How To Track Field Employee Hours

Your field employees are out there when you aren’t. So how do you know that they are where they need to be? It’s not just a matter of trust. Field employees can easily lose track of hours, client site locations, and driving time. Those lost hours become your expenses. 

From paper sheets to GPS-powered apps, there are many ways to track field employees. Today, we’re going to dig into the most popular and the most common.

Options for How To Track Field Employees

Employers tracking field employees have a variety of options: GPS time clock applications, paper timesheets, on-site punchcards, and digital timesheets. Of these, GPS time clock apps are the most convenient, accurate, and timely. 

GPS Tracking

Accurately track field employee hours in real-time through GPS mobile time tracking. Workyard starts tracking employee time and location with the push of a button—and categorizes employee hours based on location. 

Open a map to see where your employees are and where they’re headed. Never receive “rough numbers” or estimates again. There’s no additional technology required, just the same smartphone that every employee already has.

✓ Real-time field data

✓ Accurate payroll hours

✓ Specific hours associated with each job

✓ Automatically calculated mileage and travel time 

Paper Tracking

Some companies are still using paper tracking for field employees. Employees fill out their timesheets every day or every week—and the employer trusts them to record their time accurately.

Unfortunately, paper sheets frequently incur mistakes. Employees tend to round up or down, based on memory. They may not attribute their time to the right client or may vastly overestimate the amount of time they’ve spent on-site.

✓ Easy to use

✕ Frequently inaccurate

✕ Not always timely

✕ Hard to track hours against specific projects and cost codes

✕ Difficult to analyze

Physical Time Clocks

Physical time clock solutions live at the site. Employees need to be present to punch in and out. Employees can’t estimate their hours—they have to punch in where they are.

But you don’t need to pay for a physical time clock that has to be stored and secured on-site. Today, each employee’s phone can act as a physical time clock and as a time tracking app.

In Workyard, employees just clock in and turn GPS time tracking on. Once activated, Workyard tracks employee hours, mileage, and tasks with even greater accuracy than a physical time clock. 

✓ Usually accurate

✓ Easy to use

✕ Expensive

✕ Must clock in at every site

✕ Doesn’t track mileage

✕ Doesn’t work for technicians visiting multiple customer sites per day

Digital Timesheets

Field employees can use a construction labor tracking spreadsheet to track their time, but the same issues apply to digital timesheets that apply to paper tracking.

Even with a digital timesheet, it’s likely that employees will round up or down. Multiply this throughout your employees and your projects, and you could be losing quite a bit to mistakes and uncaptured client reimbursements. 

✓ Easy to use

✕ Frequently inaccurate

✕ Not always timely

The Benefits of GPS Tracking for Field Employees

GPS tracking is the best solution for tracking field employees. Through geofencing, employers can automate their mileage tracking and billing, recapture client reimbursements, and easily import tracked information into their accounting and payroll solutions.

Track and Bill Mileage With GPS

For field employees, you need more than just clock-in and clock-out times. You also need to track and bill out your mileage. When do employees start traveling to the site? How much mileage do they rack up between sites?

Phone-based GPS tracking solutions track more than just employee hours. With Workyard, all mileage can be tracked from the start of the workday to the end and automatically allocated to specific jobs.

Improve Client Reimbursables With Geofencing

It’s not enough to just know your hours and your mileage; you must know where to bill them. Geofencing technology applies hours and mileage directly to the client, to streamline and improve the accuracy of your client reimbursements.

Labor, mileage, projects, and tasks can be attributed directly to the client. Print out easy-to-read reports and ensure that your billing is accurate and timely.

Integrate and Import for Faster Accounting

Once you’ve tracked your employees’ hours, import them into software solutions such as QuickBooks Payroll or ADP. 

By importing your data directly into your payroll solution, you can run advanced labor reports. Analyze your previous labor expenses and forecast expenses in the future. Workyard can even automatically sync jobs and services to QuickBooks—for easier and more accurate reporting.

FAQs

Can You GPS Track Employees?

GPS-tracking employees is easier than ever. Today, most employees have a GPS tracker right in their pocket—their smartphone. Once employees clock into Workyard, their time is accurately tracked.

How Do You Track Employee Productivity?

Once you can accurately track employee hours, you can track and improve employee productivity? Tracking an employee’s productivity is easy with Workyard—you can easily review how much time employees are spending on-site and what tasks and projects they have completed.

What Is the Most Popular App for Tracking Employees?

Workyard is one of the highest-rated time tracking apps available on the Apple and Google Play store. If you want a streamlined solution for employee hour and mileage tracking, Workyard can help.

Track Field Employees With Workyard’s Next-Gen Time Tracking App

From clock-in to clock-out, Workyard keeps track of your employees’ hours, mileage, and locations. Workyard will provide clean, easy reports that you can use to analyze and reduce your labor costs and increase client reimbursements. 

Want to know more about how to track field employees? Workyard can help. Contact us today at (650) 332-8623 or sign up for a free trial.