Workyard vs TradesTimer
What Workyard is
Construction-focused GPS time tracking with labor cost attribution to jobs and cost codes.
Best for: Small-to-midsize construction contractors with W-2 employees who need defensible labor cost data for fixed-price bids.
Pricing at a glance
$6 per user / month (minimum)
Workforce Management plan starts around $6 per user per month; time tracking plan $8 per user per month plus a company fee.
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.
Workyard strengths
- Accurate labor-cost attribution per job and cost code
- Automatic time capture triggered by jobsite arrival
- Solid reporting for bidding and post-job profitability
Considerations for self-employed tradespeople
- Auto time capture requires jobsites to be predefined with geofences before your crew arrives
- Workflow assumes W-2 employees clocking in against assigned jobs, not a solo operator recovering their day
- Reports are built around payroll and job costing, not around a one-person invoice
- Location trails are uploaded and retained on Workyard's servers for attribution
Experiences with Workyard
These quotes come from public discussions about Workyard. Each quote links to its source.
we currently use workyard for employee timecards but we're open to something that also handles that with GPS timestamps.
Even Workyard shops keep shopping — the per-user bill has to keep justifying itself. For a solo operator, $0 with automatic GPS-stamped stops is a different conversation.
Why I built a Workyard alternative
In the back office of an electrical contractor, my recurring nightmare wasn't guys inventing hours — it was hours landing in the wrong place. Clocked into the wrong job, billed to the wrong customer, caught (hopefully) by me at invoice time. GPS verification helps an employer audit that after the fact. Capturing stops automatically prevents it from happening at all: the location picks the job, not a 7 a.m. dropdown choice.
Workyard's GPS-verified timecards solve an employer problem: proving where employees were. Solo, you don't need to prove anything to yourself — you need the hours captured when your mind is on the work. That's a logging problem, not a verification problem, and it doesn't need seat pricing to solve.
What TradesTimer does differently
- Five-day app trial, then Pro for continued automatic tracking
- No jobsites to predefine — stops are detected and labeled automatically as you work
- No employees required; the product is designed primarily around one person
- Location history stays on the phone; there is no employer-facing trail view
- Invoice preview is a share sheet, not an export pipeline into another accounting system
- All your data stays on your phone — no cloud account required
Which app fits your needs?
Workyard is a strong choice for a construction contractor who lives and dies by job cost accuracy and has W-2 employees to account for. TradesTimer is a better fit for a self-employed tradesperson who mainly wants to stop forgetting how long they were at each address — and the five-day app trial requires no payment details, so you can try it before subscribing to Pro to see if it fits your workflow.
Page last verified 2026-04-15. If Workyard 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.