Time tracking software for landscaping: 9 tools compared on drive time, crews and job costs

Time tracking software for landscaping has to do one job that generic timers skip: separate the hours a crew spends on a property from the hours it spends loading trucks at the yard and driving between stops. That split decides whether your job costs are real, whether your bids cover drive time, and whether your payroll counts every hour the law says you owe.

We compared 9 tools against each vendor’s own pricing and help pages, from simple crew time clocks to full landscape management platforms. Below you will find the criteria that matter for landscaping crews, the math on what drive time costs one crew in a season, two comparison tables, an honest entry for every tool, and the places where landscaping time tracking usually goes wrong.

What landscaping crews need from time tracking

A landscaping company runs on a few people in the office and many people in trucks. The designer, the estimator and the account manager sit at a desk for part of the day; the maintenance and install crews move between five, ten or fifteen properties. Time tracking software for landscaping has to work for both groups, so we judged every tool on six tests.

• Drive and shop time on their own line. Can a crew record loading at the yard and driving between stops separately from time on the property, without dozens of extra taps a day?
• Time by property and by service. Hours should land on a specific client, job and type of work, such as mowing, irrigation repair or a patio install, so job costing means something.
• Crew or individual clock-in. Some companies want every worker on their own phone; others want the crew lead to clock in the whole truck from one device.
• Proof of location where it matters. GPS stamps or geofences that confirm a clock-in happened on the property, for owners who need that check.
• Estimates against actuals. A report that shows which properties take longer than the bid assumed, so next season’s prices move.
• A clean path to payroll and invoices. Approved hours should reach payroll and, for time and materials work, the client invoice without retyping.

No tool on this list wins all six. Crew time clocks are strongest on clock-in and location; landscape management platforms are strongest on estimates and job costing; project time trackers are strongest on billing. If your team is mostly in the field and GPS is the main question, our guides to field service time tracking software and geofencing software go deeper on that side.

What drive time costs one crew in a season

Under US federal rules, drive time between properties is paid work. The Department of Labor regulation on travel time, 29 CFR 785.38, says travel “from job site to job site during the workday” must be counted as hours worked. It also covers the yard: when employees must report to a meeting place to get instructions or pick up tools, the drive from there to the first job is part of the day’s work. Those hours count toward overtime like any other.

So you pay for drive time either way. What changes is whether your software shows it or quietly spreads it across the properties. Here is an illustrative day for one three person maintenance crew with seven stops, priced at the US median wage for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, $18.82 an hour in May 2025 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That figure is wages only, before payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and any overtime premium. If those 7.1 hours get folded into the property timesheets, the 19.9 hours of real site work look 36% longer than they were, and every maintenance bid you build from that data is wrong. Tighten routing so the legs between stops drop from 12 to 8 minutes, and drive falls to 4.4 crew hours. Time off the property drops to 5.9 crew hours, about $111 a day or $16,656 for the season, so roughly $3,400 comes back per crew. You only see that saving if drive time sits on its own line.

9 landscaping time tracking tools compared

Prices are the lowest published paid rate from each vendor’s own pricing page, and the table covers both crew time clocks and full timesheet software for landscaping companies. Several landscaping tools charge a base fee plus a per user fee, or a flat monthly license, so check the total for your real crew size rather than the headline number.

How each tool handles drive time and crews

This is the table that separates the tools. “Not documented” means the vendor’s public pricing, product and help pages we read do not describe the feature, not that it is impossible.

The 9 best time tracking software for landscaping

1. actiTIME

Key features:

• Timesheets
• Mobile timer
• Billing rates
• Job budgets

actiTIME is project time tracking software built for billing, and it fits landscape companies that think in clients, properties and jobs. Work sits in three levels, customer, project and task, so a property can be a project and mowing, cleanup or a patio install can be tasks under it. Drive time and shop time become their own tasks with a non-billable type of work, which keeps them out of the property’s hours without hiding them.

Crews log time in the mobile app with a timer or manual entry, and the office uses the weekly timesheet or the calendar view. Managers approve timesheets and lock past periods. Each project bills either by type of work rates, for example one rate for maintenance and another for installs, or by individual user rates, and the Billing Summary Report and PDF invoices come from the same hours. Time, cost and billing budgets turn red when a job runs over, and the Estimated vs. Actual Time Report shows which properties take longer than the bid assumed.

The limits for field crews are real: there is no GPS verification, no geofencing and no crew clock-in from one phone, and the mobile app needs an internet connection.

Pricing: free for up to 3 users; Online from $5 per user per month; a Self-Hosted version runs on your own server for a one time fee. Every account starts with a full featured 30-day trial.

