For businesses that operate on a project by project basis, one of the significant factors that impact success is managing costs versus profits. Cost overruns on projects eat away at the business’s profits and eventually lead to the company collapsing if something isn’t done.
One of the easiest ways to detect and prevent cost overruns is with an online employee time clock. Time clock solutions come equipped with several features that help you keep track of your employees, their hours and productivity and how much time it’s taking to get jobs done, and how much you’re spending on projects.
This is the first step to preventing overruns, knowing your data, and using it to improve your performance.
An Online Employee Time Clock Can Help You Determine Project Costs
An online employee time clock gives you all the information you need to figure out how long your jobs are taking and what you’re spending in labor costs, and it does it all automatically. By taking all of this information into account when you bid for jobs, you can look at past data and see how long similar projects took before you bid the new job’s cost.
Viewing historical data captured by an online timecard system will help you to avoid underbidding, particularly on labor costs and time of completion. Accurate bidding will save you from having overruns by being able to estimate better the actual time it takes to complete a job, rather than simply relying on estimates and best guesses. The more data from past jobs you build up, the more accurate your bids will get. Using historical data will lead to higher overall profits and reduce the chances of overruns occurring.
Find Problems Occurring on the Job Site
One way businesses can routinely see overruns is when there are performance, staffing, or productivity issues on the job site. An online employee time clock lets you track employees in real-time and allows you to determine whether or not they are productive.
In some cases, it may be that you have a crew that is merely slacking off and attempting to “ride out the clock” as it were. In other cases, you may have employees on a task that they are ill-suited to. In these cases, you may want to change crews around or switch particular employees onto different tasks so that someone more suited can get the job done.
In other cases, though, it comes down to human resources. Overestimating your completion date can strain employees and force them to attempt to finish a job quickly, resulting in costly mistakes, more time taken on the job, and more cost overruns. By catching these issues quickly through employee timesheet software, you can move to fix them before they get worse, and the lesson learned will be there to help you improve future bids.
Ensure Accurate Employee Pay
Paying your employees exactly what they are owed with an online time clock software does two things. It saves money since you never have to worry about employee payments being wrong, and the automated features speed up the process. It also makes employees more productive since they know that they have to show up, punch into the online timesheet software, and work to get paid. They also know that if they want to get paid for hours worked, they have to be productive.
This accountability reduces the need for oversight and improves overall performance, helping you meet deadlines and reducing the likelihood of overruns.
If you work on a project-by-project basis and cost overruns are a recurring issue, then an online employee time clock is just what you need to give you the data and tools to deal with your problems. The many features can help improve all aspects of your business and help to avoid cost overruns altogether.
