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Recruitment Agency Timesheet Software Compared

Recruitment and staffing agency timesheet software compared on pay and bill, client invoicing, and price, plus why UK and US searches differ.

Recruitment Agency Timesheet Software

Why the same search returns British and American tools, what pay and bill actually means, and which of nine products fit an agency placing workers rather than hiring them

Search for recruitment agency timesheet software and you get British products. Search for staffing agency timesheet software, which sounds like the same request, and you get American ones. Search for agency timesheet software without either qualifier and you get tools built for marketing studios billing client hours.

That is not a quirk of the search engine. It reflects a real split in the market, and it is the first thing worth understanding before shortlisting anything, because a US agency that shortlists from the British results will spend a demo cycle on platforms built around off-payroll working rules it will never encounter.

Underneath the terminology there is one genuine category: software that collects hours from placed workers, gets those hours approved by someone at the client site, and then pays the worker and bills the client from the same record. This comparison covers what that requires, which of nine products do it, and where the cheaper general-purpose tools stop.

TL;DR
The defining capability is pay and bill: one approved timesheet produces both a worker payment and a client invoice, with the margin in between. Recruitment agency is British and Australasian phrasing and returns UK-built vendors; staffing agency is American and returns US ones. Most established platforms in this category do not publish pricing, and those that do price by different units, so headline numbers are not comparable. Zoho Workerly has the only genuinely low entry point at $59 a month; general tools like Deputy and ClockShark track hours cheaply but cannot invoice a client.

Why this search returns two different categories

Two distinct kinds of business track hours and both call the result a timesheet, which is why the results blur.

QuestionAgency placing workersEmployer hiring staff
Who the worker isA temp or contractor placed at a client siteAn employee on your own payroll
Why hours are trackedTo pay the worker and invoice the clientTo pay the worker and meet wage and hour rules
Who approves the hoursA manager at the client companyA manager inside your own company
What the hours produceA pay run and a client invoice with a marginA pay run only
What the software isAgency back office, pay and billTime and attendance, or HR with time tracking
Typical pricing unitPer placed worker or per agency seatPer employee or a flat platform fee
Both columns describe an employer tracking hours, which is why the search results blur together. The right-hand column never needs an invoice, which is why the products in it cost a fraction of the products in the left-hand column.

The distinction that matters is in the fourth row. An employer tracking its own staff needs the hours to reach payroll correctly and to satisfy wage and hour recordkeeping. An agency needs the same thing plus an invoice, and the invoice has to carry a different rate than the payment, against the same hours, for the same worker, at a specific client.

This is why the price gap between the two categories is so large
General workforce tools start around $5 per user per month. Agency back-office platforms frequently run ten to twenty times that per seat and often will not quote without a call. The gap is not vendor greed; it is the invoicing half of the job, plus the rate tables, client contract terms, and approval routing that make invoicing possible. If you do not need to invoice a client from your timesheets, you are looking at the wrong category and paying for it.

What pay and bill actually means

Every vendor in this space uses the phrase and few explain it, so here is the mechanic in plain terms.

StepWhat happensWhere it breaks
Placement setupWorker assigned to a client with a pay rate and a bill rateRates stored on the worker rather than the placement
Hours capturedWorker submits hours, usually from a phone at the sitePaper or text-message submission that nobody can audit
Client approvalA manager at the client company approves the hoursThe client will not log in, so someone chases by email
Pay runApproved hours produce a payment at the pay rateOvertime thresholds applied inconsistently across clients
InvoiceThe same hours produce an invoice at the bill rateInvoice built by hand in accounting software from an export
Margin visibleThe difference is the agency margin on that placementMargin only knowable at month end, not per placement

The third row is where agencies actually lose time. A client-side approval step that the client finds annoying will be skipped, and skipped approvals mean either delayed invoicing or invoicing hours nobody signed off on. Whichever product you pick, the approval experience for the client manager matters more than any feature aimed at your own team.

Rates belong to the placement, not to the worker
This is the configuration mistake that causes the most rework. The same worker may be placed at two clients at two different bill rates, or at the same client on two different shift patterns. A system that stores a single rate against the worker record will produce quietly wrong invoices the moment that happens, and the error is usually found by a client who reviews their bill carefully rather than by the agency. Confirm during a demo that rates attach to the placement and that overtime rules can differ per client contract.
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Recruitment agency, staffing agency, and why the words matter

The two phrases describe the same business and belong to different markets. This is not pedantry, because the compliance features built into each product follow the market it was built for.

