1. Why job site time is so hard to get right

In an office, time is easy. In construction, crews start early, move between sites, stop for supplies and work on more than one job in a day. Foremen are busy running the work, not doing paperwork. By the time payroll runs, someone is reconstructing the week from texts, photos of paper timecards and memory.

That creates two problems. The first is payroll mistakes, which cost money and trust with your crew. The second is labor that gets posted to the wrong job or to no job at all, which makes your job costs wrong and your bids worse.

The fix is a simple, consistent system. Not perfect, just the same every week.

2. Pick one way to collect time for every crew

The biggest improvement most contractors can make is to stop accepting time in five different ways. Pick one method and use it for everyone.

For most companies, that is a mobile time option from the payroll system they already use. Most payroll providers offer one, and it puts time straight into payroll without retyping. If a crew truly cannot use phones on site, a paper timecard can work, as long as the format is the same for everyone and it is turned in the same way every week.

Whatever you choose, write it down: how time is entered, who approves it and when it is due. Then hold everyone to it, including the foremen.

3. Make the job required on every entry

Time without a job is only half the information you need. Payroll can run on hours alone, but job costing cannot. Every time entry should include the job it belongs to, and the system should not accept an entry without one.

When crews split a day between sites, they should record the hours for each job separately. It takes a minute in the moment and saves hours of guessing later.

If your work has distinct phases, such as demolition, framing or finish work, you can add a cost code or phase as well. Start with the job alone, get that consistent, then add detail once the habit sticks.

4. Set a weekly cutoff and stick to it

Late time is the root of most payroll scrambles. Set a firm cutoff, such as Monday at noon for the week before, and make it known that time turned in late is paid on the next regular payroll unless there is a real emergency. Check that this approach fits your state's pay timing rules.

A cutoff protects the person running payroll. It gives them a defined window to review time, fix problems and submit payroll on schedule instead of chasing people up to the last minute.

Pair the cutoff with a reminder the day before. Most mobile time tools can send one automatically.

5. Review time before payroll, not after

A quick review before payroll catches most mistakes while they are still easy to fix. Look for missing days, entries without a job, unusually long shifts and hours that do not match the schedule. Compare each foreman's crew to what you know happened on site that week.

Then have each foreman approve their crew's time before it goes to payroll. Approval puts responsibility with the person who actually saw the work.

Fixing a mistake before payroll takes a minute. Fixing it after means a correction, an adjustment on the next check, and an unhappy employee.

6. Overtime across multiple projects

Under federal law, overtime for most hourly employees is based on total hours worked in the workweek, not hours per job. An employee who works 25 hours on one job and 20 on another in the same week has worked 45 hours and is owed overtime. Some states add their own daily overtime rules on top of that.

That means overtime has to be calculated on the full week first and then assigned to jobs. Many contractors split the overtime premium across the jobs worked that week, or assign it to the job that ran long. Pick an approach with your CPA and use it consistently.

If employees work at different pay rates on different jobs, such as prevailing wage and private work in the same week, the overtime rate calculation gets more complex. That is a good time to have someone experienced review your setup.

7. Posting labor cost to each job

Once payroll runs, the cost of that labor needs to land on the right job in your books. Gross wages are only part of it. Employer payroll taxes, workers compensation and benefits are real labor costs too, often called labor burden. Leave them out and every job looks more profitable than it really is.

If your payroll system connects to your accounting system, it may post wages by job automatically, as long as the job was captured on the timesheet. If it does not, the payroll register has to be posted to jobs manually or with a simple allocation each pay period.

For our commercial clients, payroll stays with their own provider, and with advanced job costing we post that payroll register to each job so labor cost lands on the right job instead of one lump sum.

8. Prevailing wage and certified payroll jobs

Public projects and some government funded work require prevailing wage rates and weekly certified payroll reports showing each worker's classification, hours and pay. The rules are strict and the reports are often a condition of getting paid.

Certified payroll depends completely on accurate timesheets. Hours have to be recorded by job and by worker classification every day, not reconstructed at the end of the week.

If you take on public work, set up those jobs in your time system before the first day on site. We prepare certified payroll reports as an add on service, starting at $75 per weekly report per project, and our residential packages include payroll administration from time review to the final check.