Competitor Comparison
Software Beats Hardware
uAttend wants you to buy a $400 fingerprint clock. Cloud Time Manager runs on the phones and tablets your team already owns — and it’s free for free for everyone.
If You're Choosing Between Them, Here's The Short Version
uAttend
uAttend is built around physical biometric time clocks — fingerprint, RFID, facial recognition. The cloud subscription is bolted on top. It works, and the hardware is reliable, but you pay $200–$500 per clock plus a tiered monthly subscription that scales from $29 to $195 a month based on employee count, with extra fees for additional clocks, additional admins, and non-CSV exports.
Cloud Time Manager
Cloud Time Manager is software-only. Any phone, tablet, or computer your team already owns becomes the time clock. Add GPS geofencing if you want to enforce on-site punching. The whole platform — time tracking, scheduling, payroll export, on-demand pay — is free for HMS merchants.
What you Actually Pay
- Cloud Time Manager
$0 /user/month
No hardware. No setup fees. Cancel anytime.
- Software platform: $0/month — completely free
- Hardware: $0 — runs on devices you already own
- Unlimited admins included
- All export formats included (CSV, Excel, PDF)
- Offline-first mobile included on every plan
- No per-clock fees — every device is a clock
- Free forever for HMS merchants
- uAttend
$200–$500 hardware + $11+/month
Extra costs often not shown upfront.
- Cloud subscription: $29–$195/month (tiered by employee count)
- Time clock hardware: $200–$500 per unit (separate purchase)
- +$12/month per additional clock beyond 2 included
- +$8/month per additional admin beyond 1 included
- +$8/month for non-CSV export formats
- +$2/month per clock for offline mode (BN/CB series)
- Month-to-month, no annual contract
Side-by-Side Feature Table
Feature
Time clock hardware
Mobile clock-in
GPS geofencing
Drag-and-drop scheduling
Auto-schedule engine
Real-time dashboard
Shift swap & pickup
On-demand pay
Minor labor law engine
Payroll export
Setup time
Offline mode
Pricing model
uAttend
$200–$500 per unit
Yes (basic)
Available, geolocation-based
Add-on (uAttend Scheduling)
No
Periodic refresh
No
No
No
QuickBooks, ADP, others (CSV)
Order hardware, install, configure
$2/clock/month (select hardware)
Tiered subscription + hardware + add-ons
Cloud Time Manager
$0 — phone, tablet, computer
Offline-first — works with no signal
Per-location, hard or soft enforcement
Included free
Demand-analysis optimizer
WebSocket — instant updates
Employee-initiated, manager-approved
Built-in earned wage access
State-specific rules, auto-enforced
ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks, Paychex, generic CSV
~15 minutes — no hardware
Standard on every device
Free for HMS merchants
Honest Assessment
Shared-device environments where you want a dedicated wall-mounted clock with biometric verification (fingerprint or facial recognition) and don’t trust a tablet kiosk for the same job. uAttend’s hardware is purpose-built for this and works reliably.
Workforces where employees don’t have personal phones and won’t use a shared tablet — uAttend hardware sidesteps the device problem entirely.
Five Things uAttend Doesn't do Natively
Auto-schedule engine
uAttend offers manual scheduling as an add-on. Cloud Time Manager has a demand-analysis auto-scheduler that builds shift plans respecting overtime caps, availability, skills, and labor-law constraints — typical managers save 3–8 hours per week.
Offline-first mobile
uAttend’s offline mode is a paid add-on tied to specific hardware models. Cloud Time Manager’s mobile app queues punches locally on every device, with no signal, and syncs automatically. Standard on every plan.
Real-time WebSocket dashboard
uAttend’s web dashboard updates on refresh. Cloud Time Manager pushes punches to the dashboard the instant they happen via Socket.IO, so a manager looking at “Who’s Working” sees changes live.
Minor labor law enforcement
uAttend doesn’t enforce minor-specific scheduling rules. Cloud Time Manager has a built-in rules engine for state-specific limits on school-night hours, max daily/weekly hours, and restricted shift times for under-18 workers.
On-demand pay
uAttend has no native earned-wage-access feature. Cloud Time Manager has on-demand pay built directly into the worker mobile app — not a third-party bolt-on.
Switching from uAttend
Most uAttend migrations finish in under a week, including the hardware retirement step:
- Export your employee list and historical timesheets from uAttend as CSV
- Import employees into Cloud Time Manager (CSV import or manual)
- Draw your geofence(s) on the map — replaces the fixed location of the wall clocks
- Workers receive an email to set their password and download the mobile app
- Run both systems in parallel for one pay period to validate
- Retire the uAttend hardware — or repurpose tablets as Kiosk PIN stations
Hardware decision
Hardware decision
Most uAttend customers retire the fingerprint clocks entirely once they migrate. A few keep one or two as shared kiosks for workers without personal phones — Cloud Time Manager supports kiosk PIN punching on any tablet, so the hardware refresh is optional, not required.
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Ready to ditch the fingerprint clock
Free for HMS merchants. Setup takes 15 minutes. No hardware required.