TermPrimary marketVendors you will findCompliance context
Recruitment agencyUK, Ireland, Australia, IndiaTimesheet Portal and ETZIR35 status, AWR parity, HMRC reporting
Staffing agencyUnited States and CanadaAvionte, TempWorks, WurkNow, BullhornMulti-state tax, ACA tracking, I-9 per placement
Labour hireAustralia and New ZealandRegional platforms and local vendorsState labour hire licensing schemes
Agency, unqualifiedMixed and ambiguousCreative and marketing time trackersBillable client hours, not placed workers
The word you search with determines the vendors you see. A US agency searching the British phrasing will be shown platforms built around UK payroll and off-payroll working rules, and a UK agency searching the American phrasing will be shown platforms built around state-level tax registration.

For a US agency the practical consequence is specific. Platforms built for the British market handle off-payroll working status determinations and agency worker parity rules, neither of which exists in US law, and they may not handle registration for withholding in multiple states, which is a routine requirement the moment an agency places a worker across a state line. The reverse applies to a UK agency evaluating American platforms.

Check which payroll systems a vendor integrates with
The fastest way to identify which market a product was built for, without reading marketing copy, is to look at its integration list. A platform that integrates with British accounting and payroll systems was built for that market regardless of how the homepage is worded, and one that integrates with US payroll providers was built for this one. Integration lists are harder to reword for an international audience than a product page is.

9 agency timesheet products compared

Seven products built for agencies plus two general workforce tools, included because agencies genuinely evaluate them on price and deserve a clear answer about where they stop.

ProductBest ForEntry PriceTimesheetsClient InvoicingPay and BillPlacement RecordsTrial
Bullhorn Time & ExpenseAgencies already on Bullhorn ATSQuoteDemo
AvionteEstablished US staffing firmsQuoteDemo
TempWorksUS agencies wanting one systemQuoteDemo
WurkNowLight industrial and warehouseQuoteDemo
Zoho WorkerlySmall temp desks on a budget$59/moFree tier
Timesheet PortalPay and bill without a full ATSModularDemo
ETZAgencies wanting per-head pricingPer headDemo
DeputyShift scheduling, not agency billing$5/userFree trial
ClockSharkField crews with GPS requirements$40 + $9/user14-day trial
Pricing verified as of July 2026 from vendor pricing pages and vendor documentation. Most agency back-office platforms do not publish list pricing and quote per agency. Pay and Bill means the platform pays the worker and bills the client from the same approved hours, which is the defining capability of this category. Placement Records means the timesheet ties to a placement and a client account rather than to an internal department. The last two rows are general workforce tools included because agencies evaluate them on price; they track hours but do not bill clients.

Bullhorn Time and Expense

The time and expense module attached to the most widely used applicant tracking and CRM system in staffing. Time capture, timesheet management, expense handling, and approval routing all sit inside the same record as the placement, which is the argument for it: no synchronization between the system that made the placement and the system that bills for it.

Pricing is quoted rather than published, the module sits on top of a platform license that itself starts around $99 per user per month at the entry tier, and implementation is a separate line. Reports consistently describe this as an ecosystem commitment rather than a product purchase.

Pros
Placement, timesheet, and invoice live in one record with no sync step
Built specifically for the complexities of staffing rather than adapted to them
Integrates with vendor management systems used by larger clients
Scales from small agency to enterprise without replatforming
Cons
Value depends on already running Bullhorn ATS and CRM
No published pricing for the module or the platform beneath it
Implementation is quoted separately and reported as substantial
Overbuilt and overpriced for an agency with a handful of placements

Avionte

A full staffing platform covering applicant tracking, payroll, billing, and timesheets, built for the North American market and used by a large base of established US and Canadian staffing firms. The appeal is completeness: an agency running Avionte is not assembling a stack.

Pros
Front office and back office in one platform including payroll and billing
Built for North American tax and compliance requirements
Deep experience in high-volume industrial and clerical staffing
Vendor management system integrations for enterprise clients
Cons
Quote-only pricing with no published rates at any tier
Implementation is a project measured in weeks or months
More platform than a small or new agency needs
Migration off it later is correspondingly difficult

TempWorks

A long-established US staffing platform spanning applicant tracking, CRM, time management, billing, and payroll. Like Avionte it is aimed at agencies that want one vendor for the whole operation rather than a timesheet tool bolted to an ATS.

