Thousands of dollars are spent every year resolving payroll problems. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, it’s safe to say the way we’re managing payroll is insane.
Construction industry businesses need to make changes to how we document and track hours worked.
5 Steps Toward Construction Industry Payroll Diligence
Timecard fraud is a common occurrence in businesses that don’t have proper systems in place to monitor their workers’ hours.
–Mena Entrepreneur
BuildCenter is offering a free template for “the perfect timesheet.” Here’s why:
- Approximately $400 billion a year is lost to timecard fraud and lost productivity.
- Eighty percent of paper timesheets have errors.
- Most construction timesheets lack the necessary information. This leads to thousands of dollars lost in overpayments, fines, and disputes.
Timesheet 4A Framework™ Solutions include:
- Accuracy – Basic timesheets have:
- Start/end times
- Hours worked
- Breaks taken
- Tracking – Consider adding GPS to company vehicles for location tracking as a backup to timesheet start/end times. Other payroll tracking methods are punch clocks and phone apps.
Punch clocks are old-fashioned, but you don’t have to employ hundreds of workers to make using one viable. Phone apps are another way to track start/end times and they have been the flagship for payroll tracking. Phone apps will likely become the payroll tracking standard for the construction industry as well as others. - Approval – Reviewing timesheets as soon as possible is the best way to avoid disputes. “Manager approval is a key step that should be added before the timesheet reaches the payroll department,” says BuildCenter.
- Acceptable – When your timesheets are “acceptable” and compliant with labor laws, your credibility improves in disputes.
- Assignable – If you can use timesheet templates that are job-specific, even better. This makes it simpler to assign cost codes to projects you can use for customer billing. Later, this information will be important to review profit/loss on every project.
Business-Building, Customized Software Solutions
Construction Monitor software analyzes U.S. building and solar permit information. You can increase your business using our data. Contact us to learn more.
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*Content is for informational purposes. Construction Monitor does not endorse nor recommend any software solutions, companies, or brands (except our own).