Complys vs QuickBooks Time

QuickBooks Time, formerly TSheets, is Intuit's time-tracking product, and its reason to exist is payroll: it captures hours with GPS and feeds them straight into QuickBooks. If you run QuickBooks payroll in the United States, that pipeline is best-in-class and hard to argue with.

For a UK construction business, though, it is an awkward fit on two counts. First, it is US-centric - built around US QuickBooks payroll, with limited UK availability and support, and it raised prices in 2026. Second, like every time-tracker in this comparison, it does no compliance at all. Complys is UK-built for CDM 2015, does the geofenced GPS clock-in and timesheets, and adds the RAMS, COSHH, inductions, accident book and permits a UK site is legally required to keep. So unless your back office is wedded to US QuickBooks payroll, the fit question alone points away from QuickBooks Time.

On the clock, QuickBooks Time is capable: GPS tracking on time entries, and geofencing to remind or require workers to clock in at a location - though geofencing sits on its top Elite tier, so the location control many construction managers want is not in the cheaper plans.

Complys captures location, accuracy, distance from site and geofence status on every punch, on every tier, and flags anyone clocking in outside the site radius. So for the specific construction need - proving who was on site and controlling off-site clock-ins - Complys gives you the geofencing without pushing you to the most expensive plan. And as everywhere in this comparison, the Complys clock-in feeds a compliance record, not just a payroll export.

QuickBooks Time is designed for the US market. Its geofencing sits on the top Elite tier, its pricing is in dollars with a base fee plus per-user that increased in 2026, and its support and payroll integrations are built around US systems. UK availability is limited, and a UK construction firm using it tends to feel like it is bending a US payroll tool to a job it was not designed for.

Complys is built in the UK, for UK construction, around CDM 2015, GDPR and the way UK sites actually work. That is not a small thing when the whole point of the software is to keep you compliant with UK law and to produce records a UK inspector or principal contractor will accept. A tool that does not really understand the UK context is the wrong foundation for that.

To be fair, QuickBooks Time is a mature, capable product with a clear strength: if you use QuickBooks for accounting and payroll, nothing feeds hours into it more smoothly. Approved timesheets flow straight through to pay, its reporting is robust, and the brand is trusted. For a QuickBooks-centric business that mostly needs to get hours into payroll cleanly, it does that job very well.

Complys does not try to replicate that tight QuickBooks payroll pipeline - direct payroll-software integration is on its roadmap rather than in the product today. So if feeding QuickBooks payroll is genuinely the single most important thing your time tool must do, QuickBooks Time has a real advantage there, and it is worth being honest about that.

Beyond payroll, QuickBooks Time is a clock and nothing more. It has no RAMS or method statements, no COSHH, no site inductions, no accident book or RIDDOR flagging, no permits to work, no near-miss reporting and no worker card or qualification tracking. For a construction business, that leaves every legal H&S obligation to be handled somewhere else.

Complys exists to carry exactly that load: generate site-specific RAMS and COSHH in minutes, get the induction signed by QR with location captured, log accidents in a book that flags the RIDDOR position and deadline, issue permits with the right precautions, and keep everyone's cards and training in date. It is the difference between a tool that feeds payroll and a tool that keeps a UK construction site legal.

UK construction payroll has its own machinery that a US-built tool simply does not model. Most obviously there is the Construction Industry Scheme - CIS deductions on subcontractor payments - and a large share of site labour is paid through umbrella companies or as CIS subcontractors rather than straight PAYE. QuickBooks Time is designed to feed US-style payroll through QuickBooks; it has no concept of CIS, and bending it to UK construction pay arrangements is awkward at best.

Complys is built in and for the UK, and its commercial side reflects how UK construction actually gets paid - quotes, invoices and applications for payment that suit trade and subcontract billing. It does not try to be your full payroll bureau, but it is not pretending the UK works like the US either. For a UK builder, a time tool that understands the UK context is a far more sensible foundation than a US payroll-feeder retrofitted to fit.

QuickBooks Time charges a monthly base fee plus a per-user rate, in US dollars, across its Premium and Elite tiers - and it raised prices in 2026. Critically for construction, geofencing sits on the top Elite tier, so the location control most site managers want pushes you to the most expensive plan, and every extra worker adds to the per-user cost.

Complys has a free-forever tier and flat monthly pricing on its paid plans that includes the whole team, with geofenced clock-in available without paying for a premium tier. So a UK construction firm gets the location control it actually needs without the Elite-tier premium, avoids per-seat costs that grow with every hire, and gets the entire compliance platform in the same subscription. On total cost of running a compliant UK site, it is not a close comparison.

Choose QuickBooks Time if you run US-style payroll through QuickBooks and the tightest possible hours-to-payroll pipeline is your single biggest need, and your compliance is handled elsewhere. Choose Complys if you are a UK construction or trade business that needs GPS clock-in plus the compliance a UK site is legally required to keep, from a tool built for the UK, with a free tier and flat pricing that includes the whole team.

The bottom line: QuickBooks Time is a US payroll-feeder that happens to track time, and it is good at that narrow job. For a UK construction business it is both an awkward geographic fit and completely absent on compliance. Complys does the clock-in and timesheets, is built for the UK, and covers the site-safety obligations QuickBooks Time does not touch - which for most UK builders is the decision made.