Complys vs busybusy

busybusy is one of the few time-tracking apps with real construction DNA - it was built by a concrete contractor, and it shows in the features: GPS clock-in, job costing, equipment tracking, breadcrumb location and daily reports, with a genuinely generous free tier. If your problem is tracking labour and equipment costs on site, busybusy is a strong, purpose-built answer.

Complys overlaps with busybusy on the essentials - geofenced GPS clock-in, timesheets, and a project profit-and-loss view with labour auto-costed from the hours worked - and then goes somewhere busybusy does not: compliance. RAMS, COSHH, inductions, permits, the accident book and worker-card tracking all live in Complys, and none of them exist in busybusy. Both are construction-native and both have a free tier, so this is one of the closer like-for-like comparisons - the deciding factor is usually whether you also want your site's safety paperwork in the same place as your hours.

GPS is common ground and both do it well. busybusy captures GPS at clock-in with on-site verification and breadcrumb tracking of where crews have moved during the day, which is a genuine strength and part of why contractors trust it for labour tracking.

Complys captures location, accuracy, distance from site and geofence status on every punch, and flags anyone who clocks in outside the site radius, with a manager view grouping everyone by the job they are on. For proving who was on site and when, the two are level. busybusy goes a little further on continuous breadcrumb movement during the shift; Complys ties the clock-in into the wider compliance record - the same location data sitting next to the worker's induction, card expiry and the site RAMS. Both are accurate enough for a construction manager; they just point the data at different jobs.

busybusy's job costing is detailed, and its equipment tracking - knowing which machine was on which job and for how long - is something Complys does not do at all. If plant and equipment cost recovery is central to how you run jobs, that is a real busybusy advantage and worth being clear about.

Complys does job costing too, but at the project level: a profit-and-loss for each job showing contract value against material, plant, subbie, labour and overhead costs, with the labour figure worked out automatically from the timesheets, plus live gross profit and margin. Where busybusy goes deeper on equipment and granular cost detail, Complys gives you the whole-project financial picture and, crucially, the compliance layer as well. Neither is 'better' in the abstract; they are built around different centres of gravity.

busybusy tracks what your labour and equipment are doing and what they cost. What it does not do - because it was never meant to - is any of the compliance a UK site is legally required to keep. There is no RAMS or method statement generation, no COSHH, no site induction, no accident book or RIDDOR flagging, no permits to work, no near-miss reporting, and no tracking of whether a worker's CSCS card or ticket is still valid.

That means a busybusy-only site still has all of that happening somewhere else - or not happening, which is the real risk. Complys was built to close exactly that gap: generate the RAMS and COSHH, get the induction signed on a phone by QR with location captured, log accidents in a book that tells you the RIDDOR position, issue permits with the right precautions, and keep everyone's cards in date with reminders. It is the layer busybusy leaves out.

Both products have a genuine free offering, which is unusual and worth comparing directly. busybusy's free plan gives unlimited users core time tracking, with job costing, scheduling and reports on the paid Pro and Premium tiers. Complys has free-forever tiers too, with AI features running on credit top-ups, and its paid Pro tier at a flat monthly price includes the whole team and the AI RAMS builder.

So you can trial either without spending anything. The honest way to choose on a free basis is to ask what you will still be missing: on busybusy free you are missing compliance entirely and some costing; on Complys free you have the compliance tools and time tracking, with AI generation metered. For a construction business the compliance is usually the more expensive gap to fill elsewhere.

Because Complys covers the GPS clock-in, timesheets and project costing, most firms moving from busybusy are adding compliance and consolidating rather than losing anything - set up your projects and site radii, add your people, get them clocking in, and the RAMS, COSHH, inductions and accident book are there. With a free tier on both sides you can run them in parallel while the crew settles in.

The one honest reason to keep busybusy alongside Complys is equipment costing. If tracking plant and machine time against jobs is core to your margins, busybusy does that and Complys does not - so a few firms run busybusy purely for equipment and use Complys for time plus compliance. Most, without heavy equipment needs, consolidate onto Complys.

Choose busybusy if detailed labour and equipment cost tracking is your main job and you handle compliance separately - especially if plant and equipment cost recovery matters to you, since Complys does not track equipment. Choose Complys if you want the GPS time tracking and project costing plus the compliance platform in one UK tool, and you would rather not run and pay for a separate RAMS, COSHH and accident-book system.

The bottom line: busybusy and Complys are the two most construction-native tools in this comparison, and both are strong. busybusy goes deeper on equipment and cost detail; Complys goes broader across the project and owns the compliance that busybusy leaves out. For most UK trade firms the compliance tips it, because it is the obligation with teeth - but if your world is labour and plant costing above all, busybusy earns its place.