How to Choose the Right Time Card Solution for Your Jobsite
Payroll is the biggest headache and most stressful aspects in any business. Employees scramble to complete their time cards. Foremen scramble to collect the time cards, verify the hours entered, and submit to Accounting. Then Accounting scrambles to enter the time card information into the payroll system. Every two weeks there is a major scramble among a company’s employees, foremen, and accountants to complete payroll.
That is the life with paper time cards, which is why your boss just handed down orders for you to start looking for a new automated time card solution. Congratulations, your organization is taking steps in the right direction. With all the time card solutions, how will you determine which is right for your construction company?
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Here are seven things to look for to help you choose the right time card solution for your jobsite.
Mobility
Whether you are in the field or the office, a time card solution should be accessible for entering and viewing time entries from any location and any device. Because internet connectivity at the jobsite can be hit or miss, it is important for your time card solution to be a native mobile app. This allows workers to enter time even when offline and then sync the information when internet connection is available.
Ease-of-use
For employees in the field – Your employees will be the primary users of your time card solution. An easy-to-use solution will ease adoption and prove itself a valuable tool for your employees. The time card solution should provide an easy way for employees to enter time, switch tasks, and record meal breaks throughout the day. Most importantly, if a worker forgets to punch out at the end of the day, a good time card solution will provides a reminder or alert to the employee.
For foreman – Foreman have a lot of responsibility on the jobsite, so you want to ensure that a timecard solution is easy to use for him too. When crews are consistent throughout a project, you’ll want to ensure that the Foreman can copy past day’s or past week’s time entries. And then need a quick way to review and approve employee time cards.
For employees in the office – The office team, especially Accounting, endures the most of the work in processing time cards. A time card solution must save them time and be easy to use. Accountants should be able to view, approve, or reject time entries individually, by employee, by project or all at once. Once approved, time entries should be able to be exported easily and similar manner.
Comments
If there are any questions or discrepancies regarding time entries, employees should be able to have a direct conversation with the time approver. When employees in the field can enter comments on time card entries from their mobile device, the field and the office can be connected in real time to resolve time card issues quickly.
Location Alerts
Many time card solutions record the location at the time of punch in / out and alerts approvers if the punch occurred outside a configurable distance from the jobsite. It is important to relay to employees that the time card solution is not tracking the employee. GPS tracking violates employee privacy rules, the time card solution is recording their punch location.
Overtime Tracking and Alerts
Many hard working employees will work diligently to complete their task and forget the amount of time that has passed. Or occasionally jobs taking longer than originally planned. Time card solutions can track straight, overtime, and double time in accordance with FLSA and DOL requirements. Additionally, overtime alerts in a time card solution are helpful to foremen and project managers in managing costs proactively.
Reports
Time card solutions must have comprehensive reporting to provide powerful insights into labor productivity and project costs. Reports should be able to provide meaningful information according to employee, specified time range, project, and cost codes. Time card solution should track more than time; it should track labor productivity. Percent of Efficiency reporting combined with a Cost-to-Complete report is important to review if you are under or over budget in labor.
Integration
The power of time card data is more than just time tracking but how other departments will use it. Project management needs this labor information to determine how project is tracking. Integration with payroll is important to ensure processing of timecards and payroll is easy. Owners need this labor information to make important hiring decisions. It is important to ensure that the information doesn’t exist in a silo and provides seamless integration with other systems.
Time card solutions go above and beyond paper time cards. There are so many features and functionality to include. The above are just some big highlights in features that will help many construction companies. It’s important for each individual company to determine their priorities when selecting a time card solution. When making the step to incorporate an automated time card solution it’s important for your company to determing what are the most important items .
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