We reduced payroll processing to 45 minutes per week

actiTIME is very robust, integrated well into your business process, and most important, helps you focus on your business instead of monkeying around with technology. actiTIME has reduced our payroll processing from 4-6 hours per week to 45 minutes per week.

Try actiTIME

2. ClockShark

Key features:

• Crew Clock
• Geofencing
• Scheduling
• Job costing

ClockShark is a GPS time clock for field service companies, and its landscaping page leans on the feature crews actually use: Crew Clock lets a foreman punch the whole team in and out from one phone, which helps when not every seasonal worker has a smartphone. A kiosk mode does the same from a shared tablet at the yard.

Workers switch between jobs and tasks, which ClockShark also calls cost codes, so a crew can move from mowing to a drive task to an irrigation repair. Clock-ins carry GPS stamps and geofencing, hours keep recording out of signal and sync later, and crews can attach photos, files and notes. Built-in scheduling and integrations with QuickBooks, Sage and Xero cover the path to payroll.

Two things to weigh. Advanced job costing controls sit on the Pro plan, and the pricing page states that a three year contract term applies to all plans, which is a long commitment for a seasonal business. ClockShark does not bill clients or produce invoices from tracked time.

Pricing: Standard $42 per month plus $9.50 per user per month; Pro $63 per month plus $11.50 per user per month; 14 day trial with Pro features.

3. busybusy

Key features:

• Free GPS clock
• Cost codes
• Equipment hours
• Budgets

busybusy started in construction and suits landscapers for the same reason: it treats crews, equipment and job sites as one picture. Its free version is unusually broad, with GPS time tracking, job costing and equipment tracking for unlimited users, so a small lawn care company can run on it without paying.

Supervisors can clock in an entire crew or one person, switch cost codes, assign equipment and see who has signed their time card at the end of the pay period. “Required Onsite” blocks a clock-in outside the project boundary, location reminders prompt people as they arrive and leave, and the app keeps working in offline mode. Equipment owners can log hour meter readings, which matters when mowers and skid steers carry their own cost. Budget versus actual reports compare estimated and real labor hours.

The catch is in the paid tiers: every paid plan adds a $40 admin license on top of per user fees, and the product is built around construction vocabulary, so you will rename a few things. Like ClockShark, it stops at payroll and does not invoice clients.

Pricing: free for unlimited users; Pro $11.99 per user per month billed monthly or $9.99 billed annually; Premium $17.99 or $14.99; paid plans add a $40 admin license with the first user included.

4. QuickBooks Time

Key features:

• Payroll sync
• Location tracking
• Geofence reminders
• Job tracking

QuickBooks Time, formerly TSheets, makes the most sense for landscape companies whose payroll and books already live in QuickBooks. Hours move into payroll and job reports without an export step, which is the main reason owners pick it over a cheaper time clock.

Workers clock in from the QuickBooks Workforce app, which logs their location at clock-in and updates it during the day. On the Elite plan you can draw a geofence around a property so the app reminds people to clock in or out as they arrive or leave. Time is tracked against customers and jobs, managers approve timesheets from anywhere, and project tracking supports labor estimates for future bids.

Drive time has to be handled by switching to a separate job or service item, since the landscaping page does not describe an automatic split. Geofence reminders and project features need Elite, which raises the per user price. The base fee covers one admin, so a crew of 12 on Premium pays the base fee plus 12 user licenses every month.

Pricing: Time Premium $20 per month plus $10 per user per month; Time Elite $40 per month plus $12 per user per month; the base fee includes 1 admin, and an introductory discount applies to the first 3 months.

5. Connecteam

Key features:

• Kiosk clock-in
• Geofences
• Shift scheduling
• Team chat

Connecteam is an all in one app for frontline teams: time clock, scheduling, forms and checklists, chat and HR tools in one place. Its pricing model suits small landscape companies, because each hub charges a flat monthly price for the first 30 users rather than a fee per worker, and a small business with fewer than 10 employees can use every hub free.

The Operations Hub covers what crews touch every day: a GPS time clock, kiosk clock-in from a shared device, payroll ready timesheets and unlimited jobs. Advanced adds automatic clock-out and up to 10 geofences, and Expert adds GPS breadcrumbs and unlimited geofences. Forms and checklists help with property walkthroughs and end of day reports, and the chat replaces the group text most crews use.

It is broad rather than deep on costs. There are no landscape style estimates, no budget per property and no client invoicing, so you would pair it with accounting or a field service tool. Once you pass 30 users, each extra user adds a per month fee on every hub you use.

