As a construction contractor, you know the challenge of tracking worker hours, especially if your project is multisite. Any construction company cannot maintain smooth business operations if there is no measure to monitor team performance.
Fortunately, with the best time-tracking software for the construction industry available, it’s a lot easier now to track employee work hours. This also helps with workforce scheduling, labor cost management, and project streamlining.
You would want to switch to automated construction time tracking over manual methods for several reasons. Manual time tracking requires hours of complicated (and unnecessary) calculations by managers. Instead, a time-tracking app for construction can automatically log work hours faster and more accurately.
This is not the only benefit of adopting time-tracking tools for your construction business, there are advantages for payroll and client billing too. In this article, we explore the best time-tracking software for construction.
Before we begin, let’s take a closer look at why your construction business requires time-tracking software.
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Benefits of time tracking software for construction
Time tracking of work hours is essential for any business that hires hourly workers. Construction is even more critical as the reliance on the labor force is much more in the industry. A time tracking software for construction can provide the following benefits.
1. Improved project management
Project management is an integral part of any construction job. As there are so many variables to monitor and track, having a tool to get real-time information about the project can make things a lot easier.
You can monitor the project’s progress to keep it in sync with the deadline. Also, the time tracking apps can help you calculate the labor and project cost accurately, ensuring that the project remains within budget.
2. Higher productivity
With the best time-tracking app for construction, you can accurately monitor and record work hours. This data can then be compared with costs to identify any unproductive behavior among workers. With the right time-tracking software, you can make your construction business a lot more productive and profitable.
3. Manage labor work time more efficiently
Time-tracking apps can help project managers and supervisors manage workers’ work hours more effectively. With these apps, managers can track how onsite workers spend their time daily, weekly, or monthly. There are options to track hours spent on the project, time off, clock in/out, and overtime.
4. Construction timesheet reporting
For any construction project, you will need reports providing valuable data regarding costing, labor efficiency, productivity, and project profitability. Time-tracking software can generate powerful reports that assist project managers in making data-driven decisions.
Now for all these benefits, you will have to choose the best time-tracking software. Our experts picked the top 5 best time-tracking apps for your construction business.
Top 7 time tracking software for the construction industry
Truein is one of the construction industry’s most robust employee time and attendance software. It is a cloud-based solution that is hardware-less making it highly portable. Construction companies can deploy Truein to any number of sites while monitoring the sites from a central dashboard.
This is the best time-tracking software for construction because it utilizes AI-powered facial recognition technology to provide a foolproof time-tracking solution for your business. It also has a feature to maintain different time and attendance policies for the contractual workforce. It is a significant feature in helping project managers manage contract workers.
Features:
- Offline and mobile device time tracking: With Truein’s offline attendance mode, workers can continue time tracking even if they face internet connectivity issues. Mobile app time tracking allows workers to clock in from remote sites with GPS geofencing.
- Instant setup for workers: With face recognition and geofencing, supervisors on site can instantly set up time tracking for laborers on site. You can onboard workers for your construction project from anywhere.
- Shift schedule: Complete control over workforce scheduling. Managers can create and share shifts with the workers. You can plan in advance and automatically allot shifts depending on worker availability.
- Payroll-ready reports: Apart from real-time monitoring of work hours, Truein can generate reports with analytics data helping project managers make data-driven decisions.
- Portable: Construction companies can deploy Truein on mobile/tablet without any hardware components. It is an excellent feature for construction projects when multiple sites are involved.
Quickbooks Time is another time-tracking app for construction businesses that offers basic features like timesheet management, job and shift scheduling, and billable hour calculation. While there is a GPS time tracking, unlike Truein, this software requires a standalone dedicated digital time kiosk to be on-site.
Features:
- Automatic billable hours calculation
- Ability to coordinate teams, schedule tasks, and track time
- Ready integration with the Quickbooks payroll software
- Reporting tools generate detailed profit & loss statements, expenses, and balance sheets
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration tool with a built-in time tracker for managing construction activities and time-driven projects.
With ProofHub you can set time estimates for various tasks and monitor the time spent on those tasks by various employees. ProofHub provides you with a centralized dashboard to schedule tasks, track project progress, manage budgets, track time, create reports, plan resources, and manage inventory.
Features:
- Quickly export time sheets in the form of CSV files or any other required format
- Automated timers help you monitor time spent by various employees that are saved to timesheets.
- Flat pricing ensures that you can add as many users as you want without any additional cost.
- Powerful collaboration features such as Discussion, Notes, and comments with @mention for having your team members on the same page.
