Let Payroll Practically Do Itself With Employee Time Tracking

Payroll likely isn’t your favorite part of the job (though if it is, I’m not going to judge). But employees tend to do better work when they’re getting a paycheck so, whether or not you absolutely love it, construction payroll is something that has to get done. And not only does it have to get done, but it’s critical to get it done right.  If there’s something I learned quickly when doing payroll it’s this: don’t mess with someone’s paycheck! Fortunately, tools are available that not only make the payroll process much more accurate but essentially lets payroll do itself. 

How Can Time Tracking Help? Let Us Count the Ways…

While you may know about the basic functions of a construction time clock app like busybusy, such as the ability for employees to easily clock in and out using a mobile device – no time cards needed. What may you not realize is that this kind of tool also offers numerous other functions that can greatly reduce the amount of time you’re spending working on payroll

Construction accounting software can help you streamline the process of tallying up the numbers and making your daily reports. But a good mobile app that helps track time can also automatically create daily reports, ones you can customize with the information you need from cost code info to important data you need to monitor what’s going on at the job site. 

And when all is said and done, using a construction time clock app has one major benefit above all else. Rather than having to manually input all the data from your job site, whether it’s construction timesheet data or information on equipment usage, a mobile app helps automate the process. That saves time for everyone involved, including your people doing all the construction accounting back at the office.  No more errors from trying to read handwriting and no more triple checking that you didn’t push the wrong key when you were typing in the hours.  

Keeping Your Numbers On Point

Having the right construction accounting software is essential when you’re looking to save time and money. Inaccuracies in the payroll process, at best, can land you back in the office and crunching numbers to figure out where everything went wrong. At worst, an inaccurate payroll process can lead to pissed off employees, bad overhead estimates, not to mention the lost revenue. Fortunately, there’s another benefit of ditching the old-fashioned construction timesheet and using an app like busybusy to track time on your job site: the accuracy of your information. 

Time theft is a problem for anybody in project management. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that can add up to big numbers when the time for calculating construction payroll comes around. Even the most honest worker is likely going to fudge a number here or there when filling out a paper construction timesheet because they can’t remember everything that happened in a day. Rounding up to account for getting to work a few minutes later or leaving a little early to make it home in time for little Billy’s soccer match also happens from time to time by other employees who got to work early the week before, but now your time is messed up and attributed to the wrong project. And maybe it doesn’t seem like five or ten minutes makes much of a difference, but if every worker has a little Billy or Susie at home and it’s soccer season, those numbers are going to add up fast. One thing you need to be able to always answer is, how much did that project actually cost me? And when you do answer that, the labor is always the largest variable cost, so the labor part better be right.

Stop Playing the Estimation Game

The obvious advantage here is that you’re not spending money paying employees for time they didn’t work. But on top of that, having better knowledge of how much time and money it actually takes to complete projects gives you access to better job costing data. As mentioned earlier, inaccuracies in the payroll process can lead you to make bad estimates. Accurate information not only helps you make better estimates but ensures you can fine-tune your processes, ensure better billing, and identify problem areas that can reduce the chances of overtime.

So if the idea of paying for a Certified Payroll Service has you gritting your teeth, or you and your team have been spending hours looking over paper timesheets to try and get payroll done, there’s a better solution. You don’t need a complicated, difficult to understand construction reporting software to manage your processes. 

 

Portable time clock systems like busybusy help automate the payroll process from start to finish, making it easier, faster and more accurate every step of the way. If you’re ready to learn more about busybusy and how it can help you, just download the app here and try it out for 14 days on a free trial.  It will take you less than five minutes to set up your account and you know what they say, 5 minutes will make you 15% more profit! I think they say that? 😏