Comparing ezClocker app vs busybusy feels a bit like comparing a shovel to a backhoe. No disrespect to the shovel, it’s a functional tool and will dig a hole. A shovel is perfect for a Saturday project, but if you’re moving lots of dirt every day, an excavator or skid steer would be a better choice. Just as a shovel and a skid steer both move dirt, it can be said that ezClocker and busybusy both track time using a smartphone, but that’s where the similarities end and major differences begin to emerge.
An effective comparison article often begins by explaining the small differences among similar features, however, ezClocker and busybusy are so vastly different that there just aren’t that many similar features to compare. In the interest of the reader’s time, it felt more efficient to begin this article by pointing out the strong features that set busybusy apart from ezClocker.
Features Unique to busybusy over ezClocker
The following features are only found at busybusy when compared to ezClocker. Also, it’s worth noting here that the features you pay for at ezClocker are all included in busybusy’s FREE package, which busybusy offers for free for an unlimited number of employees for an unlimited amount of time. (we’ll discuss price comparison later in the article)
Photo Uploads
With this feature, your employees can take photos on the job site. These photos are timestamped, tagged with a geolocation, filed under that specific project, and kept safe in busybusy’s cloud-based storage. Photos are easily searchable by date, location, or by the employee that took them. The photos can even be imported into busybusy’s Daily Report feature and shared with crew members and managers, keeping everyone on the same page. Notes can also be added and attached to the photos further clarifying job site progress or issues.
Alerts and Notifications
With busybusy’s Geofence feature your employees will receive an alert on their phone reminding them to clock in when they arrive at or leave the jobsite, this will greatly reduce timecard ‘guesstimating’. Employees will also receive an alert when there’s a change to their schedule, as well as when their timecards are ready to sign (which they can do right on their smartphone screen using their finger!)
Real-time Reports
busybusy has over 30 real-time reports that are viewable on multiple devices, including your desktop computer and smartphone, so you can stay current on what’s happening on the job site whether you’re inside or outside the office. These real-time reports track equipment stats and locations, job costing, project labor budgets, and detailed employee reports including hours worked, and their current and past projects.
Data Analysis
busybusy organizes all your collected data for you in easy-to-read charts and graphs for more effective analysis. No need to spend hours creating spreadsheets in excel, although if you want to, your data is exportable. With busybusy, you can easily view reports on cost code analysis, or project budgets to look at estimated labor costs vs actual labor costs, just to name a few. This powerful data analysis goes way beyond a job costing app. busybusy will keep your current project budgets on track and make your future project bids more accurate.
Diverse Filtering
Being able to filter your data makes it easier to compile and view the data you’re interested in. With busybusy, you can filter, sort, and view your data by projects, employee, cost code, equipment, and date. From there, data can again be filtered by any of the remaining categories.
For example, you can view data on a specific piece of equipment and then sort that equipment data further by employees who operated it, or dates it was used, and job site it was used on. The same goes for a specific project. You can sort by project, and then sort again by employees that worked that project, or cost codes used on that project. busybusy’s powerful filtering helps you to see trends and make the best decisions for your business. As mentioned earlier, you can access all these reports on your smartphone and desktop computer.
Dynamic Desktop Widgets
Customizable desktop widgets are a relatively new feature that busybusy has just released. These widgets make it easy for the owner/administrator to get a current overview of every possible aspect regarding employees, hours, projects, equipment, and personnel issues with a glance at the computer screen. Widgets can be customized to display a desired time frame of the past 7 days, 14 days, weekly, monthly, or by pay period.
Daily Reports
Many construction companies use Daily Project Reports…well…every day. Job site supervisors are spending valuable time creating these reports. With busybusy Daily Reports are automatically generated to include data such as employees onsite, equipment used, job codes, weather conditions, injury reports, and photos/notes. Supervisors can add a few quick notes if needed.
Supervisors will love how much time busybusy’s Daily Reports feature will save them. Ownership and office staff will love how accurate they are, guesstimates and rounding are no longer necessary. Reports are also easily shared among crew members and management by text, email, Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more.
Equipment Tracking
busybusy gives you the ability to track the location of your equipment in real-time, along with other important stats such as current fuel levels, total operation hours, and view current and past operators. You can also assign equipment to specific projects and associate labor costs with time-on equipment further improving your bidding accuracy. But perhaps one of the greatest benefits of equipment tracking is the ability to tie operator hours to a specific machine. This helps owners track and determine operator efficiency.
Injury reports/Covid
With busybusy, you have the option to require your employees to fill out a quick questionnaire before clocking in or before clocking out. This is the perfect opportunity for employees to complete a daily injury report (or more importantly a NON-INJURY report so they can’t come back later and file an injury that didn’t happen). The questionnaire takes mere seconds and protects employees and owners from injury disputations and possible litigation. No more surprise injury claims days or weeks down the road. All injury reports are filed away digitally in busybusy’s cloud-based storage – keeping you compliant with all labor laws.
