Time Tracking via App vs. Paper vs. Excel: What Really Works – and What It Costs

The honest question: Why do businesses switch their time tracking at all?

Most companies don't switch their time tracking because they read an article about it. They switch because something has gone wrong: a regulatory inspection, a wage dispute, an employee claiming their overtime was never recorded – or simply because payroll once again spent hours poring over illegible timesheets.

This article compares the three most common methods of working-time recording in small and medium-sized businesses: paper, Excel and app. With worked examples, concrete weaknesses – and a clear answer to the question of what really suits which business.

Method 1: Time Tracking on Paper

How it works

Timesheets, logbooks, handwritten lists – paper is the oldest and still a widely used method. Employees enter start, end and break times manually. At the end of the month the sheets are collected, transferred and used for payroll.

Arguments in favour

• No acquisition costs, no software, no IT
• Works without electricity, network and smartphone
• Everyone understands it – regardless of language

Arguments against

• Entries from memory – often days later and inaccurate
• Illegible handwriting, missing signatures, lost sheets
• No proof that entries are correct – legally vulnerable during inspections
• Manual transfer takes time every month – for every single employee
• No real-time overview for schedulers or payroll
• Archiving paper over years is laborious and error-prone

Legal sticking point: Working-time records must be traceable and reliable – the Court of Justice of the EU requires an objective, reliable and accessible recording system (judgment of 14 May 2019, C-55/18). A handwritten timesheet filled in by the employee themselves is barely a reliable piece of evidence in a dispute – neither against the employee nor against an authority.

Method 2: Time Tracking with Excel

How it works

Employees enter their times into an Excel spreadsheet – either themselves by e-mail or via a shared document. Payroll manually calculates supplements and overtime. Many businesses have built their own highly complex Excel solutions over the years.

Arguments in favour

• Cheaper than dedicated software
• Flexibly adaptable to your own processes
• Many people know Excel and feel comfortable with it

Arguments against

• Error-prone: one wrong decimal point, one wrong formula – and the entire monthly payroll is incorrect
• No real-time access: the spreadsheet is only as current as the last e-mail
• Not mobile: employees on the building site or in the field have no practical access
• Version chaos: who has the current file? Were all changes adopted?
• No location record, no automatic timestamp – little added value over paper during inspections
• Excel scales poorly with multiple employees and locations
• Often unusable for international employees who do not speak the local language

The underestimated Excel problem: Many businesses only realise during a payroll audit or an employment law dispute that their Excel records carry little weight as evidence – because they can be altered retrospectively and no automatic timestamp exists.

Method 3: Time Tracking via App

How it works

Employees clock in and out via a smartphone app – in real time, with an automatic timestamp, an optional location record at clock-in and direct project assignment. All data is centralised and can be retrieved, evaluated and exported at any time.

Arguments in favour

• Real-time overview: who is currently on duty? Who has not yet clocked in?
• Traceable: automatic timestamps are hard to manipulate, and changes can be logged
• Location record: where was the employee when clocking in? Documented at clock-in – without continuous tracking
• Automatic calculation: breaks and overtime are calculated automatically
• Multilingual: employees work in their native language – errors caused by misunderstandings become much rarer
• Offline-capable: Jobilino stores clock-ins without a network connection and transmits them automatically later
• Direct payroll export: no more manual transfer
• Scalable: works just as well for 5 employees as for 500

Arguments against

• Monthly licence costs (with Jobilino €5.99 per employee on the Basic plan, cheaper from 30 employees)
• Implementation effort – one-off, minimal, but present
• Employees without a smartphone need an alternative (with Jobilino: a clock-in terminal on a tablet, using an NFC card or personnel number and PIN)

The direct comparison: Paper vs. Excel vs. App

What does time tracking really cost? The hidden costs of paper and Excel

Many businesses believe paper and Excel cost nothing. That is true at the licence level – but not in reality. The real costs arise elsewhere:

Time costs

Suppose a business with 20 employees spends 4 hours per month consolidating timesheets: it then loses 48 hours of administrative time annually – paid at the salary of an accountant or office manager. At an internal hourly rate of €35, that amounts to €1,680 per year – just for transferring paper.

Error costs

Payroll errors caused by incorrectly recorded supplements, forgotten overtime or misallocated hours can quickly become expensive – either as back-payments to the employee or as lost revenue through overpaid wages.

Legal costs

A single employment law dispute over unproven overtime, or a regulatory inspection with missing records, can quickly cost many times the app licence.

Staff turnover costs

Employees who cannot transparently view their own hours are more often dissatisfied. And every unnecessary resignation causes recruiting and onboarding costs.

Example calculation: A business with 15 employees pays €89.85 per month for Jobilino on the Basic plan (Premium: €209.85). If it saves just 3 hours of administrative effort per month – €105 at an internal hourly rate of €35 – the Basic licence is covered in the very first month, before any avoided payroll error is counted.

Which method suits which business?

Paper – only still sensible in these cases

Paper is justifiable for sole traders without employees, or businesses with a maximum of two employees at a fixed location who have no field assignments and whose working hours are the same every day. For everyone else, paper is an unnecessary risk today.

Excel – sensible only as a transitional solution

Excel is acceptable for businesses that are currently digitising and need a short-term bridge. As a long-term solution, Excel is too error-prone and carries too little weight in a dispute for any business with more than five employees, field staff or changing work locations.

App – the right solution for these businesses

A time-tracking app is the right choice for all businesses that can answer yes to more than one of the following points:

• ✅ Employees work outside the office or at changing locations
• ✅ The team consists of more than 5 people
• ✅ There are shift, night or weekend duties with supplements
• ✅ Employees speak different native languages
• ✅ The administrative burden of payroll is too high
• ✅ You want to be able to act immediately during a regulatory inspection

Why Jobilino and not another app?

There are many time-tracking apps on the market. Jobilino was developed specifically for businesses with mobile and international teams – and focuses on three things:

• ✅ Genuine multilingualism: Not just a few menus – the whole app appears in the employee's language. Romanian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Turkish, German, English and many more.
• ✅ NFC clock-in even offline: NFC clock-ins are stored without a network connection and transmitted automatically once the connection is back – on building sites, in basements, in remote deployment areas.
• ✅ Several recording methods: App clock-in with location, NFC tag and a clock-in terminal on a tablet – freely combinable depending on industry and deployment location.

Conclusion: The right time tracking is not a question of cost – it is a risk decision

Those who use paper or Excel are not saving costs – they are deferring them. Into administrative time, risk of error, legal risk and lost efficiency. In many businesses, the monthly costs of a good app are quickly covered by the effort saved.

The real question is not: "Can I afford an app?" The question is: "Can I still afford paper and Excel?" For most businesses with more than five employees, field staff or international personnel, the answer is: no.

See for yourself: Try Jobilino free of charge and experience the difference within the very first week. No credit card, no commitment, ready to use immediately.