Pricing: free for up to 10 users; Operations Basic $29 per month for 30 users, Advanced $49, Expert $99; each extra user from $0.80 per month billed yearly on Basic.

6. LMN by Granum

Key features:

• Drive Time tasks
• Crew lead app
• Job budgets
• Job costing

LMN (Landscape Management Network, now part of Granum) was built by landscapers for landscape contractors, and it is the only tool here whose public documentation names drive time outright. LMN Crew has dedicated Shop Time and Drive Time tasks, so a crew lead punches the truck into drive, then into the property, then back into drive, and each kind of hour stays in its own bucket.

The crew lead runs the app for the team: punching people in and out of job sites, creating timesheets, logging materials used and documenting completed work. Clock-ins carry GPS location verification. In the office, LMN ties those hours to the budget that produced the estimate, and the Professional plan adds real time job costing, so you see a property going over its hours while the season is still running.

The trade off is size and price. LMN is a full business system with estimating and budgeting, priced as a monthly package that includes a fixed number of licenses, and Starter allows one active budget. A two person mowing outfit will pay for far more than it uses.

Pricing: Starter $297 per month billed monthly, with 1 office or crew lead license and 5 crew member licenses; Professional $648 per month with 3 and 15 licenses; Enterprise from 100 users on request.

7. Aspire

Key features:

• Crew timesheets
• Job costing
• Estimating
• Unlimited users

Aspire is business management software for large commercial landscape companies, covering estimating, scheduling, purchasing, invoicing and job costing, with time tracking built into the crew workflow rather than sold as a separate app. It fits companies with several divisions, for example maintenance, construction and snow, that want one system of record.

Crew members sign in with a PIN that links straight to payroll, and Aspire’s FAQ says mobile tracking starts with that sign-in and only those activities are tracked, which answers the privacy question owners get from crews. Job costing updates when crew timesheets are approved each day and when materials are received, so the office sees cost per job while work is in progress. Aspire integrates with QuickBooks Desktop or produces payroll export files.

Don’t expect to start next week. Pricing is quoted per company, implementation and training are part of the package, and for growing contractors Aspire sells a lighter product, Crew Control. How Aspire allocates drive time across properties is not described on its public pages, so ask for a demo of that exact workflow.

Pricing: not published; a single monthly license fee based on company size, with unlimited users. Crew Control, the smaller product, is listed at $30 per month per crew with a 14 day trial.

8. Jobber

Key features:

• Quotes
• Scheduling
• Timesheets
• Invoicing

Jobber is field service software for home service businesses, and many lawn care and landscaping owners use it to book work, send quotes, schedule visits and collect payment. Time tracking is one part of that system rather than the center of it.

The entry plan covers scheduling, quotes, invoices and online payments. Time and expense tracking and QuickBooks Online sync arrive on Connect, and Grow adds automatic time tracking and job profitability through job costing, plus two way SMS and custom automations. For an owner operator with a couple of helpers, having the quote, the visit, the hours and the invoice in one app is the appeal.

The limits show up as the crew grows. Users are priced per seat on top of the plan, the pricing page does not describe GPS verification or crew clock-in, and how drive time between visits is handled is not documented there. If you sync to QuickBooks, test how hours and services map to items before you trust the job costing report.

Pricing: Core from $29 per month billed annually ($49 monthly) for 1 user; Connect, Grow and Plus cost more; extra users are $29 per month each; free trial.

9. Arcoro Time (formerly ExakTime)

Key features:

• Rugged time clocks
• Photo ID
• Geofencing
• Break rules

Arcoro Time, sold for years as ExakTime, is built for long jobs on sites with no power and crews who should not depend on their own phones. Its weather resistant time clocks run on batteries for up to 21 days, mount at the site and lock, so a crew can clock in at a park, a cemetery or a large install without a smartphone.

For crews that do use phones, the GPS app verifies clock-ins against geofenced sites, and FaceFront photo capture at each punch stops one worker clocking in for another, which matters with seasonal and temporary staff. Compliance tools track meal breaks, rest periods and overtime, more than 40 reports cover labor cost by project and estimated versus actual hours, and approved time syncs to payroll and accounting systems such as QuickBooks, ADP and Sage.

It is a labor tracking tool, not a business system: no quoting, scheduling or client invoicing, and the landscaping page does not describe how drive time is split. Pricing requires a demo, which makes quick comparison harder.

Pricing: not published; request a demo for a quote.

Where landscaping time tracking breaks down

Most of these problems appear in the first month of the season, long after the demo looked fine.

