Calamari vs APS Payroll

Leave Dates

Rippling

BambooHR

Ditch the holiday spreadsheet. Leave Dates is a simple, shared calendar that saves you time and prevents booking clashes. Manage leave on desktop or mobile and give your team peace of mind. Streamline your admin and grow your business.

Try Leave Dates for free for 30 days.

Rippling is a cloud-based workforce management system that helps businesses manage operations across HR, finance, and IT.

BambooHR centralizes employee, payroll, time, and benefits data in one platform, ensuring accurate, secure, and coordinated information for peace of mind.

Head of Administration and Operations

not enough developed module with projects, lack of option to add detailed tasks - we need it sometimes for specific projects

Founder

Overall my experience with Calamari is very good and I've been using it to manage a small team of nearshore employees for 7 years now.

Business administrator

I improve teamwork because it is more united with real-time information that we can all see and thus be able to work on the same approach.

Calamari simplifies leave management with flexible policies, custom approval workflows, and automatic balance tracking. Configure leave types per team or country and stay compliant with local labor law across 100+ countries. Integrates with Slack, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace.

360 Degree Feedback

Absence Management

Access Controls/Permissions

Accounting

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

AI Copilot

Alerts/Notifications

Approval Process Control

Approval Workflow

Attendance Management

Attendance Tracking

Audit Trail

Automatic Time Capture

Benefits Management

Billable & Non-Billable Hours

Biometric Recognition

Break Management

Budget Tracking

Calendar Management

Clock In/Out

Compensation Management

Compliance Management

Customizable Branding

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Dashboard

Data Import/Export

Document Management

Document Storage

Drag & Drop

Employee Database

Employee Engagement

Employee Management

Employee Onboarding

Employee Portal

Employee Profiles

Employee Scheduling

Employee Time Tracking

FMLA Administration

For Cloud

Generative AI

Geofencing

Goal Management

HR Management

Learning & Development

Leave Policy Management

Leave Tracking

Location Tracking

Lockout Periods

Mobile Access

Mobile App

Multi-Language

Multi-Location

Offboarding

Onboarding

Ongoing Performance Tracking

Online Time Clock

Online Time Tracking

Overtime Calculation

Payroll Reporting

Peer Appraisals

Performance Appraisal

Performance Management

Performance Metrics

Performance Review Management

Predictive Analytics

Productivity Analysis

Project Time Tracking

Punch card

Real-Time Data

Real-Time Notifications

Real-Time Reporting

Real-Time Updates

Reminders

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Review Cycle Tracking

Role-Based Permissions

Search/Filter

Self Assessment

Self Service Portal

Shift Swapping

Sick Leave Tracking

Skills Assessment

Skills Tracking

Status Tracking

Surveys & Feedback

Task Management

Team Calendars

Third-Party Integrations

Time & Attendance

Time & Expense Tracking

Time Off Management

Time Off Requests

Timesheet Management

Time Tracking

Training Management

Usage Tracking/Analytics

Most reviewers indicate that Calamari delivers strong value for money, especially for small businesses, and they appreciate its affordable, flexible pricing. However, some users report concerns about high costs for limited budgets and price increases.

Value for money

The Calamari integrations most frequently cited by reviewers are: Slack (a team communication product rated 4.9 out of 5 for its integration with Calamari) and Google Calendar (a scheduling product, 4.6).

Integrations

By industry, Calamari reviewers are most commonly professionals in information technology and services (18%). The most frequent use case for Calamari cited by reviewers is leave management system (49% of reviewers).

Proprietary

Calamari

Web-based

Android

iPhone

iPad

Windows

Linux

Chromebook

AttendanceBot

Timetastic

Jibble

HRnest

edays

Jira

Sloneek

Vacation Tracker

Time Off

Core HR

Performance

HR Administrator

Its modular pricing  meant we could start small and scale without needing extensive team training, while the flawless integrations with tools like Slack completely eliminated the daily interruptions. But yes, the initial setup is pretty complex and global leave accrual policies required a bit of patience.

