Why You Should Adopt Mobile Construction Time Clocks

Whether you’re a large construction firm with simultaneous contracts and employees spread out across multiple projects or a small contractor with your own crew, it’s crucial that you find ways to maximize your profits. In such a competitive industry, any edge you can get against the competition helps you stay in business, and even small improvements can make a big difference.

One of the simplest ways to quickly increase profits is to switch from traditional paper time cards to a mobile time clock system throughout your contracting business. While paper time cards have been an industry standard for decades, new research shows that coupling electronic clocking with a mobile time clock app helps businesses save time and money, adding to their bottom line and reducing the workload for staff that conducts payroll.

This article discusses the key benefits associated with switching to mobile time clocks. You’ll learn exactly what you expect when you make the switch, including how much extra money lands in your pocket.

Mobile Time Clocks Reduce Labor Costs

Construction firms that switch from paper time cards to electronic time clocks save an average of 2% on each payroll cycle according to a recent report published by the American Payroll Association (APA). At first glance, it might seem dubious to claim that you’ll shorten the amount of labor you’re using just by tracking it differently, but the change comes from reducing human error.

Time cards are typically submitted by employees in advance of payroll. Hours for each day are recorded at once, often from memory, and it’s simply human nature that folks will overestimate their hours worked. As a result, firms end up with marginally inflated wage bills that eat into profits. Electronic time clocks are used daily and ensure that all labor reports are accurate.

Mobile Time Clocks Increase Accountability

If you’re managing construction projects, there’s no way that you can be everywhere at once to ensure that your team arrives on time and leaves when they’re supposed to. Mobile time clocks are an excellent means of building accountability into your construction firm’s practices by ensuring that records reflect when employees arrive late or leave early.

Mobile time clocks with check-in and check-out functionality that only work when the phone is located on the job site can ensure that employees are genuinely held accountable for their arrival and departure times. Requiring each mobile device to be activated by fingerprint or face scan can ensure that only the assigned employee is using the mobile device to check into the job site.

Mobile Time Clocks Reduce Administrative Workload

Payroll is normally a cumbersome task for the staff working in your construction office. For each pay period, paper time cards must be collected from each employee, checked for discrepancies against a work schedule or work attendance record, and entered manually into a computer where deductions are calculated and pay stubs can be created.

Mobile time clocks significantly reduce the administrative workload associated with conducting payroll by cutting out the data entry step. Electronic labor records can be imported into the firm’s payroll software, and because the records are only generated when employees are actually on site, they are much more reliable than paper time cards. This means that you’ll save plenty of time and money when it comes to conducting payroll.

Mobile Time Clocks Help With Job Costing

One of the most critical aspects of ensuring your success in the construction industry is accurate job costing. Your ability to create detailed breakdowns of where your project costs come from can inform your bidding practices and strategies, helping you win more contracts and stay profitable. Paper time cards are an unreliable source of job costing data, but with mobile clocks, you’ll be able to determine the exact labor inputs associated with each contract that your firm works on.

In addition, you’ll be able to minimize job costs by setting alerts for when employees enter overtime hours and their hourly rates increase. With paper time cards, contracting firms often find themselves paying tens of hours of unanticipated overtime in each payroll cycle.

Mobile Time Clocks Enable Real-Time Monitoring

Real-time monitoring of labor costs in relation to job completion status is an effective way to assess whether you’re ahead or behind schedule, and to make the necessary adjustments to ensure that jobs are completed on time. Sometimes, you need to add more overtime to ensure that a job gets finished on time. You may even realize that you’ve got too much labor. Either way, mobile time clocks for construction generate daily labor expense reports so you can make business decisions based on the most current data.

Conclusion

If you’re struggling to stay profitable while transitioning to a mobile workforce that fully leverages technology, now is a great time to start using mobile construction time clocks. An electronic system for monitoring labor hours will save you time on every payroll cycle, reduce your firm’s average bill for wages, increase accountability for your staff, produce valuable job costing data, and help you and your construction managers make better project management decisions based on real-time data.