Mobile Time Cards in Construction: 9 Reasons to Adopt this Technology in 2018

Mobile time cards are the next big advancement to employee time tracking. Traditional paper time cards have been around for centuries now, with few changes. The first change to time cards was the punch card clocks, it allowed a mostly accurate record of what time employees started and finished work. But paper time cards and timesheets, while more accurate now than a century ago, are expensively inaccurate. Mobile time cards are revolutionizing the construction industry and promising big returns to companies that use them.

Reasons to Adopt Mobile Time Cards

Mobile time cards are an easy way to reduce costs and improve productivity. However, it’s not hard to reduce costs with mobile time tracking. You don’t have to order time cards or print timesheets, which ends up being pricey and is bad for the environment. Mobile time cards offer users many benefits. With an average payroll error of 1.2% according to a Nucleus Research Study and a rise in wage litigation according to Bloomberg BNA, this technology can change businesses for the better. These improvements are but a few reasons why businesses should adopt mobile time cards in 2018.

1. Documentation

Mobile time cards ensure your business has documentation. With mobile time cards, you have access to information about who punched into a job site. Since they’re verified and signed, you have legally binding documentation of hours worked as well. Because of the rise in wage litigation in the United States, it’s crucial to have this information available. The documentation of your employees’ hours will protect your business from litigation. And with mobile time cards, you don’t have to worry about losing the documentation. It’s typically backed up or transmitted to the cloud.

2. Documentation of Work Completed

Just as mobile time cards can protect your business from litigation, they can also help your business in litigation. Mobile time cards act as a document of who was on what site and what they were doing. In case there is an issue with your contractor’s timekeeping system, you and your employees have a way of knowing what you should be paid for the work. Mobile time cards are an easy document that can be submitted to your contractor as a record of work. Especially since the accurate time card data helps in the case of a legal dispute over the hours.

3. Time Analysis

Mobile time cards are also an easy way to get good data on what happens and where your employee’s time goes. This data can help you improve your business because you can track cost codes and what was done. Knowing who worked on what helps increase transparency. It also can help aid in your scheduling. Traditional time cards and timesheets don’t make a distinction between the two which ends up hurting your business. If you know how much time your crew spends in nonproductive time you can try to mitigate that and prevent delays.

4. Location Verification

One of the reasons why your business should adopt mobile time cards is the location verification features many offers. Location verification takes a quick snapshot of the punch in and punch out locations. Using a geo-flag, your business can automatically flag employee punches that aren’t within your construction zone. This allows you to prevent people from writing in a time that they aren’t actually there. And in cases where they were sent on an errand or a separate job site, that can be accounted for in their time card. So there isn’t any confusion and there aren’t any issues.

5. Increased Accountability

Mobile time cards offer a greater accountability than traditional time cards and timesheets. Timesheets are usually filled out at the end of the day or the end of the week. People are responsible for remembering the times they got to the site, took their lunch, and left for the day. And while some might remember the exact time for every day, many won’t. Mobile time cards, unlike punch time clocks, also prevent buddy punching. Buddy punching is when someone clocks in for multiple people. However, it’s harder to do when there is a mobile time clock since most often the application is on their phone.

6. Increased Accuracy

Mobile time cards are also more accurate than timesheets or paper time cards. Mobile time cards are on a phone, so it’s easier to remember to punch in and punch out. They also will automatically fill in the information for the correct day. So you don’t have to worry about accidentally filling in your Tuesday hours on Wednesday. Plus, for the back office, it can be easily exported. So the back office doesn’t have to worry about whether they can read the information and the foreman doesn’t have to worry about collecting them.

7. Fewer Hours

Paper time cards and timesheets take time to fill out, to gather and to process. While filling out a time card or timesheet might not take too much time, the process of actually getting paid for hours worked is laborious. The foreman must gather all of the signed time cards or timesheets, they must ensure all of the time cards are signed. Then they have to drive to the back office for the time cards to be processed. The back office has to determine what the time cards say, call the foreman for any questions they have. The whole process can take hours if not days and costs businesses a lot in overtime.

8. Overtime

The back office knows who worked overtime when they start processing time cards. However, sometimes people have over time that wasn’t supposed to get overtime. And other times there are undocumented breaks which could come back to hurt the company later. With mobile time cards, it is easier to see who hasn’t had a break. It’s also easier to see who will enter overtime soon. Being able to track this will help businesses stop unwanted or unapproved overtime. This can save businesses from unexpected expenses and give them more control over their finances. This would also reduce the number of overtime hours necessary on the part of the back office and foremen for time card processing.

9. Increase Accurate Estimates

One of the benefits of adopting mobile time cards is how it can help increase the accuracy of your estimates. The data you get from accurate labor tracking can help you increase the accuracy of your estimate. Because you have a lot of data to pull from, you’ll be able to find a project similar to the one you’re bidding on. You’ll have data on how many man-hours were needed as well as what the final cost was. This will help your estimating team with their estimate because you know that the data is completely accurate rather than an estimate.

Conclusion

This technology is the next thing to revolutionize time tracking, just like the punch card clock before it. The added security of being mobile and the ease of access for you back office are just two benefits that can’t be stressed enough. Paper time cards and timesheets aren’t as accurate as they could be, and in this information era, it’s hard to justify these expenses when there are so many options.