It’s important to remember that this isn't a full-scale HR system, so if you're hoping for built-in payroll processing or performance review modules, we still need separate software to handle those tasks.

flexibility of the tool, adaptation to the company's needs, choice of modules, intuitive and easy-to-use platform, possibility to assign different roles and permissions

we started with just the leave management module to get our global PTO and regional holidays under control before scaling up to attendance.

Sales

Some areas can take a little time to configure properly at the beginning, especially if your company has different leave policies, approval flows, or employee groups.

Office Manager

As we have staff based in China and staff based in South Africa, it was important for us to find a leave system that worked for all staff across the board taking their different holidays and work days into consideration.  

It handles complex accrual rules flawlessly, and its seamless integration with the tools.

President

The calendar should be improved across all platforms to give a first-glance distinction of approved vs pending approval requests, partial vs full day leave, clear and very visible identification of company holidays without the need to hover over the days to figure it out.

Head of HR

Some features are still missing that would be really nice to have such as employee onboarding or applicant tracking system.

good comunication with emloyees, clear calendar etc., writing coments helps to uderstand reasons, people split on divisions

There can occasionally be minor issues or limitations around customization, but I have not found them to be serious enough to outweigh the benefits.

IT PLM Director

What I like most is the ease of managing employee calendars and document security.

Technician

Setting up role assignments, rules, and workflows was fairly straightforward, and any challenges we encountered were minor.

Booking a holiday takes just a few clicks, and the entire company has a real-time overview of who is absent and when.

The system is intuitive, transparent and significantly improves absence management — both for employees and the HR department.

Calamari’s intuitive interface and reliable automation have saved us significant time and reduced errors.

board assistant

We use it only to count the working hours and to control do holidays, absences - For these to the price is affordable.

Operations

It is not easy on the administrator side to add an employee's total vacation days for the entire year.

Head of Operations

The billing process from them is a bit confusing, as is the determination/visualization of the holiday calendar.

The interface is clean and intuitive, so we didn't need to spend time training employees. Plus, the support team is incredibly responsive and helpful whenever we have questions.

Some of the functions we had during the trial period disappeared as different sections in the Leave Management Sections are paid for individually.  

Overall, Calamari has proven to be a reliable, user‑friendly solution that has greatly improved how we manage leave.

In addition, its customer-oriented approach is evident both in its features and in the support provided.

The learning curve is very short, and after a few hours, employees can work comfortably in the system.

The learning curve is fairly low for employees, and managers can usually understand the main features quickly.

The automated notifications and calendar integrations reduce manual work significantly.

HR Specialist

The portion size felt a bit small for the price.

It's a useful tool helping in everyday office work as a administrator and easy tool for user to control their working ours and holidays.

The platform is easy to use, can be managed according to the company's needs, and additional licenses can be purchased and data updated quickly.

HR Manager

Overall, Calamari is simple, intuitive, and saves me a lot of time dealing with leave requests or checking my hours.

We especially appreciate its flexibility—Calamari has adapted well to our changing needs over the years.

Yet, due to its modern interface it's manegeable.

More smooth integrations with Google callendar and email. When one need to aplly for permission to leave, you cannot see the overall callender.

Director of Operations

Some features are limited unless you add different packages, which could be frustrating for growing companies who are trying to determine which features they want/need

Senior Manager, Regional Business Administration

What I liked most about Calamari is its clarity and transparency, as well as the clean, intuitive interface.

Staff can now apply for leave and manage this directly, instead of having to ask someone in South Africa to do it.

CMO, Head of SEO

We use it to manage your team's vacations and leaves from work during every week.

Our experience with Calamari has been excellent truly night and day compared to the competitor we switched from.

Director

The positives (app and modern integrations such as slack) outweight the negatives (clunky confusing UX) so we will continue to utilise.

Administrative Assistant

Overall, Calamari is a reliable tool for managing employee time and attendance.

It has significantly reduced email back-and-forth and given our team more transparency around available leave.

The fact that it is available as a Web app, Mobile App and can be integrated with MS Teams, etc.

The support is responsive and modern, usually useful.

It is not difficult to use, but the initial setup may require some attention

Robot Engineer

the software allows us to have precise control over the hours worked per job

Calamari vs APS Payroll Comparison (2026)

Calamari

APS Payroll

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives