For Payroll Professionals: How to Offer Time Tracking to Your Clients

Every payroll professional knows the pain of manual timesheet collection. But fewer recognize the business opportunity sitting inside that pain point.

Here is what the landscape looks like: 93% of accounting firms now offer advisory services beyond traditional compliance work, up from 83% the year prior, according to the AICPA’s 2024 survey data reported in the Journal of Accountancy. Firms offering Client Advisory Services (CAS) reported a 17% median revenue growth, significantly outpacing firms that stick to compliance-only offerings.

The trend is clear: payroll professionals who offer integrated services beyond basic payroll processing are growing faster, retaining clients longer, and building more defensible practices.

Time tracking is one of the most natural extensions of a payroll service. Your clients already need it. They are already doing it badly. And you are already suffering the consequences of their poor time tracking every pay period.

If you are a ProPay licensee, you already have access to a tool that solves this problem: every ProPay license includes a free ProClock account. ProClock is Paysoft’s cloud-based time and attendance system, and it was designed specifically to integrate with ProPay’s payroll processing workflow.

This is not a basic time clock. ProClock provides mobile clock-in and clock-out, GPS location tracking, manager approval workflows, and direct data export to ProPay. And because it was built by the same company that built your payroll software, the integration is not an afterthought — it is the core design principle.

You do not need to sell your clients on a separate vendor, negotiate a reseller agreement, or learn a new platform. The tool is already part of your ProPay ecosystem, waiting to be activated.

Setting up a client on ProClock through your ProPay license is straightforward. Here is the workflow:

From within ProPay, you export the client’s employee data to ProClock. This creates a ProClock account that is linked to your ProPay license with a matching account ID. For example, if your license is 6360 and this is client a01, the ProClock account ID will be 6360a01.

Once the ProClock account is active, your client’s employees download the ProClock mobile app and begin clocking in and out from their phones. Every punch is timestamped and GPS-verified, creating an accurate, tamper-resistant record of hours worked.

Your client’s manager (or the business owner) reviews the timesheet data in ProClock’s web portal. They can see who worked, when they clocked in and out, where they were, and flag any discrepancies. Once satisfied, they approve the timesheet for the pay period.

The approved timesheet data exports from ProClock in a format that ProPay reads natively. No CSV reformatting. No copy-paste gymnastics. No squinting at handwriting.

You import the timesheet data into ProPay and process payroll. The hours are accurate, pre-approved by the client’s manager, and formatted exactly the way your software expects them.

The result: The 2 PM Thursday scramble disappears. Instead of chasing clients for timesheets, you receive clean, approved data that flows directly into your payroll workflow. According to a survey of 595 businesses, automated time tracking saves an average of 2.79 hours per pay period compared to manual processes (QuickBooks Time). Across 26 biweekly pay periods, that is nearly 73 hours per year — almost two full work weeks — redirected from data chasing to productive work.

Offering time tracking to your clients is not just about making your Thursday afternoons less stressful. It is a strategic practice-building decision with measurable financial impact.

You can offer ProClock as a paid add-on service to your clients. Whether you charge a flat monthly fee, a per-employee rate, or bundle it into your payroll service pricing, it creates a new recurring revenue line without requiring new expertise or significant additional effort.

Consider the math: if you have 20 payroll clients and offer ProClock as a $50-per-month add-on service, that is $12,000 in additional annual revenue from a tool you already have access to for free.

The AICPA’s CAS Benchmark data shows that firms offering bundled advisory and technology services reported 17% median revenue growth (AICPA-CIMA). Time tracking is one of the simplest bundled services to offer because the demand already exists in your client base.

This is where the strategic value becomes significant. When a client uses both your payroll service and your time tracking solution, the switching costs increase dramatically. Their employees are trained on the system. Their managers rely on the approval workflows. Their payroll data flows seamlessly. Ripping all of that out to switch to a different payroll provider becomes a much bigger decision than simply comparing prices.

The professional services industry averages an 84% client retention rate (Shopify Research), but firms that embed deeper into client operations through integrated services consistently outperform that benchmark. A 5% improvement in client retention can increase profitability by up to 95%, according to research cited by Bain & Company.

Every additional service you provide creates another thread connecting your practice to your client’s daily operations. Time tracking is a particularly strong thread because it touches every employee, every day.

The efficiency gains are not just for you. They cascade through the entire payroll chain:

For you (the payroll professional):

• No more chasing clients for timesheets
• No more deciphering handwritten hours
• No more manual data entry from paper to software
• Automated time tracking saves an average of 2.79 hours per pay period

For your client (the business owner or manager):

• Real-time visibility into who is working and where
• Elimination of buddy punching and time theft
• Digital records instead of paper filing
• Simplified compliance with labor regulations

For your client’s employees:

• Clock in from their phone in seconds
• View their own hours anytime
• Accurate paychecks every time
• No more filling out paper timesheets

The American Payroll Association reports an error rate of 1-8% of total payroll in companies that use traditional timecards (Timeero). On a $50,000 monthly payroll, that is between $500 and $4,000 per month in potential errors — overpayments, underpayments, overtime miscalculations, and compliance violations.

