QuickBooks Time costs $10/user/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $3,600 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$10/user/mo is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Punchcard: the pay-once alternative
Punchcard does the same core job for $29, once. Self-hosted punch clock, PIN kiosk, approval queue and payroll CSV — no per-user fees.
| Punchcard | QuickBooks Time | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $10/user/mo |
| 10 employees, 1 year | $29 | $1,200+ |
| Clock in/out + breaks | Yes | Yes |
| Kiosk PIN punch | Yes | Yes |
| Timesheet approval + audit | Yes | Yes |
| Overtime flagging | Yes | Yes |
| Payroll CSV export | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted, data stays yours | Yes | No |
Less than one month of QuickBooks Time for a 10-person crew pays for Punchcard forever.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need QuickBooks Time's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Punchcard is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Punchcard — $29, once
Self-hosted punch clock, PIN kiosk, approval queue and payroll CSV — no per-user fees.