Hours in different apps
Everyone logs hours their own way, so gathering and standardising them takes time every single time.
An anonymised case study of a company working at height and on the road. No names and no prices, only the market, its work-hours problem and how it could work better.
This study is based on a real conversation with someone in the market. All data is anonymised.
Rope-access and height-work companies maintain wind turbines and industrial and civil objects. The teams are small and constantly dispatched to remote sites, often abroad. Pay depends on skill level, night work, travel and stand-by time, and the company's profit comes from the difference between the client rate and the worker's pay. So accurate work-hours tracking here is not a detail, it is the foundation.
Each worker logs hours in an app of their own choosing and sends them at month-end. The manager gathers and checks them by hand, and where needed cross-checks with the client. Because the apps and the logic differ, hours slip past each other, disputes arise and time is wasted. Night, skill-level, travel and stand-by bonuses have to be added by hand, and payroll, taxes and profitability are worked out separately.
With workers scattered across sites, and often abroad, there is no shared view of who is working where. A missing or over-counted hour only surfaces in the month-end reconciliation.
Everyone logs hours their own way, so gathering and standardising them takes time every single time.
The manager gathers and checks the hours by hand, and cross-checks with the client where needed, wasting a lot of time.
Night, skill-level, travel and stand-by bonuses have to be added by hand, so it is easy to make a mistake.
With workers scattered across sites, there is no real-time view of who is working where or how many hours add up.
To see profitability you have to add up the worker's pay, the taxes and the client rate separately.
Imagine a system where the worker logs hours on their phone, and everything else works itself out.
The worker marks the start and end of work at the site on their phone, and the hours land in one shared system.
Night, skill-level, travel and stand-by bonuses are added automatically, by project and by agreement.
From the worker and client rates you see pay, taxes and profitability for every project.
The result: less manual checking, fewer disputes over hours and clear profitability in real time.
The system adds up the hours and the bonuses, so there is no more gathering and checking by hand.
Everyone sees the same hours in one system, so there are no more mismatches.
You see how much is earned per worker and per project, not only at year end.
You see in real time who is working on which site, with no calls or messaging.
About ten people work away from the office, each logs hours in their own way, and the manager checks them by hand at the end of the month.
Travel time, four to five hours a day, and the different allowances decide whether a site was profitable, yet these are exactly the figures nobody counts properly.
Hours are logged in one place, allowances are applied automatically by rule, and profitability is visible straight away.
Fewer arguments about hours, far less manual checking, and a clear answer on whether the site earned.
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If your hours, bonuses and profit also sit in different places, let's talk. Together we will look at how this could work in your company.