How do your employees/subcontractors track time?

[bereanmom]

I recently hired my first subcontractor ( /r/smallbusiness/comments/ypi9ug/hiring_my_first_subcontractor_need_advice/ ) and received lots of good advice from this sub.

This seems to work really well.

However, one thing that I immediately ran into is: How to track time spent by the subcontractors?

I am billing my customers for hours spent on a task.

My subcontractor is billing me for their time spent.

Often I will function as a sort of defacto project manager and is sometimes asked during the project to produce an overview of time spent so far, etc.

I can then turn around and ask my subcontractor to produce that.
This does not scale really well...

So how do you track your subcontractors or employees time?

Do you have them track time in some online system?
If so, can you recommend one?

What I really need is just the amount of hours spent per project or per customer per day.

So something like a table for each week with weekday as columns and projects/customers per row. And then the cells containing hours spent.

For example something like this per subcontractor:

Week 42
                        Monday  Tuesday Wednesday   Thursday    Friday  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ACME/Project X          0       4       4           7           2
ACME/Project Y          2       0       1           0           0
BigCorp/Project 1       6       0       2           0           4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                   8       4       7           7           6

 

[justjude]

@bereanmom Try using https://clockify.me this is very efficient and works for us, since Covid era!

 

[globalharvest]

@justjude Another vote for Clockify

 

[vafollower]

@bereanmom Ive just built an easy to use time log in Google Sheets... New contractors just get a new empty version of it... You can create any report you want

Logging in and out is just a couple clicks

Also I have it pull in their pay data so they can see hours worked and pay per period...

Its endless the integrations you can do

 

[bereanmom]

Thanks for all your responses!

 

[pleaserespond]

@bereanmom We have been using software for such needs, which is Conneteam. Managing employees, workloads, and even projects because it is much easier to work when everything is organized. This is very cost-effective software given the number of tools it provides and deems to be useful in daily working needs especially in the construction industry.

 

[mikael85]

@bereanmom I made time sheet that is blank but same format and they write in each employees name and time they arrived what they did and then when they leave they write the time they left. Typically a crew of guys was on the sheet, and the foreman would be responsible for each guys time being correct. And then they signed it. I obviously knew when they started but end times were based on trust. And hand written. May seem hard but generally we had little to no problems. If and when there was a problem, it was made clear that this was the only piece of paper that would ensure they got paid so they took their time and made sure to take them seriously. To be clear its not like we docked pay, but if there was a discrepancy this was the only piece of paper that made sure everyone was literally “on the same page”. Hope that helps, but might not work in your industry.

 

[ohlord]

@bereanmom We’ve used both Clockify and WebWork. Clockify was less expensive, but WebWork reporting was much better. We’ve been using WebWork from about team members #30 to over 100.

 

[janetta]

@bereanmom To give you perspective from the other 'side', I'm a freelancer and I simply use a timer (physical or on my computer). Every time I'm not working I pause it and resume when back on the task. Then at the end of each day I add an entry to a work log which is just a simple spreadsheet I share with my clients. Each record contains a date, brief description and time worked. Based on this I invoice my clients every month. This is probably as simple as it can be, without any 3rd party software

 

[tammyinga]

@bereanmom Do you want to tie contractor's logged time to specific clients and projects? I was using a PHP application installed on my own server for years and the developer seems to have all but abandoned it so I've been looking for alternatives. I'm currently testing out Freshbooks and after about a month using it, here are my observations:

Pros:

• Invite employees or contractors and give permissions on a per-project basis
• Set cost and hourly rates individually for all contractors
• Contractors can send you invoices and you can pay them right in Freshbooks and it also integrates with Gusto
• Simple, easy to use, great invoicing functionality
• Full accounting software built-in, but optional so you don't have to use it if you don't want to. We are switching over on 1/1/23 though because it will save me $30/mo not having to pay for a separate bookkeeping software.
• Can take online payments easily through either Freshbooks own payment processing or Stripe/Paypal
• Good mobile apps

Cons:

• Can't edit time entries of contractors, change the project or client they assigned work to. I found this out the hard way when a contractor clicked the wrong client and ran a timer while working on a task. I had to ask him to delete and re-add the time entry to the correct client. It would be helpful if I as the account owner and admin could edit all the time entries.
• No real project management or task management, which is okay for me because we use a separate software for that but something to consider if you're looking for an all-in-one solution
• Can't add a convenience fee for credit card or ACH payments. Most of my clients pay by check but I would like to give them the option to pay by credit card with a 3% fee (to just cover costs) or ACH with a 1% fee but it's not possible. You can add it to the invoice but then it would apply to even clients that pay by check. This is a little frustrating.
• Doesn't actually track what your contractors are doing. This isn't a big deal for me because I've been in the business for over 20 years and know how long most tasks should take and I trust my contractors, but if you want a software that's going to take videos or periodic screenshots or track what apps are open this won't do that.

Overall it's pretty nice and unless I find something better before the end of the year we'll most likely switch over to it for 2023. Would love to get some recommendations for other options though.

 

[familylawyerspenrith]

@bereanmom There are many, many, web based software solutions for this need. My company (B2C dept) uses housecallpro.com. it has GPS based clock-in / out features that tie to a specific job. We use servicetrade.com (B2B dept) which offers a similar feature set with more robust dispatch and contract management. All of these companies offer free trials and demos. Try out as many as necessary to find the right fit for your business (feature vs price).

 

[613jono]

@bereanmom I'm just a lowly employee, but I've had two employers use Harvest (https://www.getharvest.com/) and it's worked out well for us.

 

[raiders47]

@bereanmom I recommend Cheensa for this. Works on mobile, and has a simple project and task assignment feature built in. You'd assign subcontractors to tasks and then they'll just Clock In/Out of projects as needed and our system will use this data to create time sheet reports per project