• Drive time folded into the first and last property. When the crew forgets to switch tasks, the morning drive lands on the first stop and the trip back lands on the last. Those two properties look like money losers and the bids for them go up for the wrong reason.
• Too many taps a day. A crew with ten stops and separate drive and site tasks makes about 20 switches a day. If each one takes five screens, people stop doing it by week two. Test the switch on a phone, in gloves, before you buy.
• One phone hides who did what. Crew clock-in is fast, but if the foreman forgets to clock out someone who went home early, the whole crew gets the same hours. Check that individual edits are easy.
• Contract terms that outlast the season. A multi year contract or an annual commitment on a per user plan hurts when the crew shrinks from 20 people to 6 in winter. Read the term before you count the per user price.
• Hours that sync to the wrong place. Payroll and accounting sync is only useful if each service lands on the right item or account. A sync that lumps all hours under one service item ruins job costing quietly.
• Estimates nobody compares. Tracking hours by property is pointless if no one looks at estimated versus actual time after the first month. Put a monthly review on the calendar.

Track crew hours by property and type of work, and turn them into accurate client bills and invoices with actiTIME

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Best pick by situation

• You bill clients for time and materials work and need invoices from the hours: actiTIME, with drive and shop time on non-billable tasks and billing by type of work or by person.
• You want a free GPS time clock for a small crew: busybusy, which includes GPS, job costing and equipment tracking on its free version.
• The foreman clocks in the whole truck: ClockShark, if you can accept its contract term, or busybusy.
• Payroll already runs in QuickBooks: QuickBooks Time, on Elite if you want geofence reminders.
• You want the clearest drive time split with landscape estimating: LMN by Granum.
• You run a large multi division landscape company: Aspire.
• You are an owner operator who needs quotes, visits and invoices in one app: Jobber.
• Your sites have no power and spotty phones: Arcoro Time with its rugged clocks.
• You want a flat price for a team under 30: Connecteam.

If your company also runs hardscape or construction crews, our roundup of construction time tracking software covers tools built for longer install jobs, and the list of free time tracking apps compares free versions in more detail.

How to set up crew time tracking before the season

Whatever tool you choose, the setup decides whether the data is usable in August. This order works for most landscape companies.

1. List properties and services first.

   Create each client and property, then the services you price separately: mowing, cleanup, irrigation, installs, snow. These become the jobs and tasks crews pick from, so keep the list short enough to fit on one phone screen.

2. Add shop time and drive time as their own tasks.

   Mark them non-billable or as overhead so they never inflate a property’s hours. Tell crews when to switch: leave the yard, arrive at a property, leave it.

3. Decide who clocks in.

   Individual clock-in gives cleaner payroll; crew clock-in is faster. If the crew lead punches for everyone, make sure partial days can be corrected per person.

4. Set approvals and a lock date.

   A crew lead or office manager approves timesheets every week, then locks the period before payroll so nobody edits hours that were already paid or billed.

5. Run one route for one week as a test.

   Compare tracked site hours with the bid for each property and check that drive time shows up as its own total. Fix task names and habits before every crew starts.

6. Connect payroll and invoicing last.

   Only sync to payroll or accounting once a test week looks right, and check that each service lands on the right item.

FAQ

Is there free time tracking software for landscaping?

Yes. busybusy has the most complete free version for crews, with GPS time tracking, job costing and equipment tracking for unlimited users. Connecteam is free for businesses with fewer than 10 users. actiTIME stays free for teams of up to 3 users after its 30-day trial, which suits a small office that bills clients by the hour.

Do landscaping crews need GPS tracking?

GPS is worth it when you need proof that a clock-in happened on the property, for example with large seasonal crews or disputed visits. It is not what separates drive time from site time; separate tasks do that. If crews worry about being followed, choose a tool that records location only while they are clocked in, as Aspire and QuickBooks Time describe.

Which landscaping time tracking software works with QuickBooks?

QuickBooks Time is the native option. ClockShark, busybusy and Arcoro Time sync hours to QuickBooks payroll, LMN connects to QuickBooks Online on Starter and to Desktop as well on Professional, Jobber syncs with QuickBooks Online from its Connect plan, Aspire works with QuickBooks Desktop, and actiTIME sends time records to QuickBooks Online through its QuickBooks integration.

Conclusion

The best time tracking software for landscaping is the one that shows you drive time, shop time and site time as three separate numbers, because that is where crew hours disappear and where bids go wrong. Crew time clocks such as busybusy and ClockShark get hours from the field reliably; LMN and Aspire tie those hours to estimates and job costs inside a landscape business system; actiTIME turns the same hours into client billing and invoices.

If you bill clients for your work, start a free trial of actiTIME with full features for 30 days. After the trial, teams of up to 3 users can keep using it for free.