- Built-in chat for 1:1 as well as group chats for sharing information and files quickly among team members.
- Integration with Quickbooks for forecasting project costs and client invoicing.
Time Analytics simplifies time tracking while offering essential features. This app excels in billable time tracking and timesheet management, aiming to enhance productivity and efficiency within a company, ensuring a positive return on investment (ROI).
Features:
- Streamlined time tracking solution: Effortlessly monitor hours and expenses, allowing efficient project management and automated cost distribution.
- Project profitability analysis: Utilize reporting tools to monitor billable hours, assess project and client profitability, identify revenue gaps, and streamline administrative tasks
- Project profitability analysis: Leverage reporting features to track billable hours and billing efficiency, gain insights into project and client profitability, pinpoint missing profits
BigTime is a time-tracking software for construction that features real-time time tracking, customizable timesheets, user management, billable hours calculation, and invoicing. The customizable timesheets allow you to add multiple fields with user permission; you can set them to view only for workers.
Features:
- Available as a SaaS service and can be used on any device, including smartphones. However, its mobile version is less versatile than Truein and is reported by contractors to be restrictive.
- Customizable timesheets for adjustment according to your business needs
- Expense tracking functionality to track pending employee reimbursement
- Auto-save, auto-complete, and smart lookups for faster report creation
Justworks Hours was previously known as Boomr, this time-tracking app for construction offers automated, seamless time tracking for workforce management. It is another construction timesheet app that provides payroll and accounting capabilities.
You can track your workers in real time, monitor their time on site on any device, and get overtime alerts. However, a limitation is a lack of customizable policy templates available with Truein.
Features:
- Real-time project tracking to monitor workers’ progress throughout the project
- Mobile and desktop time tracking available
- Payroll, accounting, and invoicing are integrated into the app
- Ability to manage shifts, GPS tracking, and generate reports
ExakTime is a cloud-based construction time tracking software like Truein that offers hardware-less deployment onsite. It provides managers and supervisors options to view all the GPS time punches on the map. You can edit time in bulk, create reports, and set up policies from a central dashboard.
While the ExakTime mobile app supports GPS tracking and photo verification, it is not the same as the AI-based face recognition of the Truein app, which is the safest option.
Features:
- Easy-to-use ExakTime mobile app for simple clock-in and out
- GPS tracking for onsite time tracking of workers
- Easy integration with payroll software like Quickbooks
These are the top 5 time-tracking software for the construction industry. Comparing features and pros and cons, Truein stands out as a complete time-tracking app for contractors.
Truein is the best time-tracking software for construction because its impressive features make it the safest bet for construction businesses.
Several construction companies have already implemented Truein for time tracking and attendance monitoring of their workforce. One such name is KAD Constructions.
Case Study: How Truein helped KAD Constructions optimize workforce utilization and plug revenue leakage?
KAD Constructions is a multi-disciplined Engineering & Construction company in UAE undertaking strategic infrastructure projects. As one of the most reliable contracting companies in the region, the company employs over 900 construction workers working on several sites.
The challenge company faced is with workforce management across several sites. Monitoring laborers and other people on site were difficult. Also, the company was performing leave management manually. It caused poor productivity and inaccuracies in payroll, which prompted KAD Constructions to look for the best time-tracking software.
They needed a holistic time tracking software to completely automate their workforce time and attendance management. It included overtime, leave attendance, and policy management. Truein offered an out-of-the-box solution to all the challenges KAD Constructions faced.
Our time-tracking software comes with centralized controls to monitor and manage multiple sites from the same dashboard. This helped KAD Construction eliminate the need for project managers to manage every site manually.
With Truein’s leave management module, the company could implement the provision of multi-level hierarchy-wise approval. It made it much easier to identify absenteeism and pattern of leaves within the workforce. Also, accurate time tracking and shift scheduling options allowed KAD Constructions to balance workload better, improving productivity among the workers.
It also enhanced their revenue. Furthermore, integration with payroll ensured accurate compensation for workers every time, saving HR from hours of work hour calculations.
Ultimately, managers at KAD Constructions agree that their attendance, policy, and compliance management challenges were mitigated by Truein.
You can also make your construction business more productive, profitable, and better with Truein.
Conclusion
Time-tracking software for construction is a requirement and not a choice. As the market offers dozens of solutions, making your choice based on features essential for your business is important.
Truein remains a leading time-tracking software for construction that ensures you work smarter and stay on top of your market with impeccable workforce time tracking.
