What is the difference between Rabbiit and a time clock
A time clock and hour management both measure time. The question each one answers is different. The clock asks when the person was available. Rabbiit asks what the time was spent on.
One does not replace the other. The clock exists for the workday, compliance, and payroll. Rabbiit exists for project, task, activity, and billing. Many accounts use both — and Rabbiit integrates with time-clock software for that reason.
What a time clock solves
Timesheet: time goes to project and task, not a punch clock
Time-clock software is built for the workday. It records in, out, break, and, when the account uses it, overtime and night differential.
It is for:
- clocking in at the start and end of the shift;
- meeting labor rules and the company agreement;
- feeding payroll with the day’s total (absence, lateness, overtime);
- keeping the legal attendance history.
That is its job. It is not “less complete” than an hour system — it is another front. Asking the clock how much Consulting was done for client X is asking it to do what it was not designed to do.
What Rabbiit solves
Rabbiit is hour management: time already worked, classified.
It is for:
- logging on a project and task (the type of work: Consulting, Development);
- organizing the deliverable as an activity (that project’s card);
- closing the period in a report — hours, billable, billed;
- checking capacity (what was expected that day versus what was logged).
The clock knows the person worked 8 hours on Tuesday. Rabbiit knows that of those 8, 5 were on project A and 3 on project B — and whether that is billed to the client.
Why the two work together
The workday and the day’s time entries should match, but they are not born in the same place.
- HR and payroll need the clock: the person was there, the break happened, overtime follows the rule.
- The manager and finance need Rabbiit: the client, the task, the budget, the margin.
Without the clock, payroll is blind. Without Rabbiit, the day becomes a single block — “8 hours” — without saying on what. The two systems complement each other: one closes attendance, the other closes the work.
The benefit of keeping both is exactly that cut. The clock remains the source of the workday. Rabbiit remains the source of time entry. Nobody needs to force the clock to become a time-entry tool, or Rabbiit to become a time clock.
Integration with the time clock
Rabbiit imports the day’s total that the time-clock software already recorded. In the menu: Manage > Time clock integration (superuser or administrator).
There you:
- Configure the integration with the account’s time clock;
- Sync to bring in the period totals;
- open the Total discrepancies by user report — days when time entry and the clock do not close on the same number.
In the daily report the clock column appears next to logged hours. The cell marks discrepancy when the two totals do not match: 6 h logged and the clock brought 8 h, or the other way around.
Some accounts use the imported total as the day’s cap: Rabbiit does not let time entry exceed what came from the clock. That is the system message — the daily total should not be greater than the hours imported via the clock.
The integration does not turn Rabbiit into a time clock. It brings the two fronts closer: the workday HR already trusts and the time entry the project needs. Whoever configures the clock in the other system keeps configuring it there. Rabbiit only reads the result and lets you compare.