Toolr: Time Clock Calculator

Review by eFreeware

If your pay depends on knowing exactly when you started and stopped, Toolr is the sort of app that earns its keep. It is a free time clock and work hours calculator from Toolr, Inc., built around a single tap to clock in and another to clock out, and it is meant for hourly workers, freelancers, contractors, construction crews and catering teams as much as for the office employee filling in a weekly time card.

What appeals to me is the narrowness of the promise. This is not a project manager with a timer bolted on; it is a time card first, with the math around hours, breaks, overtime and pay handled for you. It is simple: log time, edit it, group it, export it. If your working week revolves around shifts, jobs or billable hours, that is a sensible shape for an app to take.

It has been on Google Play since December 2016 and was updated in August 2026, so this is not a new experiment. The install base sits at over 50,000, and the average rating is 3.3 from 91 ratings, which tells you the app has a real audience without universal praise. I would read that as a tool worth understanding before you commit your payroll records to it.

A time card you operate with one tap

The core loop is as plain as the name suggests. You tap to start work, tap again when you stop, and the app keeps the running total. The developer also allows manual entry, so a forgotten clock-in does not have to be a lost day, and entries can be edited either on a phone or on a desktop device. That combination matters more than it sounds: the phone handles the moment, the desktop handles the cleanup.

Time is not just a single running number. Entries can be sorted by person, job and crew, which is the difference between a personal stopwatch and a small attendance system. A contractor moving between sites can keep the hours separate; a manager can see who was on which job without rebuilding the week from memory.

The app is also built to work with a team. You can invite people to track time by email or text, and the developer says the app syncs with Time Clock mobile, a cloud-based system for employee work hour tracking. In practice that means the record is not stranded on one handset, and someone other than the person holding the phone can look at it.

Reports, rates and getting the numbers out

A time clock is only as useful as the paperwork it produces, and this is where Toolr puts most of its weight. There are summary reports and a weekly work schedule calendar, so the week can be read at a glance rather than reconstructed entry by entry. Entries can be filtered and grouped by person, job or crew, which is what turns a pile of clock-ins into something you can actually check.

Enter an hourly rate and it calculates pay and billable time. For anyone invoicing clients or running a small crew, that removes the spreadsheet step that usually follows a week of work. Reports can be saved and shared, and timesheet data can be printed or exported as PDF or Excel, which is the format most accountants and payroll services will ask for.

The app also handles the awkward parts of a shift. Breaks and overtime can be tracked automatically, and the developer lists overtime calculation covering all 50 US states, which suggests the rules are meant to follow local requirements rather than a single generic formula. Tips can be recorded by employees or managers, and gross pay sits alongside the hours. There is also backup and restore for devices, so replacing a phone does not mean losing the record.

Location logging and working without a signal

Two features stand out for field work. Location logging can be switched on when someone clocks in or out, which gives a record of where the shift started and ended rather than just when. For crews spread across sites, that is a useful check that does not require anyone to write anything down.

The other is offline clocking. You can clock in and out without a network connection, which matters on job sites, in basements and anywhere the signal drops. The exact behavior of offline entries is something you would want to confirm against your own setup before relying on it for payroll.

Editing on a desktop device is worth noting here too. A supervisor reviewing a week of entries is not going to do it comfortably on a phone, and having the same records available on a larger screen makes corrections and exports far less painful.

What it asks of you, and where the edges are

The app is free to install and shows no ads, but it does offer in-app purchases. I would treat the paid side as something to look into before building a payroll routine around it. That is not a criticism of the model, just a reminder that a free time clock and a paid one can differ in what they let you do.

The cloud sync is central to how this app is meant to work. Time Clock mobile is described as a cloud-based tracking system, and team invitations, shared reports and device management all lean on that connection. If your team is one person with one phone, the collaborative side will simply sit unused; if it is several people across several devices, the sync is the point.

The overtime rules are tied to US states, which is a specific commitment and a useful one for American employers, but it also tells you the app was designed around that framework. And the 3.3 average from 91 ratings is worth weighing honestly: a time clock touches money, so a middling score from a modest number of reviewers is a signal to try the app on your own records before you trust it with a full pay period.

Suited to hourly work, crews and billable time

The clearest fit is someone paid by the hour who wants a reliable, low-friction record of the week. Freelancers billing clients by the hour are close behind, since rates, billable hours and Excel exports cover the whole loop from working to invoicing. Contractors and construction crews get the job and crew grouping, location logging and offline clocking that a site-based day demands.

Small businesses running a handful of employees are the other obvious audience. Inviting staff by email or text, grouping entries by person, tracking breaks and tips, and producing a printable timesheet is a complete attendance routine without much setup. Catering and events work, which tends to be irregular and spread across locations, fits the same pattern.

What I would keep in mind is that this is a time card tool, not a workforce platform. It is built around hours, jobs, crews and pay. If your needs run to scheduling, HR records or project billing beyond hours worked, you are asking it to be something other than what it is.

A practical time clock for people paid by the hour

Toolr is worth installing if your income is measured in hours and you want those hours recorded without a spreadsheet. The one-tap clock in and out is the draw, but the reports, rate calculations, break and overtime handling and PDF or Excel exports are what make it a working tool rather than a stopwatch. Offline clocking and location logging give it an edge for anyone whose day happens away from a desk.

The caveats are straightforward. It is free with in-app purchases, it leans on cloud sync for its team features, and its overtime rules are built around US states. The 3.3 average rating also suggests it has not delighted everyone. None of that rules it out; it just means the sensible approach is to run it alongside your existing records for a pay period before making it the only copy.

For a solo freelancer, an hourly employee or a small crew working across jobs and sites, this is a focused, well-specified tool that does one job and does it in the open. I would start with the free version, check that the exports match what your payroll or clients expect, and go from there.

What's new in version 3.1.2

- Fix report times not being displayed in correct timezone