To protect crews from potential Covid exposure, many contractors are using busybusy’s pre-clock in questionnaire feature as a brief health screening assessment. This simple tool not only helps protect employees from Covid but also ensures business owners are protected legally.
Labor Laws
Labor Laws are great because they help protect employees, however, keeping track of all the rules and regulations is a pain for business owners. busybusy can integrate many of your state’s labor laws within their software. Required breaks are automatically scheduled and overtime pay is correctly calculated. These break and OT rules can be customized for any state, for overly complicated states like California, these laws are automatically built-in.
*If you’re a business owner in California you should know that busybusy is the only time tracking software company with California overtime and break laws automatically built in!
Labor laws also require keeping two years of signed timecards for each employee. With busybusy this is easy because timecards are signed digitally and stored in their cloud-based storage, making timekeeping truly paperless.
Project Manager/Supervisor/Foreman Tools
The way construction companies are structured, with an owner, project manager/foreman, and crews, it makes sense to give project managers some oversight and access to time tracking tools to lessen the burden on owners. busybusy’s Supervisor Tools include the ability to clock in or out an employee or entire team, create and modify schedules, create daily reports, view equipment location, view job costing data based on field labor, and view the location of job site employees based on timestamps. EzClocker just released a very scaled-down feature they call ‘Manager Roles’ which will give your managers access to other employees’ timesheets and schedules.
Universal map
View all your clocked-in employees, equipment, and job sites in real-time using busybusy’s universal map.
Similar Features
There are five features ezClocker and busybusy share, however, while the basic functions of these features are the same, these features are more powerful at busybusy. Again, this threatens to sound like an article purposely extolling the virtues of busybusy over ezClocker, when in reality it simply comes down to the previously made comparison of a shovel and a skid steer. EzClocker and busybusy are just that different from each other, even when looking at the similarities.
Ease of Use
busybusy and ezClocker both eliminate the need for paper time cards by using a mobile time clock app on an employee’s smartphone. Both busybusy and ezClocker’s apps are easy to use. Time spent training your employees on how to use either app will be minimal, even if your employees are less than tech-savvy.
Ability to Track Time by Smartphone, Kiosk, or Desktop login
With busybusy or ezClocker, your employees will have the flexibility to clock in using their smartphone or an office ‘tablet’ kiosk. In regards to the tablet kiosk, there is a difference between busybusy and ezClocker. EzClocker app only gives you the option of using a 4 digit pin to sign in, while busybusy gives you the choice of using a pin or facial recognition to clock in. The facial recognition feature means that busybusy’s job site time clock app will virtually eliminate buddy punching and time theft. Also with busybusy, Office employees can clock in using their desktop computer if they wish.
GPS Capabilities
Both ezClocker and busybusy’s apps have GPS capabilities. However, ezClocker’s GPS capability is very limited. With ezClocker, you can only see the GPS location of the employee for a brief moment when they hit the clock in button and again when they hit the clock out button. It’s more like a snapshot of seeing where an employee is when they clock in, but then not again until they clock out. busybusy uses GPS breadcrumbing technology, so you can see in real-time the location of your employees the entire time they are clocked in. This is helpful when you’re managing multiple or large job sites, making it the perfect mobile construction GPS time clock.
Another great busybusy GPS feature is the ability to create a geofence around the perimeter of a job site. A geofence will notify employees, via their phones, to clock in/out whenever they cross the virtual barrier. This feature will greatly improve your company’s time tracking accuracy by eliminating the need for employees to guess their hours after the fact.
Scheduling
EzClocker and busybusy have a scheduling feature built into their mobile time tracking app. Supervisors can build schedules for their employees and employees can easily view their shifts through their smartphone app. busybusy’s online scheduling app goes a step further and will alert employees if there is a change to their schedule which saves supervisors the hassle of calling or texting employees with updates.
Exporting Data for Payroll
EzClocker allows you to export your time tracking data into a spreadsheet via a CSV file. Once that is done you’ll need to manually import the CSV file into their program. busybusy is integrated with any payroll service, which means that busybusy works seamlessly with your preferred payroll service to automatically import your payroll data saving you many hours of manually doing payroll.
Cost Breakdown
EzClocker has three packages and they offer a 30-day free trial and there is no contract to sign.
- Basic Package costs a flat-rate fee of $10/month for up to 15 employees. With this package, you’ll have access to four of their features.
- Standard Package costs a flat fee of $25/month for up to 30 employees. You’ll have access to all six of their features.
