Your foremen send daily reports, but the renewal conversation now includes employee time capture and payroll exports. Raken pricing needs to reflect which of those jobs you want to buy. The official pricing page did not expose dollar rates in the page data available for this October 26, 2026 review. Request a written quote; a current per-user rate or annual total is not verified here.
Evaluate Basic when the requirement is field activity reporting. Request Performance pricing when individual time cards, production tracking, or payroll reporting are part of the decision. Keep the current setup if reports reach the right people and payroll already receives usable records. Adding another time-entry process needs a specific benefit, such as retiring duplicate entry, that you can demonstrate with the same workday.
Separate crew activity from employee time records
Kartik Deshpande prepared this evaluation from official documentation, without testing a Raken account. The buying criteria are who enters information, which report leaves the jobsite, who reviews individual hours, and what the office can export. These determine the scope before the price comparison.
Raken’s purchasing documentation lists Basic and Performance, with a trial available. It puts production tracking, RFIs, and segments among Performance features. For a foreman who needs to record the day and distribute a report, paying for those additions should depend on an identified requirement.
| Required result | Starting scope | What needs confirmation |
|---|---|---|
| Daily activity report | Basic includes daily reporting | Which supervisors, office reviewers, and recipients need paid access |
| Employee time-card reports | Performance required by reporting documentation | The export fields and payroll destination needed by your office |
| Employee self-service clock | Dedicated documentation requires Performance plus Time Clock | Resolve conflicting plan statements in writing |
| Total contract cost | No verified public dollar total in this review | Term, billable roles, add-ons, implementation, and renewal price |
There is a documentation conflict to resolve before signing. The purchasing page says the Time Clock add-on is available on all plans, while the dedicated Time Clock page requires Performance. Do not treat a broad mention of time tracking as proof that Basic covers employee payroll records. Ask the seller to identify the edition and add-on that will run your exact test.
If the purchase is still about collecting site records rather than employee time, the construction daily-report software comparison covers the wider product choice. It gives you other reporting workflows to evaluate before extending the renewal scope.
Quote the same projects and people for a full year
Use a hypothetical contractor with eight supervisors, two office administrators, 40 field workers, and six active projects over a 12-month term. Keep that roster identical in each quote. First ask for daily reporting with supervisor entry; then request the incremental cost of employee time cards and self-service clock access. These counts describe a quote exercise, not Raken’s licensing units.
Have the vendor mark each role as billable, included, or outside the proposed access scope. Workers recorded by a supervisor may differ from workers who need their own login. Ask whether project count, inactive users, external report recipients, or archived jobs affect the charge. Leave those lines unresolved until the quote states the rule.
Request US-dollar totals for the same 12 months, with monthly billing and annual prepayment shown as separate options if offered. The worksheet should contain subscription, time-clock add-on, setup, training, required integrations, taxes, and any minimum commitment. Separate first-year discounts from renewal charges. The annual total remains unknown until those amounts and the commitment are supplied.
A useful comparison also lists the tools you will keep. If payroll stays in QuickBooks and another app still captures attendance, their costs do not disappear from the budget. Confirm cancellation timing and record access for anything you intend to retire before counting that subscription as a saving.
Follow a site record through distribution and correction
For a proposed trial, create a test project, a supervisor, and an office recipient. Use invented names and a harmless site photo. Record a crew activity description, a delay, and the photo, then preview and sign the daily report. Raken’s mobile reporting instructions place delays in the configured survey and describe distribution after signing, plus PDF sharing and export.
Save the received PDF, correct the delay description, and inspect what the recipient sees afterward. The same documentation says signing does not prevent later edits. Your acceptance check should establish how the office recognizes a corrected report and retains the earlier version when needed. These are test instructions, not observed results.
Next, if payroll is in scope, record a hypothetical employee day with six paid hours on excavation and two on cleanup. Keep the employee identifier, project, date, and cost codes consistent with the payroll test destination. Reconcile eight total hours and the six/two allocation after export; a correct employee total can conceal an incorrect job allocation.
