Complys vs ClockShark

If all you need is to know who worked, where and for how long, ClockShark does that well and has done for over a decade. It is one of the few time-tracking apps genuinely built for construction and field crews rather than office shift workers, and its GPS clock-in, scheduling and QuickBooks payroll pipeline are mature and well regarded.

But a construction site is not just a set of hours to be counted. It is a legal environment governed by CDM 2015, and the paperwork that keeps it compliant - risk assessments, method statements, COSHH, inductions, the accident book, permits to work - sits completely outside ClockShark's world. Complys does the geofenced GPS clock-in and the timesheets, and then it does all of that compliance too, in one UK-built platform with a free tier. So the honest way to frame this is not 'which tracks time better' - both track time fine - but 'do you want a clock, or do you want the tool that runs the whole compliant site'.

This is the feature people are usually comparing, so it is worth being precise. When a worker clocks in on ClockShark, it captures their GPS location, and on the Pro tier it can send geofence arrival and departure alerts and show where each punch happened. It is accurate, well-tested, and the crew-facing app is simple enough that lads on site actually use it.

Complys captures the same essentials on every clock-in: the worker's latitude and longitude, the accuracy of the fix, the distance from the site, and whether that puts them on site, near the site or outside the site radius. Anyone who clocks in from the wrong place is flagged for the manager, and the manage view groups everyone by the job they are on. For the core question a construction manager actually asks - 'was this person on my site when they said they were' - the two are on a par.

Where they diverge is what the location data feeds into. In ClockShark it feeds timesheets and payroll. In Complys the same clock-in also sits alongside that worker's induction record, their CSCS card expiry, the site's RAMS and the accident book - so the location proof is one thread in a full compliance picture, not a standalone punch. If GPS accuracy for mileage reimbursement is your priority, a specialist like Timeero edges both; for site attendance, Complys matches ClockShark and gives the data somewhere more useful to live.

It would be dishonest to pretend ClockShark is weak - it is a good product, and for some businesses it is the right one. Both tools do job costing: Complys gives you a project profit-and-loss view with contract value against your cost categories and labour auto-costed from timesheets, while ClockShark works at a more granular cost-code and task level, coding individual labour hours against codes in real time - so if you cost every hour to a specific code, ClockShark is the more detailed of the two. Its scheduling is strong too, with drag-and-drop shift and job assignment that crews find easy.

Its biggest single advantage is payroll. ClockShark integrates tightly with QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto and other payroll systems, so approved hours flow straight through to pay with very little re-keying. If your back office runs on QuickBooks and paying the crew accurately every week is the thing that keeps you up at night, that pipeline is genuinely valuable and Complys does not yet replicate it. ClockShark's support also has a strong reputation, and the product has the polish that comes from years of iteration with real contractors.

Here is the gap that matters. ClockShark has no risk assessments, no method statements, no COSHH assessments, no site inductions, no accident book, no RIDDOR flagging, no permits to work, no near-miss reporting and no way to track whether a worker's CSCS card or ticket has expired. That is not a criticism - it was never built to. But it means that if ClockShark is your only site software, every one of those legal obligations is still being handled somewhere else: a folder of Word documents, a separate RAMS tool, a paper accident book in the site cabin.

Under CDM 2015 the duty holder has to show suitable and sufficient risk assessments, that workers were inducted and informed of the risks, and that incidents were recorded and reported. If an HSE inspector or a main contractor asks for that, a stack of timesheets does not answer the question. Complys is built around exactly this: generate a site-specific RAMS and COSHH assessment in minutes, get workers to sign the induction on their phone by QR with their location captured, log accidents in a book that tells you which are RIDDOR-reportable and by when, issue permits for hot works or confined space, and keep every worker's cards and training in date with automatic reminders.

So the real difference is not a feature here or there - it is that ClockShark answers 'how many hours' and Complys answers 'is this site legal, and how many hours'. For a business whose biggest risk is a compliance failure rather than a payroll error, that is the whole decision.

Choose ClockShark if time, scheduling and job costing are genuinely your only problem, you run your payroll through QuickBooks and want the tightest possible integration, and your H&S compliance is already handled well by something else you are happy to keep paying for and maintaining separately.

Choose Complys if you are a UK construction or trade business that has to keep the site compliant as well as track hours - which is most of them. You get the geofenced clock-in and timesheets, and you stop paying for and juggling separate RAMS, COSHH, induction and accident-book systems, because they are all in one place. And unlike a pure time-tracker, Complys also helps you win the next job through its public contractor directory and reviews - so it earns its keep on the way in as well as on site.

Moving is straightforward because you are not losing the capability that drew you to ClockShark - Complys covers the clock-in, geofencing, timesheets and job assignment - you are adding the compliance layer on top and consolidating your subscriptions. The practical steps are to set your projects and site radii, add your people, and get the crew clocking in on the Complys app; from there you generate your RAMS and inductions and the site is compliant, not just clocked.

Because Complys has a genuine free tier and flat pricing that includes your whole team, you can run it alongside ClockShark for a week or two, get the crew used to the new clock-in, and satisfy yourself the attendance data is what you need before you move over fully. If detailed cost-coding or QuickBooks payroll is doing heavy lifting for you today, some firms keep ClockShark purely for that and use Complys for time plus compliance - but most consolidate, because paying twice to track the same hours rarely makes sense.

ClockShark is a good, construction-focused time-tracking app with strong job costing and payroll integration, and if that is the whole of your problem it will serve you well. But it is a clock, and a construction site needs more than a clock. The hours it counts are only one of the things an HSE inspector, a main contractor or a client will ask you to prove - and it has nothing to say about the rest.

Complys was built the other way round: it starts from the compliance a UK site is legally required to keep, and includes the geofenced GPS clock-in and timesheets as part of that, not as the whole product. So you get everything ClockShark's clock gives you, plus the RAMS, COSHH, inductions, accident book, permits and worker-card tracking that keep you on the right side of CDM 2015 - and a directory that helps you win the next job. For most UK trade and construction businesses, that is simply more of what the job actually needs, from one platform, starting free.