When a contractor hires a construction company, one question comes to mind. Do they have relevant recent experience? If so, that provides a significant advantage. Did this company just build a food hall in such-and-such place? Well, I want to put up a food hall in my town, too. Let’s get that business owner in and see how that guy did it.
Your future construction bids are based on fine-tuned data. Let me repeat. Future bids are based on what you do with time tracked and employee costs from your most recent successes. That’s why having good construction time clocks and other job-related data is a must even for your average Joe.
In other words, there’s no resting on laurels.
When you have tools like a labor burden calculator or a time clock app to help you get accurate numbers that can be used right there at the job site, you’ve got proof. You’re not just winging it like a used car salesman on Sunday (no offense Ride ‘n’ Hide.)
Better Bidding Through Technology
Guessing is for game shows. Miscalculations and low-ball labor costing can lead to flaky project bids which can keep you from being competitive. Remember that kid’s game of Telephone, where one person whispers a message to the next one down the line? The last guy says something so different as to be laughable.
That’s how project estimates often go. Most labor guesstimates go up the chain from the worker to the shift supervisor to the project manager and finally to you, the owner. After all those interpretations, like the party game, you’ll have a total cost that hardly resembles reality. And when you’re trying to put together a budget, figuring out important things like the costs of running your business in a year (note – that’s 52 weeks) having the wrong data can really land you in the hole.
All that information should be ready to pull from a report. That’ll help you out and allow you to provide good customer service. If you’re not able to do this now, it may be time to upgrade your software.
Disaster Waiting to Happen
Faulty bids, like faulty wires, are dangerous. If you’ve ever had to make good on a bad bid, you know what I’m talking about. Does the phrase “eat it” sound appetizing?
A reliable construction job costing app keeps you honest by accurately reporting labor cost and timeline, mobile crew times and equipment used, working hours and more. With that information, you can identify your true costs.
If you’re not keeping track of your project times with job site software, your estimates are going to be way off. Most employees round up the time on their time cards in fifteen-minute increments. And remember, employee time is your money. Over a project’s life span, this can add thousands of dollars of inaccurate costs to your estimates.
There’s simply no reason to miscalculate the employee hours needed to complete a job. Mobile time clocks give employees GPS-based reminders to clock in or out as they move from location to location. That data can be used to more accurately estimate the time needed to complete a similar project and the labor burden costs associated with it.
The app’s remote reporting tools ensure job-costing data from past and current projects is accessible. It’s essential to be able to compare a project’s progress through to completion against allocated budgets and employee hours you propose. You may even see when a bid would not be profitable at all.
The Picture of Progress
Another excellent advantage of using a tracking app is the ability to share photos of work in progress. Employees can upload photos, documents, job site status updates and other information to document daily tasks.
This becomes a running record of production hours and whatever problems may arise. Data and images are viewable in real-time from all Android and iOS devices or any web browser so folks back at the office can stay in the loop and anticipate any additional costs.
This is an invaluable management tool, in that it provides proof of quality and compliance. Accountability is one of the five key traits of top construction companies.
With an efficient time tracking app like busybusy, you stop guessing and start gathering facts. Make better bids that beat the competition when your calculations are accurate. See how busybusy can help you build better bids today.