Raken documents time-card exports in CSV and PDF for Performance. Inspect both before choosing what to retain. A PDF supports reading, while row-level data supports checking employee and job mappings. Confirm that the chosen export includes the detail your downstream process needs, then test a correction without creating duplicate hours.
Recipient and corrected copy
Employee, date, job, hours
Accepted allocation and exceptions
Test access and connectivity with field accounts
The Time Clock documentation says the clock needs an active connection and distinguishes it from offline Daily Logs entry. Try the intended workflow with the phone configurations and signal conditions your crews encounter. Document the fallback for a missed punch so the office does not mistake a connection failure for an attendance decision.
Review who receives site photos, who can export employee records, and whether a supervisor can see another project’s data. Use restricted test accounts rather than an administrator for those checks. Ask for retention, deletion, and account-closure terms, and have your privacy owner assess any location or photo-identification configuration before enabling it.
Where Permute fits after the field report
Permute sells connected business data and custom applications, so this evaluation has a commercial interest. We can scope a workflow using available field exports and accounting records, resolve project identifiers, and retain evidence behind the combined output. This does not assume a native Raken connector; the supported file or connection path needs verification.
With accepted-period rules and job mappings defined, the same output can support a recurring review of reported hours against posted labor cost. A field operations manager can inspect unmatched jobs and the source records behind them. The construction job-cost report covers the broader accounting inputs that a daily report alone does not supply.
Inspect the records behind a field report
Start with a non-sensitive sample and examine the project identifiers, dates, and references a repeatable report would need.
Keep site approval and payroll ownership explicit
This reporting scope does not replace Raken’s field capture, decide wage treatment, or promise a payroll write-back. Supervisors own the site record and the payroll team owns accepted employee hours. A custom reporting workflow has its own setup, access, and maintenance scope; it should address a recurring cross-system requirement.
Retain the archive before moving active projects
Before canceling an old account, export representative daily reports, photos, time records, and the identifiers that connect them. Open those exports without the old login. Record anything missing, including signatures, corrections, or attachment relationships, and agree how it will be retained. A downloadable report is not proof that a complete project archive transfers.
Rebuild project templates, recipient lists, survey questions, worker mappings, and time policies in the destination. Reconnect approved integrations and test one project through a reporting and payroll period. Keep the existing process authoritative until recipients receive the expected reports and the office reconciles its accepted records. Assign someone to resolve exceptions after the move.
The Raken buying decision starts with the record the office needs to receive. Daily reporting and payroll time capture require different checks, and the plan entitlement conflict deserves a written answer. Compare the same roster and term, then verify the export and correction process. If the current workflow already meets those requirements, keep it until the proposed change has a demonstrable benefit.
Scope the field-to-office reporting work
Bring your required report and a sample export to discuss data mappings, access boundaries, and the work needed between field and accounting records.
Questions before accepting a Raken quote
Why is there no dollar price for Raken here?
The public pricing page did not expose a usable dollar rate during this review. The same roster can require different access and add-ons, so a directory price would not establish your cost. Request an itemized quote with the term and renewal rate attached.
Should I accept Basic if the quote says time tracking?
Ask which employee record and export that wording includes. The official pages conflict on Time Clock availability, while dedicated time-card reporting documentation requires Performance. Have the vendor confirm the required edition against your test before accepting the quote.
Does every report recipient need a paid seat?
That licensing detail was not verified. Ask the vendor to distinguish someone receiving a report from someone entering, reviewing, or exporting information in the account. Include each role in the written quote rather than assuming all recipients are free or paid.
Should payroll move when daily reporting moves?
Only if changing payroll is part of the intended project and has been evaluated on its own requirements. You can test the report-to-payroll handoff while keeping the existing payroll process authoritative. Do not count a payroll subscription as a saving unless it will be retired.