[HRLand]

I would like to know what systems other small coompanies are using to keep track of employee hours. I just post a sheet for everyone to enter their times at the beginning and end of each day but would like to go with something better. I can't really use a recorder because of limitations with power.

[GLAN]

well.....

We all leave the yard in the morning at the same time.....

We all leave to go home at the end of the day at the same time.....

Knowing that. It's easy to keep time, regardless if all are working together on a project or the men are divided into crews. On the occasional odd day that a specific crew can leave early. I already know what time they will be leaving. Besides they tell me the next morning. If need to I can verify that time cause of other people knowing when the trucks get parked.

[Bill Schwab]

Crews are given a time sheet, logged in, drivers get paid to and from the jobs. Anyone who does not have a valid drivers license gets paid for on the job time only.

The cards come in and I take them, log them into Quick Books Pro Contractor 2005. Ahhhh the power of power!!! ARRRRR ARRRR ARRRR!!!! The time gets posted accordingly to each perspective job and is reviewed as I log it. Forman are called on the Nextel at 1:00PM every day to report progress on the job they are doing.

Once you get your job function times dialed in, you can tell by the index weather someone is making rate, or, having problems. If the truck comes in at the same time every night, and all work was done as per budgeted hours, that is all we need. At least in our company model.

[jwholden]

Bill,

Out of curiosity how many crews/foreman are you running?

Congrats on getting QB Contractor Pro, there is no going back!

[Bill Schwab]

John:

We run 3 crews, 3 foreman. 2 do the work as proposed. The 3rd is a detail crew, they clean up, tweek jobs, and jump on with the other crews when needed, and/or run out of detail work.

It is an expensive program, and so long as you need to keep track of the money anyway, it has so much more we can use...If only they had a scheduling software for routing it would have it all!

[jwholden]

Bill,

There is an add on for scheduling, it isn't made by QB but it integrates with it. I should have kept that piece of mail.

[ianc]

it's qxpress http://www.qxpress.com/

[Bill Schwab]

Ok, I knew that is what you guys would recommend. I mean't that QB should have an internal scheduling software. One that with one entry will take crae of service rendered, money collected, and so fourth. Also, the $1,200.00.00 for QX and for that matter $500.00 for QB is ridiculous. A little plastic disc at a cost of .20 sells for over a grand? That is a big steel bucket for a loader, or a new set of injectors for a toy car, or something that has substance...(

Anyhow, point being, QB should ad this into their mix of tools as an option for another $100.00. I never liked the way add on software makers are way over priced for what their product does, at least in our company... And what amazes me is companies operating one truck with 2 or 3 employees spend this amount of money to do what a $20.00 white board and a flip card route book will do just as well. A clear case of over technification in the industry.

[JIM DARCY]

I am not sure I agree about not paying while traveling from one job to the next. That would mean they are off the clock and not entitled to workman comp benefits should there be an accident. Besides it being a cheesey way to save payroll,and obviously that is the reason for doing it that way.

[GLAN]

Originally posted by JIM DARCY
I am not sure I agree about not paying while traveling from one job to the next. That would mean they are off the clock and not entitled to workman comp benefits should there be an accident. Besides it being a cheesey way to save payroll,and obviously that is the reason for doing it that way.

What Bill is refering to and by all means is do-able.........His work consists of being on a job site for a week or more per job. Federal law allows this.........as long as those not being paid till on the job site are in no way doing anything at the yard in the morning or after returning at the end of the day. Something like this is not realy possible with maintenance crews.

[agla]

In one of the many places that I have worked, I saw a system that I really liked.

Each individual clocked in and clocked out. In addition to that, each filled out a time sheet that listed each general task at each job chronologically (7:00 - 9:30 smith walkway, 9:30-11:00 smith prep for sod, 11:00-12:00 picked up plants for jones,...). Then, each person in charge of a job had a card for each major task on a job with a list of employees that worked on the job that day, how many hours each worked, and what materials were used on that job.

As simple as these were, it was great for cross checking hours, keeping the workers honest, backing up everything for billing, having the employees doing it for you, and making a record that could be reverse engineered to adjust your pricing formulas. The last item is huge and way too often overlooked.

You think you are making good money with what you charge. But without checking it against those job cards, you really don't know.

You can haveall the software in the world. But if you don't collect relevent data that is detailed enough to analyze, it does not tell you where you are making money and where you are losing it in a quantifiable way.

[cutntrim]

I'm only running two trucks right now, and I'm in one of them. However, each day - each individual has a daily logsheet with a spot for listing time in/out at each job and space to record what was done.

Then I take the sheets and enter the info into Quickbooks Pro. I don't have the Contractor edition, but I'm able to track how much time was spent on each task (maintenance) at each customer over the season. That, along with property size measurements, helps me with pricing for the next season. I'm hoping to do a similar thing with my installation jobs as well.

Given the level of competition in my area (and many others), I think it's critical to have hard data to go by when pricing my services, and this is one way I'm able to hopefully do it.

[agla]

Cutntrim,

Do you have them break it down to how much of that time was mowing, how much was trimming x' feet of hedge, how much was edging x' of beds,...? It all helps you know if you were pulling in your target production money rate.

Most guys I know look at overall gross for each job, but few of them (that I talk to) actually have the data to know that their pricing formulas are balancing out with their actual overhead cost on those particular tasks (is the $x per square foot of walk actually realizing the $x per hour that you think you are charging per man? Or did you really make the money on the planting job, but it balanced out with the walk over the whole job?).

Many of the people I talk to pull their prices together by adding up the materials and guessing how long the job will take by memory and then adjust the price if it sounds to high or low. If you collect the data and crunch the numbers, you are no longer relying on memory or guesstimation.

These people that I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread took each of the paver jobs and added up the labor hours and multiplied it by the rate they bill for hourly work. They would add up all the material purchased for each job and mark it up to retail. They would then compare the numbers between the contract price and if it were billed by time and materials. If the contract came out to less than T&M, they considered it losing money. They would try to figure out if the contract rate was too low, or if there were unusual circumstances, or why it was off. If this became consistant, the contract rate for pavers would be adjusted to match based on this data. It sounds complicated, but it really is only a quick addition if the data is right there on your job sheets.

The problem is that most guys I talk to only know how much the entire job grossed and the overhead for the entire job. So they me be raking it in in one aspect and losing some in another, but don't know exactly where those areas need to be adjusted. Some of then just look at how much is left over in the company after everything is paid and decide if they had a good year or a bad year and then raise all of their guesstimating by a certain percentage to make it better next year.

[cutntrim]

Yes, I do break the time down into individual tasks. But I don't do that all the time. Once it's been done for a particular property a couple of times, then it's not normally required again for a while. This is for maintenance I'm talking about.

Currently I'm breaking down the time numbers on each installation job I do, and when I've done enough of them to get accurate averages, then I'll be able to better use those numbers in estimating.

[season-al]

I have a time card for each Employee and a time-sheet for each day in it my Foreman find all the jobs of the day with job numbers, job names, time allocations for one man up to six men ( since I run six men crews) along with codes for maint., extras, and so forth!! its so easy!! but the most important thing is to empower the Foreman or crew-leader, then everthing follows!!