawing geofences is doing the office admin's job on top of your own. TradesTimer detects stops wherever you happen to work — no predefined job sites, with a five-day app trial before subscribing to Pro.
What TradesTimer does differently
- Five-day app trial, then a Pro subscription for continued tracking
- Zero pre-setup — the app discovers your stops and names them after you visit
- On-device location history, no employee portal, no dispatcher to maintain
- Invoice preview designed for one person sharing a quick total, not for payroll export
- No cloud account required — your location history stays on your device
Which app fits your needs?
ClockShark is the right pick when you have a dispatcher scheduling a crew and you need job costing fed into payroll. TradesTimer is the right pick when you are the dispatcher, the crew, and the bookkeeper, and you just want to recover the billable hours you are currently losing to memory — a five-day app trial lets you try the workflow before subscribing to Pro.
Page last verified 2026-04-15. If ClockShark has changed pricing or features since then contact us at support@tradestimer.com to request a correction.
Five days to try it. Pro to keep tracking.
The upcoming paid release includes five days of tracking without payment details or automatic charges. Continue with Pro, including encrypted backup. Exports remain available after the trial.
- Automatic stop and trip recording
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit stops and trips
- Rounded billable hours, exported as text or CSV
- Travel log with estimated distances
- 7-day summary view
- History stored on your phone
Canada: CA$9.99/month or CA$69.99/year. Both plans include the same features.
- Continued automatic tracking and timeline review
- End-to-end encrypted cloud backup
- Restore your full history on a new phone
- A backup stored separately from your phone
US prices are shown in USD; Canadian prices are shown in CAD. Your local App Store or Google Play price may differ. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled through the store where you purchased.
Control your location history
TradesTimer stores your history on your phone. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider. You choose where to share your hours and travel exports.
If you enable Pro backup, TradesTimer encrypts your history before uploading it. Your recovery code unlocks the backup. See the privacy policy for details about address lookups, exports, and other data use.