Pros
Complete front and back office coverage under one vendor
Long track record in US staffing across agency sizes
Time management ties directly to billing and payroll
Serves both small agencies and larger multi-branch operations
Cons
Quote-only pricing requiring a sales conversation
Interface reflects its long history rather than recent design
Full platform commitment rather than a modular purchase
Setup effort is significant relative to lightweight tools

WurkNow

A newer US platform aimed at light industrial and warehouse staffing, where the operational pattern is high volume, short assignments, and shift-based work. Time tracking, payroll, and applicant tracking are bundled, with the workforce-facing experience built around mobile.

Pros
Built for the high-volume light industrial staffing pattern
Modern mobile experience for workers submitting hours on site
Time tracking, payroll, and sourcing in one platform
Newer architecture than the long-established incumbents
Cons
Quote-only pricing with no published rates
Narrower industry focus than the general staffing platforms
Smaller customer base and shorter track record
Less relevant for professional or clerical placements

Zoho Workerly

The only product here with genuinely accessible published pricing: a free tier covering five temps and two active jobs, and a Basic plan at $59 per month starting at a minimum of 25 temps, with per-temp rates falling as volume grows. Scheduling, electronic timesheets, approval routing, and invoicing sit in one interface, with integration into the wider Zoho accounting products.

For a small temp desk moving off spreadsheets, this is the shortest path from scheduled shift to approved hours to invoice, and the free tier makes evaluation genuinely risk-free.

Pros
Published pricing including a free tier for very small desks
Scheduling, timesheets, and invoicing in one interface
Per-temp pricing falls as the agency places more workers
Integrates with Zoho accounting for the invoicing side
Cons
Paid plan starts at a 25-temp minimum regardless of actual count
Payroll compatibility needs confirming for your specific provider
Lighter on US-specific compliance than the dedicated US platforms
Best value assumes willingness to use the wider Zoho ecosystem
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Timesheet Portal

A pay and bill specialist rather than a full agency platform, built for the British market and used by recruitment and project-based agencies that want tight control over the timesheet-to-invoice path without buying an applicant tracking system they do not need. Pricing is modular, charged for the components an agency actually uses.

Pros
Focused on pay and bill rather than bundling an ATS
Modular pricing means paying only for components used
Strong expense handling alongside timesheets
Long track record with agencies in its home market
Cons
Built around UK payroll and compliance rather than US
Pricing is modular and therefore hard to compare directly
Not an applicant tracking system: placements originate elsewhere
Less relevant for a US agency with multi-state obligations

ETZ

Another British specialist, distinguished by charging per processed timesheet or per head rather than per agency seat, on a month-to-month basis. For an agency whose worker count fluctuates seasonally, a unit that tracks placement volume rather than office headcount can align cost with revenue more closely than a seat licence does.

Pros
Pricing unit tracks placement volume rather than office seats
Month-to-month rather than a long contract commitment
Covers the timesheet-to-invoice path including onboarding
Cost scales down as well as up with seasonal volume
Cons
Rates are not published and require contact
Built for UK and Australian compliance rather than US
Per-head pricing gets expensive at high placement volume
Narrower scope than the full staffing platforms

Deputy

A general workforce management tool for scheduling and time tracking, at $5 per user per month on Lite, $6.50 on Core, and $9 on Pro, with a monthly minimum spend. Included here because agencies evaluate it and the honest answer is that it does one half of the job very well and the other half not at all.

It will schedule shifts, capture clock-ins, and export to payroll. It will not hold a bill rate, produce a client invoice, or record which client account a shift belonged to in a billable sense.

Pros
An order of magnitude cheaper than agency platforms
Excellent scheduling and shift management for hourly work
Clean mobile experience for workers clocking in
Published pricing with a free trial and no sales call
Cons
No client invoicing: the billing half must live elsewhere
No pay rate and bill rate pair against a placement
Per-user pricing means cost climbs with every placed worker
Monthly minimum spend applies to very small agencies

ClockShark

Field-focused time tracking built for construction and trades, at $40 per month plus $9 per active user on Standard and $60 plus $11 on Pro. The relevance to agencies is narrow but real: an agency placing crews at physical job sites where location verification matters gets GPS-stamped time capture that general office tools do not offer.

