Time Clock App for Construction Crews

What a construction time clock app has to do

A time clock app for construction has one job the office clock never had: prove the crew was at the job site when their hours say they were. That takes four things, and most of the price differences between apps come down to how many of them are included. A punch from the worker's own phone, with the GPS position recorded at the moment of the punch. Job sites defined by address with a radius, so a punch inside the radius is stamped with the site and a punch outside it is flagged. Sites that have dates, because a re-roof lasts a week and next Monday's job is somewhere else. And a timesheet that carries all of that into payroll without anyone retyping it.

The office still matters. A shop, yard or trailer wants a tablet by the door with a PIN pad, so the people who never leave the yard are not installing anything. A construction business usually needs both clocks, and the honest price comparison is for both.

How Kloqk handles job sites

• Job sites by address, with dates. Type the address off the work order (“412 Pine St, Wilmington NC”), a first and last day, and how far from it counts as on site. The default radius is 150 metres, about 490 feet, which covers a house and its street. The address is turned into a map position for you; nobody enters a latitude.
• Every punch is matched to every live site. Crews are not assigned to a job in advance. Whoever punches inside the radius of a site that is live that day is stamped with it, so three crews on three jobs need no setup beyond the three addresses.
• Off-site punches are flagged, not lost. A punch outside every live site still counts, marked off-site with the street it was made from and a map link. A manager accepts it or not, and the record keeps the flag and who accepted it. A business can switch this to block instead.
• Finished jobs close themselves. When a site's last day passes it stops catching punches and drops off the crew's list. The same address can be added again for the next job at that property.
• Location is read only at the punch. Nothing tracks a phone between clock-in and clock-out. The worker sees the same record the office sees: each punch, the site, the distance from its marker.

What a six-person crew costs per month

Most construction time clocks charge a base fee plus a per-user fee, so the bill grows with every hire. For a six-person crew and one office, using each vendor's entry paid tier:

Timeero and Buddy Punch are cheaper for a crew of six and dearer for a crew of twenty; per-location pricing crosses over at about twelve people. If the crew also uses a tablet in the yard, Kloqk's office clock is free at one location on any plan.

A worked week: four roofers, two jobs

Monday the office adds “Johnson re-roof, 412 Pine St” for Monday to Wednesday and “Baker repair, 88 Oak Ave” for Thursday and Friday. Nobody is assigned to either. Two roofers arrive at Pine Street at 7:52 and 7:58 and clock in from their phones; both punches land inside the 150-metre radius and are stamped “Johnson re-roof, 90 ft from the marker”. A third clocks in from the supply yard at 8:10, outside both sites: his punch is recorded, flagged off-site with the yard's street address, and the foreman accepts it that afternoon because the run to the yard was his job that morning. Thursday the Pine Street site has closed itself and Oak Avenue is live; the same phones, the same button, the punches land on the new job.

Friday the timesheet shows each person's hours by day and by job site, the one accepted off-site punch with the accepting manager's name, overtime after 40 hours, and an export for payroll. The customer who asks whether the crew was there on Tuesday gets an answer with a map.

What to check before you pick one

• Is GPS on the plan you would actually buy, or two tiers up? On several products geofencing is a top-tier feature.
• Does the price grow per person? A per-user fee is fine at four people and a problem at fourteen.
• What happens to a punch made off site: refused, silently accepted, or flagged for a manager to decide?
• Can a job site have dates, or does someone have to delete last week's jobs by hand?
• Does the worker see the same record the office sees? A crew that cannot check its own hours argues about them on payday.
• Is there a kiosk for the yard, and is it free, or is the yard another paid seat?

Related: how the GPS time clock works, job site time clock, choosing construction time tracking software, and overtime rules by state.