When time data flows digitally from clock-in to payroll, the transcription errors disappear entirely. The data your client’s employees create is the same data you process. No interpretation, no re-keying, no rounding.

Employers make an average of 15 corrections per pay period due to payroll errors, according to an EY study reported by HR Dive. Each correction takes time, creates frustration, and erodes your client’s confidence. Integrated time tracking eliminates the largest source of those corrections.

Knowing the business case is one thing. Communicating it to your clients is another. Here is how to frame the conversation effectively.

Your clients do not care that you have access to a time tracking platform. They care that tracking employee hours is a headache, that payroll day is stressful, and that they suspect they are overpaying for hours that were not actually worked.

Start the conversation there:

“How are you currently tracking your employees’ hours? Are you confident those timesheets are accurate every pay period?”

Most business owners will admit their time tracking process is far from perfect. That is your opening.

Position time tracking as a service you are providing to make their lives easier — not as a product you are selling. The distinction matters.

Instead of: “I have a time tracking system I’d like you to try.”

Try: “I’ve been looking at ways to make our payroll process smoother for both of us. Right now, a lot of the delays come from the timesheet collection process. I can set up a system where your employees clock in from their phones, your manager approves the hours, and the data comes directly to me ready for processing. No more paper timesheets, no more chasing signatures.”

Business owners worry about employee pushback when introducing new technology. Address this proactively:

• The app takes less than a minute to set up on a phone
• Employees clock in with one tap
• They can see their own hours anytime
• It is actually faster than filling out a paper timesheet

Be transparent about the fact that this helps both of you:

“When I get clean, accurate time data from your team, I can process your payroll faster and with fewer questions. That means fewer delays, fewer corrections, and more accurate paychecks for your employees. It is a win for everyone.”

If you are charging for the service, be upfront about the value equation:

“The service is $X per month. That covers the time tracking system for all your employees, plus the integration with my payroll processing. Most of my clients find that the time they save on timesheet collection alone more than covers the cost — and the reduction in payroll errors saves them even more.”

If you are including it as part of your existing service fee, highlight it as added value:

“This is included as part of my payroll service. I want to make sure you have the best tools available, and this integration makes the entire process smoother for both of us.”

The payroll services market in the United States is valued at $8.44 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $11.61 billion by 2031, according to Mordor Intelligence. That growth is attracting more competition, including SaaS platforms that automate basic payroll processing.

As a payroll professional, your competitive advantage is not in data entry — software can do that. Your advantage is in the relationship, the expertise, and the integrated service experience you provide. Offering time tracking through ProClock strengthens all three.

Most payroll providers still operate as passive recipients of whatever timesheet data their clients provide. They wait for the data, process it, and hope for the best. By actively solving the time tracking problem for your clients, you move from being a service vendor to being an operational partner.

That distinction is what makes clients stay. According to a Clearly Rated analysis, firms that expand beyond core compliance work into advisory and technology services see 5-10% higher retention rates than generalist firms (Clearly Rated).

Here is something your competitors offering generic payroll services cannot easily replicate: the ProClock-to-ProPay integration is native. It was built by the same company, designed for the same workflow, and optimized for the same outcome — accurate, efficient payroll processing.

When a client asks “why should I stay with you instead of switching to an online payroll service?” you have a concrete answer: “Because your employees’ hours flow directly from their phones into my payroll system with zero manual handling. That level of integration is not something you get with a generic online payroll tool.”

Adding ProClock to your client service offering requires minimal setup:

Your ProPay license includes a free ProClock account. If you have not activated it yet, contact Paysoft support to get started. There is no additional cost for the account itself — it is part of your existing license.

You do not need to roll this out to every client at once. Pick one or two clients who are particularly painful on timesheet collection — the ones who are always late, always messy, or always requiring corrections. Set them up first. Let the results speak for themselves.

Once your first clients are running smoothly on ProClock, use their experience to introduce the service to the rest of your client base. Real results from real clients in your own practice are more persuasive than any sales pitch.

Paysoft has been serving payroll professionals for over 25 years. Their support team understands the payroll workflow because it is all they do. Whether you need help with initial setup, client onboarding, or troubleshooting the integration, support is available.

You became a payroll professional because you are good at payroll — not because you enjoy chasing paper timesheets. Every hour you spend collecting and deciphering handwritten time data is an hour you are not spending on the work that actually grows your practice.

Offering time tracking to your clients through ProClock solves your timesheet collection problem, creates a new revenue stream, makes your clients’ operations more efficient, and builds the kind of integrated service relationship that makes switching providers unthinkable.

The tool is already included with your ProPay license. The demand already exists in your client base. The only question is whether you are going to be the payroll professional who offers this solution — or the one whose clients find it somewhere else.