Successfully managing a project is like a juggling act. You have a lot of balls in the air (your team, costs, tracking time) and when one falls, the others quickly tumble down. You need to make sure each part functions like it should, so the project is completed on time and you get paid. Tracking construction time on your projects keeps your team accountable, your project on budget and your payment processing accurate.
Track Where and When Your Team Works
Construction projects don’t happen in a vacuum. You deal with various job sites and multiple teams of workers. Keeping the lines of communication open is essential to making sure everyone is on the same page and doing their job; that’s where time tracking helps.
Time tracking leaves a digital footprint of where your employees are working and how much time they’re putting in at each site; automatically communicating with you through their mobile devices each time they start their day, no paper time cards required.
Time tracking software also allows you to view reports that detail an employee’s start and stop times, including which tasks the employee spent his or her time completing, so you can see a breakdown of who is doing what and how long it takes. Reports can be generated per location or per employee. This gives you the opportunity to accurately see how time is being spent so you can keep productivity high—and potentially provide a paper trail to a client looking for a detailed breakdown.
When you keep everyone on track, the work gets done on time helping to ensure a happy client and quick payment.
Keep Tabs on Overtime and Equipment Use
Unforeseen costs, like overtime pay and equipment use, can quickly blow a budget. In fact, overtime pay is easily one of the most runaway expenses facing construction firms in 2020. Tracking helps you coordinate when overtime needs to be paid and when it and other costs need to be curbed, helping to keep you on budget.
With options like ExakTime’s Employee Executive Summary reports, you can quickly view hours worked by single employees and entire crews for each day of the week so you’re always up to speed on potential overtime costs. Along with watching worker costs, expensive equipment use is another cost that needs to be monitored. Equipment tracking lets you see every time a bulldozer, jack hammer, concrete cutter or scaffolding was used on a project.
Not only does tracking give you the opportunity to monitor progress and overtime, but it means you can correctly bid on the next project, eliminating the need to go back and forth with clients when projects go over budget. ExakTime’s time tracking uses GPS-powered geofences and equipment tracking so you’ll know how long a task actually took to complete, giving you the knowledge to better estimate going forward.
Seamlessly Sync Time Tracking to Payroll
Knowing that you don’t have to worry about hassles with paper time cards or manual payroll processing means eliminating one major administrative headache. A digital process that automatically syncs to payroll allows you to shift your focus to invoicing promptly on time and materials jobs so you can keep cash flowing.
Let’s face it, you may love your work but getting paid for it is the ultimate goal. When you track your projects, you eliminate surprises and improve efficiency. Plus, knowing the ins and outs of every project, allows you to easily share that information with clients and send accurate invoices. You also have the paper trail to show clients when and what you did, should they question your labor costs.
ExakTime, an Arcoro company, has solutions to improve your tracking, from time to payroll syncing and reporting, so you can ensure your bills are detailed and prompt enough to get paid in a timely fashion.
