Timesheets are crucial in the construction industry, where labour costs often comprise a significant portion of project expenses. These essential documents record how long employees have worked for the day. They also comprehensively log the time spent on specific tasks or projects. 

However, many construction companies struggle to manage labour costs, mainly if they still use paper timesheets. Besides being outdated, it can be inefficient, prone to errors, and not environmentally friendly. For this reason, your organisation should start investing in an app for construction management. 

If you want to operate a competitive construction company, this article will enumerate five reasons to manage timekeeping with technology. 

1. Better Safety Oversight 

Like everything else, safety must always be a priority when entering or exiting construction sites. Unfortunately, these areas are still hazardous and can result in many accidents and injuries yearly, especially if you don’t monitor workers in the area regularly. For this reason, your organisation must start investing in a high-quality app for construction management. 

Digital timekeeping systems can help by providing immediate information on crew members’ whereabouts, allowing instant photo uploads of accidents. It can also help project managers verify injuries at the clock-out time and provide GPS tracking to alert for unauthorised areas. That way, everyone can ensure better project accountability and safety. 

2. Higher Accountability

Many companies struggle to ensure time-tracking accountability, mainly if they rely on manual methods. Cheating techniques like “buddy punching” and “off-site punching” waste money and make it difficult to determine how long it takes to finish projects. These tactics can also negatively affect future project bids. Thankfully, you can avoid this by investing in an app for construction management. 

You can also use mobile solutions, kiosk entry systems, GPS tracking, and geofencing to remind employees to clock in and out. When selecting a timekeeping system for your construction organisation, you must ensure it can prevent cheating. 

3. More Flexibility

Apps for construction management should offer time entry options, like smartphones, kiosks, and tablets, depending on project location, size, and the number of employees. Smartphones allow field crews to easily track their working hours, while kiosks are ideal for businesses with many employees in a central location. Project managers can also use tablets to monitor employee time and status and adjust schedules accordingly.

Moreover, automating a timekeeping system can help supervisors free time from manually watching clock-ins and outs, resulting in employees working promptly and avoiding unproductive waiting. Additionally, they conduct Payroll through automation, removing outdated paper-based processes.

4. Integrations with ERP 

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and construction resource management go beyond time tracking. You can benefit from time tracking by working well with other tools like payroll software. 

And you can maximise your return on investment (ROI) by integrating time-tracking data with other enterprise software, project management, or payroll software. That way, the time-tracking app can automatically fill in necessary fields in the other software, reducing the risk of errors that come with manually entering the same data in multiple places.

5. Allocated Time for Costs

A solution that lets workers categorise time by type of work or cost codes creates an accurate picture of their activity, how long it took, and how much work employees completed. This information helps estimate job costs and bidding on future projects. 

Workers can also select the appropriate cost code for each task and enter the quantity or amount completed before clocking out. From there, supervisors have a comprehensive record of the duration taken to finish each task and can monitor the job’s advancement during the day. 

Conclusion

Construction companies must learn to stay efficient, especially in today’s digital age, where people are slowly transitioning from manual timekeeping to more digitised records. You can ensure safety and accountability on the sites by investing in reliable apps for construction management. 

If your building firm needs high-quality apps for construction management in Sydney, visit Edara Apps! We combine multiple software and applications to eliminate to avoid paying for and using multiple ones. Request a free demo now!