Pros
GPS-verified clock-ins for workers at remote job sites
Job costing gives visibility into cost per assignment
Charges per active user, so idle workers do not accrue cost
Published pricing with a 14-day trial
Cons
No client invoicing at agency bill rates
Base fee on top of per-user pricing raises the effective cost
Built for direct employers in the trades, not for placement agencies
Irrelevant for clerical, professional, or remote placements

Why pricing in this category is hard to compare

Most comparison content in this space presents a price column and moves on. That column is close to meaningless here, for two reasons worth stating plainly.

Pricing unitWhat it meansWho it favors
Per agency seatYou pay for recruiters and back-office staffAgencies with many placements and few internal staff
Per placed workerYou pay for each temp or contractor on assignmentAgencies with few placements and a larger internal team
Per timesheet processedYou pay by transaction volumeAgencies with seasonal or fluctuating placement volume
ModularYou pay per component usedAgencies needing only part of the platform
Quote onlyNo public rate at any tierNobody comparing options efficiently

The first reason comparison fails is that these units are not convertible without knowing your specific ratio of internal staff to placed workers. An agency with four recruiters and two hundred placements and an agency with twenty recruiters and forty placements will rank these vendors in opposite orders, and neither ranking is wrong.

The second is implementation. Where platform licences are quoted, setup is quoted separately, and reports on the larger platforms describe implementation costs that can rival a year of licence fees for a small agency. Any comparison that omits implementation understates the first-year cost of exactly the products that are hardest to leave.

Ask for a first-year total, not a monthly rate
The useful question in a sales conversation is what the first twelve months cost in total at your actual seat count and placement volume, including implementation, data migration, training, and any per-transaction fees. Vendors quote monthly per-seat rates because that number is small. The first-year total is the number you are actually deciding on, and asking for it directly tends to surface the fees that would otherwise appear later.

How to choose agency timesheet software

Do you need to invoice clients from these hours?
Ask this first because it splits the market cleanly. If approved hours have to become a client invoice at a bill rate different from the pay rate, you need an agency platform and the cheap general tools are off the table regardless of how attractive the price looks. If you invoice clients on a fixed monthly fee or a placement fee rather than on hours, you may genuinely only need time tracking, and paying agency platform prices for it is waste.
Which market was the product built for?
Check the integration list rather than the marketing copy. A platform integrating with British payroll and accounting systems was built around off-payroll working rules and agency worker regulations, which do not apply in the United States and whose absence does not help you. A US agency needs multi-state tax registration handling, and a platform that has never needed to support it will not have built it. This eliminates roughly half the shortlist in one step.
Will the client manager actually approve timesheets in the system?
This determines whether the implementation succeeds and it is almost never in a feature comparison. The approver is an employee of your client, not yours, and they have no obligation to learn your software. Look at what approval requires from them: an emailed link that approves in one click succeeds where a portal login with a password reset fails. Run this specific flow during a demo and imagine your least cooperative client contact doing it.
Do rates attach to the placement or to the worker?
The same worker may be placed at different clients at different bill rates, or on different shift patterns at the same client. A system holding one rate per worker will produce wrong invoices as soon as that happens, and the error surfaces when a client audits their bill rather than when you send it. Confirm in a demo that pay and bill rates are properties of the placement and that overtime rules can vary per client contract.
What does the first year actually cost at your volume?
Because vendors price by different units, the only comparable figure is total first-year cost at your real numbers: your seat count, your placement count, your timesheet volume, plus implementation, migration, and training. Build that figure for each shortlisted vendor before comparing anything else. Agencies that compare monthly per-seat rates routinely pick the platform that is cheapest per seat and most expensive in year one.

Before you choose

FirstHR does not do pay and bill. We do not invoice clients, hold bill rates against placements, or run timesheets for placed workers. Every product above does something we do not, and an agency shopping for the timesheet-to-invoice path should buy one of them.

There is a second population inside every agency that these platforms are not built for, and it is easy to overlook precisely because the agency spends its attention on placements.

