It’s no secret that saving time and increasing efficiencies are the critical elements to saving money in construction. While we all know that, and we all see the value, the “how” has often left us scratching our heads. Efficiency practices are part of nearly every software in your arsenal of programs used to run your business. So how does busybusy play into your construction strategy? Simple, we eliminate hand-written time cards with a time tracking software for employees that offers so much more than just payroll time tracking. Our employee time clock also creates efficiencies outside of the jobsite to reduce wasted time for project managers, supervisors and administrators.
1. Project Access Anywhere
Whether you’re a manager or an administrator, you can check the status of a project based on hours allocated and hours used from anywhere. Login in and swap between projects with a few clicks. There’s no need to wait for timecards to be turned in at the end of the week and risk missing a few, they’re all logged and provide real-time data.
2. Equipment Data at Your Fingertips
If you’ve ever been the one stuck calling around to all your job sites and asking each project manager or supervisor “Is the 12’ scissor lift on your site?” you’ll appreciate this benefit. By tracking equipment use on job sites you can pull up a piece of equipment in the app and see where it was used last, by who, for how long, and if it’s intended to be used there again soon. Not only is this data extremely helpful, it’s a great time saver in many ways.
- Save time searching and calling around for the location of specific equipment.
- Plan ahead for maintenance, knowing how many hours the equipment has been used since it’s last preventative maintenance. This one is two fold; plan the maintenance around project needs and prevent or eliminate downtime by not missing a maintenance window.
- Quickly track budgeted use against the equipment’s allocation to a project, or even job code.
3. Eliminating Manual Entry and Collection
Paper time cards come with some inherent issues like illegible handwriting, collecting time cards from the field, double checking time and getting signatures from both employee and supervisor. We’ve eliminated all of those. Never worry about trying to read someone’s chicken scratch or sending cards back to the field for signatures.
Looking beyond the immediate issues of manual time cards, storing them for 2 years can create additional labor or space issues. If your storage takes up multiple file cabinets, it impedes on space for personnel or office equipment. If you are not maintaining physical storage, you need to take the time to take photos or scans of every submitted card. Even after all that, they need to be filed in a manner that allows you to find the correct timecard for the correct employee, project, and timeframe if questions arise.
Time Tracking Software to Solve the Payroll Headache
Looking at an example from a single paycycle collecting timecards for a company with 70 field employees on 12 different job sites. We’ll make the assumption that a single admin processes payroll for all employees and we’ll call him Bob. Monday morning Bob hopes that all the Supervisors have dropped their crews’ time cards from Friday. With the first review he sees he’s missing cards from one project and calls the supervisor to get the cards. Those cards don’t arrive to Bob until Tuesday after lunch. As he continues through the paper time cards he realizes Tracy from Project 6 missed signing one, and also requests Tracy come sign off on the time as soon as possible. Bob also finds that 3 other employees left some days blank, and if no time was worked they need to at least enter a zero. For these, Bob has to get each supervisor to get those cards back to the jobsite for the employee to correct and send back to Bob for final processing. Woah – we’re still at 10am on a Monday and my head hurts just thinking about this scenario.
Bob now takes each time card and transposes each entry into the payroll software based on the employee, the project and the cost code. Bob double checks his work and finds one mistake, but also misses one mistake, and WooHoo! Loren is getting paid extra this week! Once everything is entered, confirmed, revisions from the field are back, and payroll is released, it’s midday Wednesday. Sound familiar? Bob’s time could be better allocated to other tasks within the company that bring in more revenue, but instead he’s processing payroll 6 plus days a month, 72 plus days a year.
Don’t let your company waste your employees’ time. Optimize your field and your office staff with the efficiencies built in with busybusy. Speed up your essential construction processes, and download the busybusy app Pro for your whole team and get a month free. Get started today.