- Premium Package costs a flat fee of $50/month for up to 100 employees. It comes with the same features as the Standard package.
busybusy has two packages. A Free Package and a Pro Package and there is no contract to sign.
- busybusy’s FREE Package gives you access to twelve features for FREE, including all the features you have to pay for at ezClocker- even with their basic package. Busybusy’s free package is good for an unlimited number of employees for an unlimited amount of time. Stated another way, it’s Unlimited Freeness Forever.
- busybusy’s Pro Package costs $9.99 per user, per month if you sign up for annual billing. This gives you access to all their powerful features. The first month is free and busybusy gives you a 90-day money-back guarantee, and there is no contract to sign.
A couple of thoughts about the Cost Breakdown
Yes, ezClocker doesn’t charge per employee, they only charge a flat monthly rate. Initially, this seems like a no-brainer. HOWEVER, here’s the kicker. busybusy’s FREE package has twice the number of features as ezClocker’s Basic, Standard, AND Premium package! So save yourself the $10, $25, or $50 a month and just use busybusy’s Free Package. Or upgrade to busybusy’s PRO level and increase your company’s profit by using their data analysis and many cost code/budget reports to improve the accuracy and efficiency of your project bidding.
busybusy Pro has been proven to help companies save money and increase their profits. For example, after a busybusy client analyzed their time tracking data they realized that 30-40% of their payroll expenses were being spent paying for non-working time. Following a few modifications, they were able to reduce their employees ‘inefficient hours by 50% –busybusy helped save their company almost $500,000!
Another way busybusy helps to save your company money is with their Automatic Billing Policy. This policy ensures you’re not charged for something you’re not using. For example, there will be some months you might have fewer employees due to seasonal work or turnover. busybusy tracks your employees’ usage automatically and adjusts your bill accordingly. The fact that it’s done automatically saves you time and it definitely will save you money.
Customer Service
With busybusy, you can reach customer support any time by phone, email, or through their onsite chat feature. EzClocker has an email address and phone number on its website.
When you sign up with busybusy you will be assigned a personal onboard specialist(s). This specialist will help explain and personalize all the time tracking and payroll settings according to your company’s needs. They will help you integrate your payroll (including walking you through your first payroll process) and help you import your current employees, equipment, and projects.
We mentioned previously, but it bears noting again, that busybusy offers a 14-day free trial while ezClocker offer a 30-day free trial. busybusy also offers a 90-day money-back guarantee with no contract so you have 3 months to discover how much you’ll love their product with zero risks.
Conclusion
Both busybusy and ezClocker will give you mobile time tracking software that is easy to use, however, ezClocker’s features are basic, limited, and underwhelming, especially for the unique needs of a construction company. busybusy’s many powerful features are designed specifically for the construction industry and give you the tools you’ll need to run your business efficiently and profitably. Plus busybusy’s FREE package comes with every feature (and more) that ezClocker charges you for.
Reasons to use busybusy over ezClocker
- Digital timecard signatures for employees and supervisors. Truly go paperless.
- busybusy was designed specifically for the construction industry. They understand the unique needs of construction owners.
- Geofencing capabilities to remind/notify employees to clock in/out when they arrive/leave the job site.
- An Automatically Fair Billing Policy will save you money by only charging you for what you use.
- Comprehensive reports and data analysis will give you confidence in the accuracy of your project bids and help to grow your business
- Supervisors can create powerful Daily Project Reports in seconds using data busybusy gathers throughout the day
- Equipment Tracking
- Jobsite photos that are tagged, organized, and searchable
- Universal Map that will show you in real-time the location of clocked-in employees, equipment, and job sites.
- Automatically comply with overtime and break laws
- Clock in/out questionnaires help with liability and safety
- Personal Onboard Specialist to help with startup transition and other customer service needs.
- No contracts
Schedule a demo with busybusy to see what they can do for your business today.
Reasons to use ezClocker over busybusy
To be honest, it was a struggle to come up with any reason a construction company should use ezClocker over busybusy, especially since busybusy’s FREE package includes all of ezClocker’s features (plus more) and busybusy’s PRO package is so comprehensive, but if you’re a small, non-construction based business and you’re looking for a basic timekeeping program with limited GPS capabilities or if your company falls into the categories listed below then ezClocker could work for you.
- If you run a small business where project bidding and in-depth reports aren’t necessary.
- If your business doesn’t own work trucks or heavy equipment.
- If you don’t use photos to track job site progress or protect your liabilities.
- If your business doesn’t deal with injury reports and you don’t need to document injuries and NON-injuries to reduce legal woes.
- If your business doesn’t require Daily Project Reports then you won’t miss this cool busybusy feature.
- If your payroll process is simple and can easily be taken care of in-house without the need to integrate your time tracking data with a payroll service.
