How to Track Time on a Job: What Each Entry Must Show, and Where It Goes

A time entry is one record among several that touch the same hours. Each one proves something different.

A time entry says who worked, when, for how long, and where the work belongs. Payroll and job cost are two places that record feeds. Miles are recorded in the mileage log guide.

For a covered, non-exempt employee, the employer's record must show the hours worked each workday and the total each workweek (DOL Fact Sheet 21; 29 CFR Part 516). The other fields make the entry useful for job cost and easier to check.

The payroll record is bigger. For a non-exempt employee, the employer's payroll record also keeps the day and time the workweek starts, the pay basis, the regular rate, straight-time and overtime earnings, additions and deductions, total wages, and the pay date and period (DOL Fact Sheet 21). The time entry feeds it; your payroll system or provider may maintain the rest, but the employer remains responsible for the required records.

Your own time as the owner. Logging your own hours for estimating and job costing is not an FLSA employee record; you keep it to know where your labor goes. If the business treats you as its employee, get payroll or employment-law advice on the wage-and-hour rules that apply.

Clamp saves an entry with a job or business time, a role and hours. That is the app's minimum, not the payroll standard.

Log it the same day, by the person who did the work. On a crew, each person logs their own time; the owner or admin reviews exceptions. The person who did the work knows where the hours went, and the employer still owns the accuracy of the record.

A filled example (illustrative):

Start / Stop, with the role

Saved with its times

The example in Clamp: Log Hours with Start / Stop and the role, and the saved entry with its times. Demo data.

Time entries roll up. The time tracking guide's published job (contractor time tracking) was estimated at 100 hours. If its entries add up to 125:

That difference is only as good as the entries under it: the right job, the right role, the same day. What 25 hours means, and what to do about it, is the time tracking guide's subject; this guide stops at the roll-up.

For payroll. For a covered, non-exempt employee, the employer must keep accurate records of hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek. Any timekeeping method works if the record is complete and accurate (DOL Fact Sheet 21; 29 CFR Part 516).

Rounding. Federal rules accept rounding to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter hour only if, over time, it doesn't underpay the employee (29 CFR 785.48(b)). This guide records exact minutes and avoids the question.

Travel. Travel from one job site to another during the workday is hours worked (785.38). Other travel has its own rules.

Breaks. Short rest breaks count (785.18). A bona fide meal period can be excluded when the employee is completely relieved from duty. Thirty minutes is ordinarily long enough, a shorter period can qualify in special circumstances, and an employee who has to work while eating is not relieved (785.19). The FLSA doesn't require breaks, but some states do.

How long to keep them. Payroll records generally at least 3 years; time cards and schedules used to compute wages, 2 years (DOL Fact Sheet 21).

Federal law is the floor. States can set different overtime, meal and rest, rounding, recordkeeping and retention rules. Check with your payroll provider or an employment lawyer for your state.

For a dispute. A time record is more credible when it is made at or near the time, from someone with knowledge, and kept consistently as part of the company's regular practice. Those ideas track the business-records principle in Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6). This guide also keeps later corrections traceable, with the reason. Whether a record is admitted, and what it proves, depends on the forum, the contract, the facts and the applicable law.

For job costing. Right worker, right date, right job or business time, right role, actual hours. Michael C. Stone, a builder and remodeler with more than six decades in the industry and the author of Estimating Construction Profitably, compares actual labor against estimated labor in chapter 12, "Know Your Accuracy, Adjust Accordingly". He notes job costing breaks down when workers don't track their hours by job cleanly, and that when the estimated labor rate does not match the labor costs being reported, you may need to compare hours rather than dollars.

Decide these once, so every entry is logged the same way.

Confirmed with a role

A detected visit in Clamp waits to be confirmed with the job, the hours and a role. Demo data.

Detected visits. A detected visit says your phone was at the site. It doesn't say the time was work, or in which role. Confirm each one the same day, take out the time that wasn't work, and pick the role.

Job cost. Each entry is costed at its role's loaded rate for the work date (loaded labor rate).

Payroll. The hours feed your payroll provider's record, which adds the workweek total, rate, overtime and pay.

The estimate. The roll-up is compared with the estimate in contractor time tracking, and for painting in painting labor hours.

Never the customer's invoice in Clamp. Clamp jobs are fixed price; hours feed job cost, not the invoice. Billing time and materials is a different contract, priced and signed as such.

Most time records fail for the same few reasons.