How do you handle crew time-tracking?
The honest answer: most contractors use a mix of methods depending on crew size and job complexity. You might have someone clocking in on a tablet at the job site, others texting photo timestamps, and a few old-school guys writing it down. We'll walk through what actually works at different scales.
Start with what your crew will actually use
Your system fails if your crew won't use it. A plumber climbing under a house isn't stopping to log into an app. A roofing crew on a pitched roof isn't pulling out a phone. So pick something that fits your people. For small crews (2-4 people), a simple handwritten timesheet that someone collects at day's end works. For crews of 5-10, a physical jobsite clipboard where people write their start and stop times, plus the job code, takes 10 seconds. For crews of 10-plus or multiple concurrent jobs, you need something faster. That's when a mobile app or in-app timer becomes necessary. The key difference: friction. If clocking in takes longer than 20 seconds, people skip it.
GPS and geofencing catch real-world problems
GPS tracking answers the question you actually care about: was anyone really at that job when they said they were. A concrete crew that says they worked 8 hours on a small residential job probably didn't. GPS shows you arrival and departure times automatically. Geofencing is the next step—draw a boundary around the job site, and the system logs clock-in and clock-out when your crew crosses it. You don't rely on memory or manual entry. This catches padding (adds 30-90 minutes per week across a crew of 4), helps you estimate future jobs (you now know residential driveway jobs actually take 9 hours, not 7), and gives you evidence if there's a dispute about time worked. Most mobile time-tracking apps offer GPS and geofencing as baseline features.
Route and sync everything back to the office
Your office person needs to see what your crews are doing in real time, not at the end of the week. This is where a connected system saves hours of reconciliation. When a crew member clocks in with GPS, that data syncs to your office dashboard and your payroll. No retyping timesheets. No forgetting someone worked Tuesday. No disputes on Friday about who worked what. If you're using Lowkly or another CRM with time-tracking built in, clock-in data flows directly to the job record, so you're capturing labor costs per job without extra steps. For simpler setups, a shared spreadsheet updated daily works, but it requires discipline—someone has to collect and enter it every single day.
Match time tracking to your invoice and estimate process
Time tracking only matters if it feeds into how you bid and bill. If you're billing hourly, your crew's actual hours directly hit the invoice. If you're billing fixed-price, those hours tell you whether you're profitable on similar jobs next year. A roofing contractor who doesn't track actual labor time on tear-offs doesn't know if they should charge $4,000 or $6,000 for the next one. The system doesn't have to be fancy. Once a week, pull up each crew's logged hours, tie them to the job, and ask: did this take what we estimated. Do that consistently for two months and you'll see patterns. Jobs that run over. Crew members who are slower on certain tasks. That's the real value. The time-tracking system is just the tool that makes this easy instead of painful.
Bottom line
Pick a method your crew will actually use, then stick with it for at least two months so you can spot real patterns in your labor costs. GPS and geofencing eliminate guesswork, but simple handwritten or app-based systems work fine if they're consistent.