Job Costing and Reporting is Easier Than Ever

OnTheClock is a valuable time management tool for internal use, but you can also use it to track your projects and report billable hours to clients. Our system provides a clear, accessible option for recording employee work on various projects so your customers are billed fairly. Whether you're in the construction business or a freelancer, you will be able to accurately track your jobs and projects accordingly. 

You can make OnTheClock as simple as you need to or as detailed as you want for your reporting. We will show you how to set up job reporting in our system and review some of the benefits of this option. 

Why Your Timesheet Tool Should Also Track Billable Hours

Some time tracking apps only log when employees start work and when they leave. We wanted to make it easier for you to gain insight into what your employees do in the time period in-between. A few key benefits of using timesheet tools for your client projects include: 

• You can organize employee schedules by client and demand. This is particularly useful if you work with part-time employees and contractors along with full-time workers. 
• You can save time by recording hours in one place instead of investing in multiple management tools.
• You can promote your brand as a transparent company that reports employee hours accurately. 
• You can budget internally by knowing how much projects will cost (in money and person-hours) based on past data. 

As you can see, your sales, HR, operations, and leadership teams all benefit from using the same system for time tracking and client task management. 

How to Set Up Jobs and Create Billable Reports

Accurate billing is essential for maintaining your client base and getting paid in a timely manner. Even internally, knowing how much time your employees spend on a project can help you determine the staff you need and time resources required for each project. 

We want to provide as much transparency into the project tracking process as possible. That way your employees can easily log their hours and you can send reports to your stakeholders. 

Step One: Set Up the Jobs and Project Codes Based on Your System

Under the Settings tab, select the Jobs label. This will bring you to a page where you can add jobs and project codes based on what your employees need to work on. You can create specific codes for each client or log different jobs for the same client based on the work that needs to get done. This is the most basic way to record jobs in our system. 

 

Step Two: Provide Information for Customers, Projects, and Tasks

Some companies might only need to know what the job name is. They don’t need to go into more detail other than the client’s name. However, other companies need more detail. This is why we developed a Job and Project Costing Setup page. 

Find this page under the Settings tab. You can input the data by your customers, by the project, or by the task.

 

Each section also has subheads that you can add to provide detail and create an organizational hierarchy. This is ideal if you offer multiple services to your clients or if there are multiple stages involved in the production process. Use this to meet your customers’ expectations with billable reporting. If they want to see how much time each part of the project costs, then you can give them this information.

 

As an added benefit, we also let our users customize their tasks. This means you can create different criteria or names for more organization on your end.

Step Three: Organize Your Reports by Customer, Project, or Employee

Once you have your projects set up, your employees can clock into certain projects and record what tasks they are working on. After the first pay period, you can start to report these hours to your client. You can either click on the “Job Costing Reports” button on the setup page or through the Time Cards section. Both buttons will bring you to the same place.

Use our flexible filtering criteria to create the different reports that you need. You can export these to a CSV or Excel spreadsheet to forward on to your clients for accurate and effective reporting.

Promote Your Business With Honest Time Tracking

Not only can our tools help your team manage the hours and tasks of employees, but it can also help you promote your business. As your sales team meets with clients, they can show how your team tracks jobs and client work in great detail and provides regular reports on their progress. This shows that you care about the time and budgets of your clients. 

Remember, 70% of projects fail, and they mostly break down because of scheduling, budgeting, and quality. Proving that you can stay on schedule and know how to budget the hours required to build your team can win over clients who are on the fence of signing a deal with your company. Your clients can also sign on to your company knowing they won’t get overbilled for unnecessary hours because your team has worked on projects of similar size before. The simple step of showing your time management and tracking processes can build trust and show how transparent your organization really is.

OnTheClock can be a simple tool for employees to clock in and out, or you can tap into our advanced features to monitor work on various tasks and jobs, improving your overall operations.