Construction time tracking

Construction Time Tracking for Small Crews, Built by a Contractor

It's Thursday at 5pm. Your foreman is sitting in the truck trying to remember who was on which job Tuesday, and whether the new guy left at 2 or at 3. That's how a lot of small crews track time, and it's where hours go missing.

This page is for owners running 2 to 30 guys in roofing, masonry, landscaping, concrete, painting or general contracting. No office staff chasing time cards. No patience for software that takes a week to set up.

The idea is simple: hours go in from the truck, totals come out in the office.

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The simplest way to track construction crew hours is to have each foreman log hours from the job every day, then review the week in the office. Many crew apps charge per seat, so the bill climbs with every hire. My Guys Time is $12/month flat for the whole company, however many guys you run.

What construction time tracking needs to do for a small crew

Construction time tracking means writing down who worked, on which job, and for how many hours, every day. Then turning those days into weekly totals the office can hand to whoever runs payroll.

My Guys Time shows weekly hours, hours past 40, and a simple gross pay estimate. It doesn't calculate taxes, deductions, net pay, or run payroll. The office hands that week to the person who does.

For a small crew, that comes down to three jobs:

Capture hours in the field. The day they're worked, by someone who was there.
Review the week. A foreman who knows the crew checks it before it goes up.
Hand off clean totals. The office gets the week's hours to pass to whoever runs payroll.

Bigger outfits shop for geofencing, kiosks, biometric clocks and cost codes. Those tools exist for a reason, and some companies need them. Most crews of five or fifteen guys need something simpler: the basics, done every day, by the people on the job.

The best way to track construction crew hours (4 steps)

Same four steps every week. You can see the 4-step weekly workflow or click through it yourself in the demo.

1. Log hours in the truck, the day they're worked

The foreman opens My Guys Time on his phone and taps in the crew's hours before he pulls off the job. It runs in the phone's browser, so there's nothing to download from an app store. On an iPhone or an Android phone, open the site, choose Add to Home Screen, and it sits there like any other app. The screen is built for a guy standing next to a tailgate, not someone at a desk. Hours logged the same day are hours you can trust. Try the crew view.

2. Foreman reviews and approves the crew's week

There are three roles: Admin, Foreman and Employee. The foreman sees his crew on the weekly crew board, day by day, and approves the week before it goes to the office. Running a one-man crew? It auto-approves past the foreman step, so nobody waits on himself. If something happened on the job, the foreman adds an incident note right on that day. New guys join from a copyable invite link you can text them. See the foreman view.

3. Office reviews and finalizes

The office view shows hours, rate and notes for every person. A guy bought a box of wall ties out of pocket? He snaps a photo of the receipt on his phone and it goes on his card as an expense to reimburse. W-2 employees and 1099 subs sit on the same board, so one review covers everybody who worked that week. Open the office view.

4. Hand the week to whoever runs payroll

When the week is right, the office has the hours that were logged the day they happened. Hand that week to your bookkeeper, or to whoever you use for payroll. That's the handoff. There's no integration to set up and nothing to keep in sync.

Paper, spreadsheets, or an app?

Ask around on r/Construction how guys track hours and you'll hear the same answer a lot: paper timesheets, typed into Excel later by somebody in the office. Nothing wrong with starting there. Most of us did. Here's how the three options stack up.

	Paper time card	Spreadsheet	Crew app
When hours get recorded	Whenever someone remembers, often Thursday	When the office types them in	The day they're worked, from the job
Can you read it?	Depends on the handwriting and the rain	Yes, if it was typed right	Yes, it's entered on the phone
Who can see the week	Whoever has the card	Whoever has the file	Foreman and office, on one board
Handoff to the office	Someone retypes it	Someone rebuilds it every week	Reviewed on one board
Cost model	Free, but hours leak	Free, but someone rebuilds it weekly	Per seat, or one flat price

If paper's working for you, make it work better with a free printable construction timesheet template or a construction daily report template for the day's job record. If it isn't, here's why paper time cards leak hours and the Thursday spreadsheet problem. For the longer look at the tradeoffs, see how contractors track crew hours.

What does construction time tracking software cost?

Crew time apps are priced three ways: per seat (a base fee plus a fee for every user), free plans capped at a set number of users, or one flat company price. See the ClockShark alternative with flat pricing and BusyBusy's per-user pricing. My Guys Time is $12/month flat for the whole crew.

The calculator, the questions to ask a vendor, and how the bill changes as the crew grows are on what construction time tracking really costs.

For a shortlist sorted by fit, see best time tracking apps for small construction crews.

Features that matter for small crews (and what we left out)

The list is short on purpose. Here's every feature, no bloat.

Hour entry built for the truck

A mobile-first screen that runs in the phone's browser. Add it to the home screen and it opens like an app. No app store, no install.

Weekly crew board with foreman approval

Every guy, every day, on one board. The foreman approves his crew's week. One-person crews auto-approve past that step.

Foreman incident notes

Something happened on the job? The note goes on that day's entry, where the office will see it, instead of a text thread that scrolls away.

Copyable invite links

Text a new hire a link and he's in. No download, no setup call.

