Time tracking
Hours in, labour cost out, and nothing counted until you approve it.
Most crews do not clock in. The hours are on a whiteboard in the trailer and get sorted out Sunday night. Ridgepole takes them either way, and puts approved hours into the job budget as labour at the rate you set.
Typing in the week
The main way hours get in: “Dave, Tuesday, 8 hours, Henderson reno.” A foreman or the office enters hours for anyone on the crew, by job, by day, in quarter hours. Pick the budget line if it is not general labour, and add a note.
A typed day is capped at 24 hours per person, because 80 is a typo. Correct an entry later and the cost is recalculated with it.
Clocking in, for crews that do
Pick the job on the phone and clock in. If the phone gives a location within a couple of seconds, it is stored with the clock-in and the clock-out. If it does not, in a basement or with location turned off, nobody is held up.
A shift somebody forgot to close on Friday is closed with the time they actually left, not Monday morning, so the job is not charged for a 60-hour shift.
Approval is what posts the labour
Hours wait for a manager. Until they are approved they are not in the budget at all. Approve a page of entries at once and the labour cost lands on the job’s labour line, or the line each entry was coded to. Reject one and it is taken back out. Re-date or re-code an approved entry and the budget follows it.
Workers can also submit a weekly timesheet for approval. Either way, the hours in the reports and the hours in the budget are the same hours.
Rates and who sees them
Each person has an hourly rate on file, set on the Team page. A manager can override it on a single entry. Labour cost is hours times that rate.
Field users see their own hours. They do not see anyone else’s, and they do not see anyone’s pay.
Payroll hours, ready for whoever runs payroll
The payroll hours report lists every person’s hours for a pay period across every job, archived jobs included, split into approved, waiting and rejected so nobody is paid for hours a manager threw out. Export it to CSV in hours and dollars and hand it to whoever runs your payroll.
Built for how it works in Canada
Put the loaded rate in
A carpenter paid $35 an hour costs you more once CPP, EI, vacation pay and your WCB premium are added. Ridgepole posts the rate you give it. If you want job cost to show what labour really costs, enter the loaded rate, not the wage.
Overtime rules are provincial
Daily and weekly overtime thresholds differ by province and sometimes by sector. The payroll hours file gives your payroll service every person’s approved hours for the period, job by job, to apply your province’s rules to.
The whiteboard is the real system
Typed entries are the main path, not a fallback. The crew does not have to change how they track the week for the office to get the hours into the job.
Questions builders ask
Does my crew have to clock in and out?
No. A foreman or the office can type the hours in after the fact. Clocking in is there for the crews who want it.
Does it track where my crew is all day?
No. If the phone offers a location at the moment someone clocks in or out, that one point is stored. Nothing is recorded in between, and typed entries carry no location at all.
Why do approved hours matter so much?
Because approval is what puts the labour into the job budget. Until a manager approves them, hours are not counted as cost anywhere, so the budget never includes hours you have not checked.
How do the hours get to payroll?
Export the payroll hours report for the pay period to CSV, by person, in hours and dollars, and hand it to your payroll service or bookkeeper.
Which plan includes time tracking?
Growth and Enterprise. The 14-day free trial includes everything in Growth, so you can try it on a real week before you pay.
Works with
- Job costingEstimated, spent, committed and what is left, on every budget line, while the job is still running.
- ReportsMargin, cost, labour, payables, sales tax and payroll hours, each with a CSV.
- ScheduleMilestones and tasks on every job, and every job on one screen.
- Daily logsThe day on site, written from a phone, with or without signal.
See it on your next job.
Start free. 14 days to decide. Questions go straight to someone who knows Ridgepole inside out.
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