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New: HelloTime now integrates with HelloBooks — sync clients, hours, invoices and payroll.

HelloTime: an honest Truein alternative for India teams

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TL;DR

  • Truein and HelloTime are different product shapes, not the same product at different prices. Truein covers one job extraordinarily well — deskless attendance. HelloTime covers three on one tenancy: deskless attendance, desk productivity, and an India payroll + books loop that closes month-end without a Truein-to-ADP CSV handoff.
  • For an SMB with a mixed team — some staff on the factory floor, some at desks, some in the field — Truein leaves you running two stacks. The hidden cost is not a per-seat number; it is a CSM call to ADP every time payroll gets reconciled and a second login for desktop staff.
  • Pick Truein if deskless attendance is your only job to be done, 70-plus pre-baked policies are decisive, and you are happy with a sales-led buying motion. Pick HelloTime if you want one product for attendance + desk + payroll + books, and a public pricing page so procurement does not need to schedule a demo to compare line items.
Try HelloTime freeBook a demoVisit Truein's site →
HQ
Pune, India
Country focus
India-first — deskless, contract, multi-site
Entry pricing
Sales-gated — no public per-seat pricing on truein.com
Free tier
No (sales-led trial)

Feature-by-feature: HelloTime vs Truein

CapabilityHelloTimeTruein
Pricing (entry plan)From ₹49 / user / mo (Attend tier)Sales-gated — quote on requestTruein does not publish per-seat list pricing. Buyer estimates from procurement forums put it in the ₹100–200 / seat range, but this is unverified.
Self-serve signupYes — under 60 seconds, no cardNo — book a demo, qualify, quote
Free trial7-day free trial of full Premium, no credit cardSales-led trial only (no self-serve)
Country focusIndia / Global — INR-native, GST-readyIndia-first — deskless / contract / multi-site
Data residencyAzure Central IndiaIndia — local hosting
Face-recognition attendance (with anti-spoof)Yes — Azure Face + liveness check on the Attend tier ₹49Yes — Truein's flagship strength, mature anti-spoof libraryBoth vendors ship face-rec; Truein has a longer track record on edge cases (poor lighting, twins, masks).
GPS geofence + kiosk (tablet) modeYes — PWA kiosk, GPS geofence, photo-at-clock-inYes — kiosk, GPS geofence
Mileage tracking + reimbursementYes — trip GPS streaming, photo receipts, IRS + CBIC dual-rate, vehicle profiles, approved trips post to HelloBooks as a journal entry on the same tenancyNo — Truein is a face-attendance product; mileage and reimbursement are not in the platformTruein customers run a separate mileage tool and reconcile reimbursement against a third-party books vendor at month-end.
Offline-first clock-inYes — Flutter + SQLite mobile queue, IndexedDB on kioskYes — offline clock-in is core to Truein
Contract / temp worker moduleYes — separate entity, no payroll seat cost, DigiLocker-masked KYCYes — Truein's contract-worker onboarding is mature
Attendance policy templates30 polished templates; custom rules built per request70-plus templates — Truein's depth of edge casesTruein wins on raw count and edge-case maturity; HelloTime templates are fewer but cover the canonical India workforce shapes.
WhatsApp / SMS clock-inYes — for staff without smartphones; geofence + selfie verifiedNo — Truein's bottom-of-pyramid story is a kiosk tablet
Desktop productivity (hybrid / WFH)Yes — consent-based desktop tracker, app / URL summaries, opt-in screenshotsNo — Truein is a pure attendance product
Screenshot retention (if enabled)Per tier: Attend none / Track 30d / Pro 90d / Business 365d (+₹50/seat 3-year add-on)N/A — no desktop screenshots
India payroll (PF / ESI / PT / TDS / LWF)Native via HelloBooks Payroll — Form 24Q quarterly, Form 16 annual auto-fileNo — hand-off to a third-party payroll (ADP, Keka, etc.)
Native accounting (GST books)HelloBooks — one tenancy, one bill, GSTIN / HSN / SAC invoicesNo — Truein is a point solution
Enterprise integrations (SAP / Oracle / Darwinbox)Roadmap — Phase 2 on the public planYes — Truein has SAP / Oracle / Darwinbox connectors in market
Volume discount transparencyPublished ladder — every tier's per-seat rate on the pricing pageNot published — sales-gated above demo

Pricing and feature parity check on 2026-05-13. Vendors update plans frequently — see Truein's site for the current list.