Multiple crews on different jobs

Run two or three crews on different jobs and review all of them in one place.

Mixed W-2 and 1099 crews

Employees and subs on the same weekly board. How you classify them is between you and your accountant. The app keeps the hours.

Expenses with receipt photos

Reimbursements and petty cash go on the card, with a photo of the receipt taken on the phone. No shoebox.

Office view: hours, rate and notes

The office sees weekly hours, hours past 40, the hourly rate, and a simple gross pay estimate. It doesn't calculate taxes, deductions, net pay, or payroll.

Hand the week to payroll

When the week is right, the office hands verified hours to whoever runs payroll.

What it's not

It's not a heavy office system. It's not per-seat pricing. It's not another app-store download your guys will ignore. And there's no GPS tracking or geofencing. Plenty of apps call location tracking a must-have. We made a different bet: a foreman who logs his crew's hours every day and signs off on them tells you more than a map of where everybody's phone was.

Built by a contractor who tracked hours on a 2x6

For years my time card was a scrap of 2x6 wedged behind the seat of my truck. At the end of the day I'd pencil in who worked and how long. That held up fine, because it was one crew and I was standing right there.

It stopped working when I started a second crew and put a foreman on it. I wasn't on that job every day anymore, so the hours reached me secondhand. Every Thursday around 5pm my foreman was piecing the week back together from memory, tired and trying to get home. Some weeks it was close. Some weeks it wasn't.

So I went through the Play Store looking for an app. What I found was made for people who sit at desks, and just about every one of them priced by the head. More guys, bigger bill. Why should the app cost more because you hired another guy?

I couldn't find what I wanted, so I built it. Hours go in from the truck, the foreman signs off, the office gets a clean file, and the price is the same whether you run three guys or thirty.

Jeff Mohler, founder

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Time tracking by trade

Roofing. Weather days, tear-offs and crews that move between roofs in the same week. See roofing crew time tracking.
Masonry. Block, brick, stone and a supply-house run in the middle of every day. It's the trade this app came from: masonry crew time tracking.
Landscaping. Crews that grow in spring and shrink by fall. See landscaping crew time tracking.
Painting. Guys spread across three houses at once. See painting crew time tracking.
Plumbing. Short calls and small jobs that never make it onto a paper card. See plumbing time tracking.
Electrical. Leads and helpers split between jobs. See electrical crew time tracking.
General contracting. Your own guys and your subs on the same job. See time tracking for general contractors and their subs.

Construction time tracking FAQ

How much does a construction clock time tracker cost?+

It depends on how the app is priced. Per-seat apps charge a monthly base fee plus a fee for every user, so the cost follows your headcount. Some apps have free plans capped at a set number of users. Others charge one flat price. My Guys Time is $12/month flat for the whole company, whether you run three guys or thirty. See $12/month flat for the whole crew.

Can QuickBooks track time for contractors?+

Intuit sells a separate time tracking product called QuickBooks Time. My Guys Time is a different kind of tool: it doesn't connect to QuickBooks and it doesn't run payroll. The office reviews weekly hours and hands that week to your bookkeeper for QuickBooks or whatever you use for payroll. Compare QuickBooks Time and My Guys Time.

How do you keep track of hours worked as a contractor?+

Log hours daily, not weekly. The foreman enters the crew's hours from the job the day they're worked, checks the week on Friday, and the office signs off before anything goes out. Paper works if somebody actually fills it in every day. An app makes the daily part easier and keeps the whole week in one place the office can see.

What is the best free timesheet app?+

There's no single right answer, and free options do exist. Connecteam's pricing page says it's free for up to 10 users, busybusy lists a Free tier, and Jibble calls its construction time tracking "Free Forever." The trade-offs are usually user caps, features saved for paid tiers, and a bill that shows up as the crew grows. My Guys Time isn't free. It's $12/month flat, after a 7-day trial with no card required.

What is the best app for contractors to track job progress?+

We can't pick one for you, because My Guys Time doesn't do that. It tracks crew hours, not job progress, schedules or budgets. If you need project management, look at tools built for it. If you need clean crew hours every week without chasing anybody, that's what this is for.

Do I need to install anything?+

No. There's no app store download. My Guys Time runs in the phone's browser on iPhone or Android. Open the site, choose Add to Home Screen when your phone offers it, and it sits on the home screen like any other app. Your foreman can be logging hours the same day you sign up.

Do I pay per employee?+

No. $12 a month covers the whole company: foremen, laborers, subs and office. Hiring another guy doesn't change the bill.

Does it handle 1099 subs or just W-2 guys?+

Both. W-2 employees and 1099 subs go on the same weekly board. The app keeps the hours. How you classify and pay each worker is between you and your accountant.

What happens after the 7-day trial?+

To keep going after seven days, you subscribe at $12/month for the whole company. The trial doesn't take a card, so nothing gets charged unless you choose to subscribe. After that, you can cancel anytime from the billing portal.

Run a real pay period free

Seven days, no card required. That's a full pay period before you pay a dime. After that it's $12/month flat for the whole company, and you can cancel anytime from the billing portal.

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Not ready yet? Pick a role and poke around the real app: Admin, Foreman or Employee. No signup, no password.