Job Costing Via Your Time Clock

When your company handles multiple lines of business, it’s possible that workers will toggle between different projects throughout the day. When they do, you want to be able to track and manage jobs accurately. This helps make sure you stay within budgets, build teams the right way, and plan for future projects smartly.

Tracking job and project costs.

Job costing can affect many things, including:

• How you bill
• Your payroll
• Future budget estimates
• Your next RFP

What’s more, challenges happen when it comes to tracking jobs, hours, and costs correctly:

• Sometimes, an employee moves between projects mid-stream, but might not account for their time correctly on their timesheet.
• Scheduling changes can force managers to scramble as they look for new resources and talent who work at different wage rates.
• Meanwhile, change orders from the client can redefine the project scope, and affect budgets in unforeseen ways.

When you’re building a job costing strategy, did you know that the way you track time and attendance can support your efforts?

Access useful job costing data

As employees bounce between projects, inaccurate timekeeping can cost you money, and create confusion that might affect relationships with clients and customers. However, if you can capture employee punch data down to the minute, you can eliminate issues related to inaccurate timecards, missed punches, or indecipherable entries.

To job cost successfully, you want to be able to address a number of operational concerns.  

• Find and schedule your workers for your current needs.
• Estimate future projects accurately.
• Keep the costs of labor as low as possible, while staying competitive.

So, how do you know whether or not your time clock is actually helping you job cost? To start, here are some questions to ask and answer:

• Do you notice that certain employees or managers often feel rushed to wrap things up, or to get their time sheets in on time?
• Have there been issues where invoices don’t capture all billable hours?
• Are you consistently running over budget?
• Is it difficult to build cost estimates for future projects, or complete RFPs accurately?

Every organization wants to be able to propose, bid, track, and stick to budgets across jobs and projects.

Otherwise, you could create a situation where growth unsustainable, employees get frustrated, and the success you want is always just out of reach.

That’s why Icon Time’s TotalPass suite of products do much more than just capture clock-in/out information. They generate useful, actionable data you can rely on in order to support your job costing strategy, and much more.

1. Track what’s happening in real time, then compare actual numbers with estimates.Features let employees and admin track costs, and gain an accurate view into how much time they’re putting in at each phase.

• • With this information on hand, you can gain a clearer look into how teams are performing.
  • You can also stay ahead of cost issues before you push beyond budgets.
  • You can even set alerts to go off as you approach specific budget numbers, based on actual hours and rate-of-pay.

2. Build future projects by using true job costing data.One key insight you can gain from an updated time clock solution is a breakdown of cost estimates based on projects, and how these estimates line up with the actual budget.

• • Time card reports, and payroll data, provide information that can help you analyze how well your team is performing.
  • By looking deeper into actual data, you can make strategic business decisions within the flow of ongoing projects.
  • And, with a new view into data, you can create more accurate estimates on future projects, and build teams that include the right mix of experience and skills.

3. Export hours directly to your payroll.This might be one of the most powerful takeaways when it comes to updating your time and attendance solution.

• • In short, your employee hours will move seamlessly into your payroll system.
  • This eliminates the need for manual data entry.
  • An automated solution also enhances accuracy, and cuts down on administrative costs.

Digital accuracy matters when it comes to job costing.

There’s no reason to put your company at risk because your time clock solution only does part of the job. When you can track job and project costs with greater accuracy, you can begin maximizing resources, and getting more out of everyone’s time.