When to choose HelloTime

  • You have a mixed team (some deskless, some at desks, some hybrid) and you want one login for face clock-in at site, desktop tracking at the office and project time on the road.
  • You want public, transparent pricing in rupees — sign up in 60 seconds and pay ₹49 / seat, no sales call.
  • Attendance needs to flow into payroll on the same tenancy: TDS auto-deducted, Form 24Q filed quarterly, Form 16 generated annually — not a CSV handoff to ADP.
  • WhatsApp / SMS clock-in is a real unlock for the bottom of your workforce — Truein's tablet-kiosk story alone does not reach those staff.

When to choose Truein

  • Deskless attendance is your only job and depth on 70-plus pre-baked policy edge cases is decisive.
  • You are already integrated with SAP, Oracle or Darwinbox HR and want a connector that has been in market for years.
  • Enterprise procurement is the buying motion you prefer — RFP, custom quote, dedicated CSM — rather than self-serve.

HelloTime vs Truein: FAQ

Is HelloTime as accurate as Truein on face recognition?

Both use top-tier face APIs — Truein on its own + cloud providers, HelloTime on Azure Face. Accuracy parity in well-lit conditions is essentially equivalent. In low-light factory floors HelloTime ships a mandatory PIN + selfie fallback. Truein has more years of edge-case data on Indian deskless faces; HelloTime is closing that gap and offers a free migration if accuracy underperforms in your first 30 days.

How is HelloTime's pricing different from Truein's?

HelloTime publishes ₹49 / ₹99 / ₹199 / ₹399 per seat on the pricing page and offers a 7-day full-Premium trial with no credit card. Truein does not publish per-seat pricing; you book a demo, qualify, and receive a quote — usually with an implementation fee.

Can HelloTime handle our existing 70-plus Truein policies?

HelloTime ships 30 polished policy templates covering manufacturing, retail, security, construction, office and field staff. If you have an edge case not covered we build the rule for you, usually within a sprint. If you have 70 policies for genuine reasons, talk to us — we will quote a one-time policy-port engagement.

Does HelloTime cover contract and temp workers like Truein does?

Yes — separate ContractWorker entity (no payroll seat cost), DigiLocker-masked Aadhaar KYC, vendor-tagged, document-expiry alerts. Onboarding flow is WhatsApp-link based, which Truein's kiosk-first flow does not match for very low-tech workers.

What about offline clock-in for sites with no internet?

HelloTime mobile (Flutter) keeps a local SQLite queue and syncs when the network returns. The kiosk PWA uses a service worker plus IndexedDB. Same coverage as Truein.

Does payroll really run from attendance on the same tenancy?

Yes — attendance flows into HelloBooks Payroll, TDS is deducted on salary, Form 24Q files quarterly, Form 16 generates annually, and labour cost hits your P&L in real time. With Truein, attendance ends at a CSV; the payroll loop happens in a separate vendor.

What if we are already integrated with SAP / Oracle / Darwinbox?

Truein wins this row today — SAP, Oracle and Darwinbox connectors are in market for them. HelloTime supports generic CSV / API export and has SAP / Oracle / Darwinbox native integrations on the Phase 2 roadmap. If this is a blocker at 500-plus seats, talk to us and we will prioritise it.

HelloTime features

Time tracking, timesheets, productivity insights, leave and approvals — the full product surface.

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HelloBooks integration

The native payroll sync — STP Phase 2 lodgement, leave accruals and allowances without a connector.

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Pricing

Per-seat pricing, AU rates, free trial details and volume discounts.

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