The reliable way to track staff hours is to have workers clock in and out against specific jobs on their phone, so hours are captured as they happen rather than reconstructed from memory at the end of the week. This gets labour onto invoices accurately, makes payroll simple, and ends the timesheet battle.
Why paper timesheets fail
Timesheets filled in at the end of the week are guesses. People forget which job took how long, round up or down, and hand them in late. The result is labour that gets under-billed, payroll that’s approximate, and a weekly chase to collect them. The problem is the delay between working and recording — the further apart they are, the less accurate it gets.
Clock in against the job, in real time
The fix is capturing time at the moment it happens: a worker unlocks the app with their PIN, taps Clock In, checks in to the job on arrival and checks out when they leave. The hours are real because they’re recorded live, not remembered later. Tie it to the specific job and the labour flows straight to where it needs to be billed.
What the location data does
The app records where each check-in happened and shows the office whether the worker is on site, or how far away. It never blocks a clock-in, and it isn’t proof of attendance. While someone is clocked in, their position is recorded every couple of minutes while the app is open, and the day’s trail is kept. It stops when they clock out.
Get the labour onto the job automatically
The real payoff is when tracked hours go straight onto the job at each person’s rate when they check out, rounded up to the quarter hour by default (you can change that). No transcribing timesheets and no forgotten labour. If the job is already invoiced, the office gets a task instead.
Make payroll a report, not a reconstruction
When every hour is captured cleanly against jobs, payroll is just exporting the data. No end-of-week scramble, no chasing dockets. In TradieO, staff unlock the app with their PIN, tap Clock In, and check in and out of each job; it flows the labour onto invoices, and exports timesheets for payroll — the whole timesheet battle disappears.
Frequently asked questions
What if a worker forgets to clock in?
The office can correct, add or void a time entry (with a reason, and the history is kept), and staff can flag that they forgot to clock off — but real-time clocking on the phone makes forgetting far less likely than with paper.
Can multiple workers track time on the same job?
Yes — a good system tracks each person against the shared job and calculates all the labour automatically.
Does GPS tracking bother staff?
The app records where each check-in happened and, while someone is clocked in, their position every couple of minutes while the app is open. It stops when they clock out. Tell your crew before they start; it’s for accurate job records.
