Does Your Timecard Work for You?
05/15/24
Design Your Timecard to Help You Make More Money
The main purpose of construction field crew timecards is to keep track of employee hours so you can pay them properly for the hours they work. Right? Not entirely true. If you also want to know and track accurate job costs, your timecard can become an important business tool to make you more money. To make this happen, you need to design your timecard to reflect how you do business and match what you want to keep track of.
Designed properly, your timecard can become an invaluable tool to track labor production, field quantities installed, company and rental equipment usage, and materials consumed on the job. And then, after gathering the information available from daily and weekly timecards, you can create a production tracking system to give your field foremen and superintendents updated job cost data so they will know how well they’re doing every week on their projects. To design an integrated timecard to work for you, get your estimator, project manager, and foreman together to determine which work task cost codes you want to keep track of.
When you bid a job, the estimator calculates exact quantities of work for each part of your scope of work. For example, to bid a new concrete slab warehouse floor, the estimator ‘takes-off’ the amount of labor, materials, and equipment to form the slab edge, place concrete material, finish the slab, and then strip the forms and cleanup. Each of these operations requires a bid estimate of crew production hours required to perform each task. Your timecard cost code categories must therefore match how you estimate and bid in order to keep track and know actual hours required to do different parts of the job.
By observing the example time card, you will notice how the work is broken down exactly as the estimator bid the job. By having the codes match the timecard, the estimator can then calculate the number of hours required to perform each task after project completion and see if their production rates are accurate and match how they price future projects.
TIMECARD - Concrete Slab |
Employee Name: Joe Super |
Project: Ace Warehouse |
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Hours |
Crew Weekly Quantity |
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Cost Code |
Work Description |
M |
T |
W |
T |
F |
Total |
|
3401 |
Form Concrete Slab |
8 |
8 |
8 |
|
|
|
600 LF |
3402 |
Place Concrete |
|
|
|
8 |
|
|
370 CY |
3403 |
Finish Slab |
|
|
|
|
|
|
20,000 SF |
3404 |
Strip Forms & Clean |
|
|
|
|
8 |
|
20,000 SF |
Total Hours |
|
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
40 |
|
Company Equipment |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3451 |
Pickup Truck # 101 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
40 |
|
3452 |
Generator |
8 |
8 |
8 |
8 |
|
32 |
|
Rental Equipment |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3601 |
Concrete Pump |
|
|
|
|
8 |
8 |
|
Materials |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3801 |
Form Lumber |
|
|
|
|
|
|
650 LF |
3851 |
Concrete |
|
|
|
|
|
|
370 CY |
3861 |
Curing Compound |
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|
|
|
|
|
50 Gallons |
When team leaders know what they are trying to accomplish, it makes it a lot easier to hit their targets. In order to give your foreman something to shoot for, they must know the quantities they are trying to hit and get a weekly update of how well they are doing. Before the job starts, the estimator should get together with the project manager and foreman to review the bid and quantities allocated to perform the entire job. The foreman then will have a budget to aim at. To keep track of how well the crew is doing versus the job estimate and budget, make sure your foreman records the quantities installed every week as noted on the timecard. This way, the foreman and project manager can review the progress weekly to see if they are staying on budget.
Estimators also calculate the number of equipment hours required to build projects. The timecard can also be used to efficiently track company equipment and rental equipment usage. Set up your timecard to include a listing of all of your equipment. Have the foreman record which equipment is used on the daily timecard. Your accounting manager can then job charge your equipment weekly to the correct jobs based on where it was used. At the end of the job, you can then review the estimate of equipment usage versus the actual hours spent on the projects. Your foreman and project manager can also monitor the budget versus actual for equipment if given updated numbers every week. You can also design your timecard to track the materials used weekly on the jobsite. Have the foreman record what materials were installed or delivered to the job as shown.
Weekly FIELD PROGRESS TRACKING REPORT |
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Project: Ace Warehouse |
|
Date: Week Ending March 1 |
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||
Cost Code |
Work Description |
Budget Quantity |
Actual Progress |
Budget Labor |
Labor Actual |
3401 |
Form Concrete Slab |
1,200 LF |
600 LF 50% |
120 Hrs. |
70 Hrs. 58% |
3402 |
Place Concrete |
740 CY |
370 CY 50% |
96 Hrs. |
48 Hrs. 50% |
3403 |
Finish Slab |
40,000 SF |
20,000 SF 50% |
80 Hrs. |
40 Hrs. 50% |
3404 |
Strip Forms & Clean |
40,000 SF |
10,000 SF 25% |
64 Hrs. |
16 Hrs. 50% |
At the end of each weekly pay period, add up the number of hours spent in each cost code work item and compare it to the job budget. Review these numbers with your field foreman every Monday morning to make sure they know where they are and what they have to do to keep their job on budget. Your estimator is the best person to prepare this weekly recap as they clearly understand the cost codes and job budgets. Plus, they will be the first to discover if their estimate is correct or if there are job cost overruns. Note, on the example, the ‘Form Concrete Slab’ hours are over-budget as of the date of this report. By knowing this early on, the field team can make immediate adjustments to bring the job in on-budget.
Knowing where you are is easy if you setup your timecard properly. Have your foreman turn in every field employee’s timecard daily to maintain accuracy. Keep your costs updated every week and make sure your foreman knows if their job is on-budget or not. This will help you make more money.
Ready to explore how Sunflower Bank can assist you? Speak to a personal banker at a branch near you, contact a specialist on our Wealth Management team, or find the right financial partner on our Commercial Banking team for your business needs.
This article contains general information only. Sunflower Bank is not, by means of this article, rendering accounting, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This article is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, before making any decisions related to these matters, you should consult a qualified professional advisor.