"Time reporting in the palm of your hand. " Jim Strite, Consultant

---

Punching the Clock From the Field

If you’re looking for a handy way to keep tabs on the various tasks your crew performs, consider doing electronic time tracking in the field. At Ken Spears Construction, Inc., in Shabbona, IL, each of the company’s 10 field employees carries a personal digital assistant (PDA) loaded with a software application called PocketClock. The software stores job codes for every task that can be performed on site.

“When our field employees arrive at a job site, they punch in the code for a given task and hit ‘go,’” explains production coordinator Greg Spears. “Every time they switch tasks, they enter the appropriate job code and hit ‘go’ again.”

The software makes it easy for the remodeler to compare actual labor costs with estimates and perform other back-office tasks. “You can collect data from the PDAs every day, but we do it weekly and sync it with QuickBooks,” says Spears. “We can do payroll in about 10 minutes and get all of our job costs done.”

To get your own copy of this e-Newsletter, click here.