Punchboard

A desktop app for tracking daily work hours, estimating pay, and keeping an eye on your yearly workload — for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Your data stays in a plain JSON file that you choose the location of, so it's easy to sync with iCloud, Dropbox, or any folder you already back up.

quackbyte.dev/punchboard — marketing page, or jump straight into the browser app.

Features

• Punch clock — punch in and out for today with one click; the running session is tracked live and saved as a real start/end time.
• Clocked sessions — click any day on the time card to log sessions, either with quick entry (9-13, 14-18:30, 8:45 to 17, or a plain total like 7.5 / 7h 30m) or by editing start/end times directly. Each day shows a mini timeline of its sessions, and each session can carry a note.
• Time rules — optional automatic unpaid break on long days (minus any gaps you already took), punch rounding to 5/6/10/15/30 minutes, and an overtime rate for days off and, optionally, hours beyond the schedule. Rules apply when hours are counted, so recorded times never change.
• Day exceptions — mark days as vacation, sick leave, or holiday, with automatic exclusion from expected working hours.
• Vacation allowance — set the vacation days you get a year and the month your leave year starts; the year view shows days taken, booked and left.
• Extra hours — track hours on days off separately from the schedule.
• Pay estimation — paid by the hour or on a fixed salary. A salary is entered as an hourly rate × contracted weekly hours or as a yearly amount, and paid as a twelfth of the year each payslip; overtime is either paid on top or tracked as unpaid, and the payslip shows your effective hourly rate. Tax and extra deductions give estimated gross and net pay for the current payslip period (with a configurable payslip start day).
• Currency conversion — optionally show a second currency alongside your primary one on every payslip line, using a manual conversion rate.
• Balanced weeks — today's target is what's left of your weekly hours, shared over the workdays still to come: 40h by Thursday on a 45h week leaves 5h for Friday. On a salary, hours over or under carry into the next weeks (only unpaid ones: hourly periods and overtime paid on top don't bank), optionally from a start date, resetting each January or capped at a limit.
• Finish estimate — the punch clock shows when you'll be done for the day, automatic break included.
• Yearly overview — a chart of hours worked per month across the year.
• Weekly totals — hours per ISO week against the scheduled hours, with the hours carried so far.
• Timesheet export — download the period as CSV, or print / save a one-page PDF timesheet with sessions, notes, totals, pay (in both currencies when converting) and vacation used.
• Undo — reset a day or delete a session by mistake? Undo it from the toast or with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z.
• Keyboard friendly — arrow keys move around the time card, Enter edits a day, T jumps to today and ⌘, / Ctrl+, opens Settings.
• Menu bar / tray — a mini punch clock in the menu bar (macOS) or system tray, with the running time next to the icon.
• Desktop extras — a global ⌥⌘P / Ctrl+Alt+P punch shortcut, a "still on the clock?" reminder once the day's target is done, an optional punch-in nudge on workdays, and open at login.
• Import/export — back up or move your data as a JSON file.
• Light/dark theme.
• Auto-updates on macOS, Windows, and Linux via electron-updater.

Install

macOS (Apple Silicon) — via Homebrew:

brew install --cask quackbyte/tap/punchboard

Or download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:

• macOS — .dmg or .zip (signed and notarized)
• Windows — .exe (NSIS installer)
• Linux — .AppImage

Installed apps check GitHub Releases for updates automatically (every 6 hours) and prompt to restart once a new version has downloaded — no manual reinstalling needed.

Development

Requires Node.js 22+.

npm install

# Run the renderer only, in a browser (fastest for UI work)
npm run dev

# Run the full Electron app in dev mode, with hot reload
npm run electron:dev

# Unit tests (Vitest) for the parsers, hour/pay maths and exports
npm test

Pull requests run the tests and a full build in CI.

Building

# Build the web + electron bundles
npm run build

# Package a distributable for your current platform
npm run dist

Project structure

• src/ — React renderer (UI, state, business logic)
• electron/ — Electron main process and preload scripts
• build-resources/ — packaging assets (entitlements, afterPack hook)
• site/ — static marketing page deployed to GitHub Pages, with the web build of src/ nested at /app

Stack

React, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI primitives (via shadcn/ui-style components), and Electron.

Releases

Releases are automated with release-please: merging to main with conventional commits opens a release PR, and merging that PR tags a release and triggers signed builds for all three platforms.

License

MIT