If you are shopping for an ExakTime alternative for electricians, it is probably not because the GPS is bad. The GPS works fine.
It is usually something else. The annual contract renewed. The brand changed names. Nobody will say in writing which QuickBooks plan the sync supports.
Then there is the quieter reason. A customer questioned a T&M invoice, you pulled the report, and the report proved your electrician was on site. It did not explain what the electrician did there.
That gap is the whole thing. The charge was fair. The explanation was missing.
What follows is the evaluation and migration procedure for an electrical shop: what to test before you switch any field time system, how to get your history out, what breaks in QuickBooks sync on a mid-year switch, and when you should stay exactly where you are.
First, Know What You Are Actually Shopping Against
ExakTime is now Arcoro Time. Arcoro's own ExakTime page states it plainly: "ExakTime is now Arcoro Time."
The old exaktime.com/pricing/ URL 301-redirects into Arcoro's site. The product you bought is now one module of a construction HR and payroll platform.
Here is what Arcoro publishes for pricing (checked 2026-10-24 on arcoro.com/exaktime/pricing-plans):
| Plan | Published price | What it adds |
|---|
| Time Essential | "starts at $9" per employee/month | Mobile time and attendance, GPS/location awareness and tracking, perimeter control for clock-in and out, meal break tracking, custom forms |
| Time Professional | "starts at $12" per employee/month | Employee alerts and notifications, job assignment scheduling, PTO administration |
| Time + Payroll | "starts at $20" per employee/month | Everything in Professional plus Arcoro Payroll |
The same page says pricing is "per employee per month with an annual contract and annual payment terms," that monthly and quarterly terms are also available, and that volume pricing applies at 200+ employees. It also offers a free trial.
Two lines are missing from that page: hardware cost and any setup or base fee. Neither is published. Ask for both in writing.
If you want the published plans laid side by side with a phone-only clock, there is a dated ExakTime comparison that sticks to what Arcoro publishes.
Which QuickBooks Does It Actually Sync To?
Arcoro's ExakTime QuickBooks page says the integration works with QuickBooks Online and with QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise, and that timesheets are imported "with our account-bridging software." It does not say which QuickBooks Online plan is required, or what kind of record lands in QuickBooks.
That second question matters more than it looks. Hours imported for payroll and hours written against a customer for job costing are different jobs, and a sync can do one without the other.
Send this exact email to every vendor, including whoever you are replacing:
Which QuickBooks products does your time sync support: Desktop, QBO Essentials, QBO Plus, QBO Advanced? Does it write TimeActivity records against a customer and service item, or only payroll hours? Does any of it require a higher QuickBooks plan than the one I have?
A one-line written answer to that is worth more than any feature grid. If a salesperson will not put it in an email, that is your answer. How TimeActivity records get written is covered in this QuickBooks time entry walkthrough.
What ExakTime Does Well, Before You Talk Yourself Out of It
The rugged clock line is real hardware solving a real problem, and it is the hardest part to replace. Arcoro's QuickBooks page describes crews clocking in on the mobile app or on "weatherproof rugged time clocks."
If your crews work sites with no reliable signal and no power, a weatherproof box screwed to a stud is a specific answer to a specific problem. Ask Arcoro for the current hardware datasheet (punch storage, battery life, how it syncs) and a per-unit price before you decide what it is worth to you.
Arcoro's ExakTime page also lists GPS geofencing that can limit clock-ins to a job site, breadcrumb geotracking, project and cost codes, equipment tracking, daily reports, and employee timecards.
Equipment tracking (tools, incidents, and repairs logged against a job) is the one most often missed in a switch. If you use it, write it down and confirm each replacement candidate has it; many phone-only time apps do not.
The Four Kinds of Replacement
Most shortlists mix four different kinds of tool. Know which kind you are looking at before you compare prices.
| Kind of tool | Good at | Weak at | Ask before you buy |
|---|
| Rugged hardware clock system | Sites with no signal or power; shared clock on a wall | Hardware cost, fobs or badges to manage, contract length | Per-unit price, sync method, what happens to the units if you cancel |
| Phone GPS app with geofencing | Restricting where people clock in; crew location views | Location data the crew may resent; rarely explains the work | Is location tracked off the clock? Can a geofence be turned off per job? |
| Phone time app with a work note at clock-out | Hours plus a plain line of what got done, ready for a customer | No hardware option; a note is only as good as the habit | How many taps is the note? Does the customer report hide your cost rate? |
| Paper daily field report | Free, works Monday, signed on site | Rekeying, lost sheets, no sync | Who collects it, and who types it in? |
Phone-based candidates electrical shops often put next to ExakTime include ClockShark, BusyBusy, and Workyard. Each has a dated comparison built from its own pricing page: ClockShark, BusyBusy, Workyard, and QuickBooks Time.
