Clockora

Self-hosted staff timesheet — hours by project, exact totals, approvals. No invoicing.

The problem it solves

Studios, agencies, support teams, and workshops need to know who worked how many hours on what — and they track it in a spreadsheet nobody trusts, or in a time-tracking SaaS that insists on bundling invoicing, billing rates, and payroll they never asked for, priced per employee every month. All most teams actually need is exact hours, by project, approved.

• Hours logged in a spreadsheet that never quite adds up
• Time-tracking SaaS bolting on billing/payroll you don't want
• Per-seat monthly pricing for what is a timesheet and a total

Every feature

• Clock in, clock out. Start a live timer for anyone from the timesheet or their record. Stopping it files a draft entry that passes the same overlap and 24-hour checks; if a check refuses it, the timer keeps running rather than losing the hours.
• The employee hears the decision. Approve or reject a timesheet and the person who submitted it can be told by email — through your own SMTP, off by default, and never carrying a pay figure because the product stores none.
• A weekly nudge for unsubmitted time. A cron chases employees whose week has hours but no submitted timesheet — each person claimed once per period before any mail is sent, so a double-fired cron can never nag twice. Dry-run mode shows who would be reminded.
• Employees & projects. Employees with a role and an optional weekly-hours target; projects as simple labels for tagging time — no billing rates anywhere.
• Clock or manual entries. Log time with the live timer, by clock start and end times (crossing midnight handled), or as a manual duration — stored as exact integer minutes, never floats.
• Overlap detection. One employee can't have two clock entries overlapping in time on a day, checked on an absolute minute-timeline; clean back-to-back entries are allowed. Manual duration entries have no clock position and are not overlap-checked.
• Timesheet per period. A week (with prev/next) or a custom date range, with exact totals per employee and per project — reconciled to the minute.
• Submit → approve workflow. Entries move pending → approved / rejected with an approver and timestamp, per entry or in bulk for a period.
• Overtime flag, PDF & hardened CSV. A configurable weekly overtime FLAG (never a pay figure), a dependency-free per-employee PDF timesheet, and a spreadsheet-formula-injection-hardened CSV export. DST-safe throughout.
• Installable mobile app (PWA). Add it to a phone or tablet home screen straight from the browser — a full-screen app served from your own server, with no app store involved. Business data is not stored offline on the device; what you see is read live.
• Clock in from your own phone. Each person can have their own My time login: Clock in, Clock out, their week, Submit. They see their own hours only; you approve.
• A tablet by the door. Open a kiosk link on a shared tablet; staff clock in and out with their own PIN. No login on the tablet, no location, no photo.
• Same rules on every door. A clock-out from the kiosk, a phone or your timesheet is checked for overlaps, a day over 24 hours and locked pay periods, and the clock keeps running rather than losing the time.
• Breaks that come off. Start and end an unpaid break on the clock, from the timesheet, a phone or the tablet, and the worked hours are net.
• Payroll in the shape you need. One row per person, one row per person per day, or decimal hours beside the exact minutes.
• Excel as well as CSV. Entries and payroll download as spreadsheets that open straight in Excel.
• Approve from your phone. Submitted time as cards, one per person and week, with the week's total against their overtime threshold and one tap to approve what the card shows.
• Decimal hours in the CSV. The time-entries CSV carries hours to 2 decimal places beside the exact minutes.
• Updates from inside the app. The Updates page installs a new release with your license key: Ownware's signature is checked, a backup is taken first, and the app puts the previous version back by itself if the update is interrupted or the database step or start-up check of the new version fails. It never checks by itself.
• Backups by themselves. Automatic backups, an optional copy to S3-compatible storage you own, and a weekly check that the latest backup reads back. The Health page names anything that needs attention.
• Own It 4.0.1 — fixes and an up-to-date manual. For Clockora, 4.0.1 fixes an installer that had lost its styling, a rollback that a page opened during an update could stop, scheduled tasks that a browser could start and a command-line update that ended in an error after putting the previous version back. Its manual, FAQ and QUICKSTART now cover everything 4.0 added, including two Nginx rules that keep the data folder private. Your license covers it: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.
• Own It 4.0.2 — the installer opens on every host. For Clockora, 4.0.2 fixes a fresh install on an Apache host: the one-page setup at /install/ looped back to itself and never opened, and now it opens. Your license covers it: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.

Release notes in full

• Own It 4.1: client installations and your other tools. For Clockora, 4.1 makes two changes that every app gets. An Extended license bought from October 4, 2026 covers up to ten client installations, one per client project: hand each one over to the client or host it for them, with the client's logo and colors from the app's branding settings. The API reference now shows how to connect Clockora to Zapier, Make or n8n, using its own webhooks and API key. Your license covers the update: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.
• Own It 4.0: it updates and backs itself up. For Clockora, 4.0 means updates from inside the app: the Updates page checks for a new release with your license key, verifies Ownware's signature, takes a backup and puts the previous version back by itself if the update is interrupted or the database step or start-up check of the new version fails. A new install can start with a sample business and remove it in one click; backups run by themselves, with an optional offsite copy and a weekly check that the latest one reads back; and the Health page says whether the install is looking after itself.
• Own It 3.3: approve from your phone. 3.3 brings approval to your phone. Submitted time arrives as one card per person and week, with the week's total against their overtime threshold, and one tap approves what the card shows. The time-entries CSV also carries decimal hours beside the exact minutes.
• Own It 3.2: staff clock themselves in. 3.2 took clocking to the people doing the work: each person clocks in and out from their own phone, or with their own PIN at a shared tablet by the door, and every way in is held to the same checks. Unpaid breaks come off the worked hours, and payroll downloads in the layout you need, as CSV or Excel.
• Own It 3.1: it writes to the people you serve. The 3.1 wave gave the catalog a way to reach the other side of the transaction: counterparty email through your own SMTP server, calendar feeds your own calendar subscribes to, attachments filed where the paperwork belongs, and export presets other people's software imports. Each outbound feature ships switched off and runs on your own credentials; a failed send is recorded, and the action that triggered it stands. What this app gained is listed at the top of this section.
• Own It 3.0: works for your AI, not just for you. Close a pay period and it is closed in the app, over the REST API and for an agent — one rule, one implementation, three doors, with unlocking audited. MCP runs the submit and approve cycle under the same refusals you get. Payroll CSV exports approved time only, exact minutes, no money.
• Own It 2.0: API, 2FA, backups, dark mode. Clockora 2.0 adds the 2.0 owner layer. Upgrade by replacing the files — the database migrates itself, and it is still the same one-time purchase.