PopulationWhose employee they areWhich system holds their record
Placed temps and contractorsThe agency, in most US arrangementsThe agency platform, by placement
Recruiters and account managersThe agency, directlyGenerally nothing purpose-built
Back-office and payroll staffThe agency, directlyGenerally nothing purpose-built
Branch managers and leadershipThe agency, directlyGenerally nothing purpose-built

Rows two through four are the agency's own staff. They are hired, onboarded, issued handbooks and policy acknowledgments, given equipment, reviewed, and eventually offboarded, and none of that lives in a platform designed around client placements. In agencies under fifty internal staff this work typically sits in a folder and an inbox. FirstHR covers it with onboarding workflows, e-signature, document management with retention, training modules with completion tracking, and employee records, at a flat $98 to $198 per month for US teams of 5 to 50. We sit alongside an agency platform rather than replacing any part of it. Our comparison of payroll software for staffing agencies covers the adjacent question of running two payrolls, and our guide to contractor onboarding software covers the 1099 side.

Key Takeaways
Pay and bill is the whole category. One approved timesheet has to produce both a worker payment at the pay rate and a client invoice at the bill rate, and software that only reaches payroll is not an agency system regardless of what its marketing says.
The phrasing of your search determines the vendors you see. Recruitment agency is British and Australasian and returns platforms built around off-payroll working rules; staffing agency is American and returns platforms built around multi-state tax registration. They are not interchangeable.
Rates belong to the placement rather than the worker. The same person may carry different bill rates at different clients, and a system storing one rate per worker produces invoices that are quietly wrong until a client audits them.
Client-side approval decides whether the rollout succeeds. The approver works for your client and owes your software nothing, so an emailed one-click approval succeeds where a portal login fails, and no feature list captures this.
Published prices are not comparable across vendors. Some charge per seat, some per placed worker, some per timesheet, and most quote privately with implementation billed separately, so the only meaningful figure is total first-year cost at your actual volume.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is recruitment agency timesheet software?

Software that collects hours from workers placed at client sites, routes them for client approval, and then both pays the worker and invoices the client from the same approved record. The invoicing half is what separates it from ordinary time tracking, since the hours are the product the agency sells.

What does pay and bill mean?

Running both sides of a placement from one timesheet: the worker is paid their rate and the client is invoiced the bill rate, with the agency keeping the margin. The complexity comes from rates varying by placement, shift type, overtime threshold, and client contract terms.

Why do recruitment agency and staffing agency return different software?

Because the terms belong to different markets. Recruitment agency is standard in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, and those results feature vendors built for those markets. Staffing agency is American phrasing and returns vendors built around US payroll and multi-state tax. The products are not interchangeable.

How much does agency timesheet software cost?

Most established platforms quote privately rather than publishing rates. Where pricing is public the unit varies: per agency seat, per placed worker, or per timesheet processed. Published examples run from a free tier for a handful of workers to well over $100 per seat monthly, with implementation quoted separately. See our payroll pricing guide for how comparable software models work.

Can a staffing agency use a general time tracking app instead?

For collecting hours yes, and far more cheaply. It will not produce a client invoice, hold separate pay and bill rates against a placement, or record the client assignment in a billable sense. Agencies do export hours and invoice in accounting software, which works until reconciliation becomes its own job.

Do agency workers count as employees of the agency?

Often yes in US staffing, where the agency is frequently the employer of record and handles payroll, withholding, workers compensation, and the I-9. Other arrangements treat the worker as an independent contractor, which changes the tax treatment and carries misclassification risk. Our guide to worker misclassification covers the analysis.

What is the difference between timesheet software and time and attendance software?

Timesheet software records blocks of time against a placement for billing purposes. Time and attendance software records when an employee started and stopped for pay and compliance purposes, with recordkeeping obligations under the Fair Labor Standards Act attached. An agency employing its own temps needs both.

What should an agency look for in timesheet software?

Client approval workflow the client will actually use, pay and bill rates held at the placement rather than the worker, direct output to both payroll and invoicing without re-keying, and a worker-facing mobile experience. Everything beyond those four is preference rather than requirement.

Does agency timesheet software handle onboarding for placed workers?

Some larger platforms do, since agencies onboard continuously and at volume. What they generally do not cover is the agency's own internal staff, who are a separate population with separate paperwork and typically sit outside the placement system entirely. See our guide to new hire paperwork for what that file should contain.

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