Why a Location Trail Still Loses the Argument
A location trail loses the argument because your customer is not asking where your electrician stood. They are asking what they paid for.
Every proof mechanism in this category (GPS stamp, geofence, photo at punch) answers "was the crew there." That is the office's question, and it is already settled.
The customer's question is different, and it shows up 30 days later attached to an unpaid invoice.
Same eight hours. Same job. Two records:
| What the record says | What the customer reads | What happens next |
|---|
| Worker on site 8.77 hrs, GPS verified | A number and an address | "Eight hours doing what?" You discount it, or you win and lose the relationship. |
| Thu 7:02a-3:48p: pulled and terminated circuits 12-18, second-floor east wing | Work performed, in sequence, on a date | The line explains itself. The argument never opens. |
The second row is not a software feature. It is one sentence a journeyman can say out loud in four seconds.
So the real evaluation question for any system on your list is not what the dashboard looks like. It is what the printed export looks like in a customer's hands.
If you have never seen one built that way, here is an annotated sample billing packet, with no signup and nothing to fill in. Use it as the standard you hold each vendor's export against.
What the New Record Has to Capture
The new record has to capture four things: clock times, the job, one plain line describing the work performed, and the rate you bill, entered the same day by the person who did the work.
Four fields per worker per day, in this order:
- Date and in/out times. Actual times, not rounded to the half hour.
- Job or customer. Whatever name matches your QuickBooks customer exactly.
- What was done. The specific noun: panel, circuit numbers, floor, room, riser, device count, what got energized.
- Hours and the bill rate. The rate you charge, not the rate you pay.
Test it directly: print the report you would email to a GC and look for your own cost on it. This is a five-minute check, and it is the fastest way to rule a vendor out.
Three ways to capture field #3, cheapest first:
- A paper daily field report the foreman signs on site. Free, works Monday, no vendor involved. The forms are in this T&M billing backup kit, free with no signup.
- A custom form in whatever system you choose. Arcoro lists custom forms on every plan, and most field time apps have some form builder; require exactly one text field at end of day and nothing else.
- A time app that asks for the note at clock-out and lets the worker reuse a recent one, which is how FieldTimesheet handles it.
The Real Obstacle Is Not the Software
The note field stays empty because nobody explained what it is for.
"Fill in the notes so I can see what you are doing" gets a shrug. It sounds like being checked up on, and it earns the cooperation it deserves.
"Write one line so when the GC tries to knock eight hours off this invoice I can show them exactly what we did" gets cooperation. On that argument, the crew and the company are on the same side.
Say it out loud at a Monday huddle, once, in those words. Then make the note cost seconds.
One field. End of day. Plain language. No dropdown of 40 cost codes, no required photo, no essay.
Give them the wording, too. "Pulled and terminated circuits 12-18, second-floor east wing" is the model: task, quantity, location. Post that example where they can see it.
What to Test Before You Switch Any Field Time System
Run one real job all the way through to a printed, customer-facing page before you sign a contract. Seven tests, all doable in a trial or a demo with your own data.
- The no-signal test. Put a phone in airplane mode in a basement or electrical room, clock in, force-close the app, reopen it 30 minutes later. Does the punch survive, and does it reach the office when signal returns?
- The print test. Generate the customer-facing report. Is your cost rate on it? Is there a column describing work performed? Would you email it to a GC unedited?
- The note test. Hand the phone to your least tech-interested apprentice and ask them to log "replaced four ballasts, suite 210." Count the taps, and count them the same way on every vendor you try. Whichever takes the fewest is the one that will still be getting filled in six weeks from now.
- The rate test. Put a journeyman and an apprentice on one job at different bill rates. Can the system carry both rates on the same job without a workaround?
- The QuickBooks test. Sync one week, then open QuickBooks and check it yourself: right customer, right service item, billable flag set, hours matching. Then change a rate and re-sync and watch what happens.
- The export test. Ask for a full CSV export of the demo data before you buy. If you cannot get a plain CSV out, you are renting your own records.
- The math test. Fill in every line of the cost worksheet below, including the lines nobody publishes.
The Cost Worksheet Nobody Fills Out
Per-user price is rarely the whole bill. Fill in all six lines for each vendor, side by side, before you compare anything.
| Line | Your number | Where to get it |
|---|
| Per-user price × headcount | Vendor's published pricing page |
| Platform or base fee | Ask in writing; often unpublished |
| Hardware units and badges or fobs | Ask for a per-unit quote |
| Implementation / setup | Ask whether onboarding is billed once or included |
| Annual vs monthly commitment | Contract terms on the order form, not the website |
| QuickBooks plan required | The written answer to the email above |
Example arithmetic, using only published figures, for a 15-electrician shop:
| Input | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|
| Headcount | 15 | Example crew; substitute your own |
| Time Essential, per employee | $9/month | Arcoro pricing page, 2026-10-24 |
| Software subtotal | 15 × $9 = $135/month | Arithmetic |
| Payment terms | Annual contract, annual payment | Arcoro pricing page |
| Implied annual commitment | $135 × 12 = $1,620 | Arithmetic |
| Rugged clock hardware | Not published | Must request |
| Setup or base fee | Not published | Must request |
This is example arithmetic on published numbers, not a quote and not a claim about your bill. Run it with your own headcount and the plan you would actually buy. If you need job scheduling, the same math on Time Professional is 15 × $12 = $180/month.
The rule: any line you cannot fill in is a line that will surprise you later. A "starts at" price is normal. An unanswered "what is the base fee" is not.
If you want to weigh the switch against what disputed invoices already take out of a year, there is an invoice dispute calculator with every input visible so you can change them.
How to Get Your Time History Out Before You Cancel
Export everything to CSV or Excel while the account is still active and paid, and do it before you give notice.
- Pull every report the system offers, pay period by pay period, for your full retention window. Timecards, by-job, by-employee, and any daily reports.
- Export as CSV or Excel, not PDF only. Keep the PDF for the record; the CSV is what you can search, sort, and re-import.
- Include the notes and description fields. For any job still unpaid or in dispute, those fields are your billing backup.
- Save it twice, in two places, with the job name and date range in the filename.
- Export your setup, too: job list, cost codes, employee list, rates. That is what you will rekey into the new system, and it is the slowest part of a migration.
- Keep the records as long as the law requires, not as long as the vendor does. The U.S. Department of Labor's FLSA recordkeeping fact sheet says payroll records must be kept at least three years, and the time cards wage computations are based on for two years. A prevailing-wage contract or your state may require longer.
What Breaks in QuickBooks Sync on a Mid-Year Switch
Two things break on a mid-year switch: duplicate time entries and mismapped customers. Both are preventable with a clean cutover date and one parallel pay period.
Five things to control:
- Make the cutover date the first day of a pay period. Never mid-week. A split week is where reconciliation goes bad.
- Do not backfill old hours. They are already in QuickBooks. Re-importing them creates duplicate time records and doubles the labor cost sitting on that job.
- Re-map jobs to QuickBooks customers by hand, once, and check the spelling. "Miller Residence" and "Miller Res." are two customers, and they will split one job's costs into two.
- Verify service items and the billable flag on the very first synced week, before you invoice anything from it.
- Run parallel for one pay period. Both systems, same week, then reconcile totals before you shut the old one off.
One more: disconnect the old app's QuickBooks connection when you are done. Two apps writing time into the same company file is where most duplicate-hour messes start.
If you are re-checking how job costs should land once the sync is clean, the mechanics are in this job costing walkthrough for electricians.
When You Should Stay with ExakTime
Stay with ExakTime if the hardware is doing work nothing else can do, or if your payroll already runs through Arcoro.
- You own rugged clocks and they work. A weatherproof clock on a site with no signal and no power is a specific answer to a specific problem. Do not throw that away for a better note field.
- You need geofenced clock-in as a hard rule. Arcoro lists geofences that limit clock-ins to a job site. If a GC contract requires that, make it a hard filter and confirm it on each vendor's own feature page; do not assume either way.
- You run payroll through Arcoro, or through an ERP its sync already feeds. Replacing a working payroll bridge to gain a better field note is a bad trade.
- You track equipment against jobs. Tools, incidents, and repairs logged to a job is on Arcoro's feature list. Confirm any replacement carries it before you switch.
- You are over 200 employees. Arcoro offers volume pricing at that size, which changes the per-seat math. This post is written for 10-to-30-worker shops.
Switching costs a pay period of double entry and a week of crew friction. Spend that only on a problem a form cannot solve.
The Switching Checklist
Work top to bottom. Do not sign anything until item 7 is done.
- Write down what you actually use today: every feature, every report anyone opens.
- Email every vendor the QuickBooks question, verbatim, and wait for writing.
- Run the no-signal test on your worst site.
- Run the print test and look for your cost rate on the customer-facing page.
- Run the note test with your least tech-interested crew member.
- Confirm two bill rates on one job.
- Fill in all six lines of the cost worksheet, including the unpublished ones.
- Export your full time history and setup data to CSV, and back it up twice.
- Pick a cutover date on the first day of a pay period.
- Re-map jobs to QuickBooks customers by hand and proof the spelling.
- Run both systems parallel for one pay period and reconcile.
- Disconnect the old QuickBooks connection, then cancel, in that order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ExakTime still called ExakTime?
No. Arcoro's own ExakTime page says "ExakTime is now Arcoro Time," and the old exaktime.com pricing URL 301-redirects into arcoro.com. The ExakTime name still appears in URLs and listings, but you are buying a module of a construction HR and payroll platform.
Does ExakTime work with QuickBooks Online?
Arcoro's QuickBooks page says it works with QuickBooks Online and with QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise. It does not name a required QuickBooks Online plan or say whether hours land as payroll time or as customer-linked time for job costing. Ask both questions in writing before you commit.
What does ExakTime cost for 15 electricians?
On published figures, Time Essential starts at $9 per employee per month, so 15 × $9 = $135 per month, on an annual contract with annual payment terms per Arcoro's pricing page (checked 2026-10-24). Hardware and any setup fee are not published, so that $135 is a floor, not a total.
Can I try Arcoro Time before buying?
Yes. Arcoro's pricing page offers a free trial. Use it to run the print, note, and QuickBooks tests above with one real job rather than a demo account.
Can I export my time history before I cancel?
Export it yourself while the account is active rather than relying on anyone to send it later. Pull every report per pay period as CSV or Excel, include the notes and description fields, and save your job list, employee list, and rates separately for rekeying.
Do I have to replace my rugged clocks to switch?
The clocks are tied to their own system, so treat them as sunk cost, not as transferable equipment. If crews genuinely work with no signal and no power, that hardware may be the strongest reason to stay put.
Will my electricians actually write a note at the end of the day?
They will if it takes one line and they know what it is for. Framed as "so the customer cannot chisel us on work we did," it lands; framed as a compliance step, it does not. Keep it to one field, allow reuse of a recent note, and post an example of what good looks like.
What do I actually show a customer who disputes a T&M invoice?
A page per day showing date, who was on site, what was done in plain trade language, hours, your bill rate, and the amount, with your cost rate and margin nowhere on it. Assemble it chronologically, one line of work performed per worker. Practical patterns for building that are in this T&M billing guide.
Does any of this work in a basement or electrical room with no signal?
Only if you test it yourself, because "offline support" is a checkbox that hides very different behavior. Clock in with airplane mode on, force-close the app, reopen it half an hour later, and confirm the punch reaches the office once signal returns.
The Bottom Line
ExakTime, now Arcoro Time, documents where your crew stood, and it does that part well. Rugged clocks, geofencing, cost codes, and equipment tracking are real capabilities that a phone-only app does not simply replace.
But a location trail plus an hours total is still an invoice your customer has to take on faith. That is why the switch usually is not about GPS at all.
So judge every candidate, including the one you already pay for, on one thing: print the page you would hand a customer, and see whether it explains the charge without you standing there to narrate it.
If it does, you have what you need. If it does not, a signed paper field report fixes it before any contract does.