Harvest hours on the back of an envelope
At harvest the team grows. A student drives the grain trailer, a retired neighbour runs the drier, a relief driver covers the combine on his days off from another farm. Days start when the dew is off and finish when the combine stops, which might be seven in the evening or eleven at night. Some days it rains by lunchtime and everyone goes home.
Hours are recorded however each person likes. The student writes them on a sheet on the office door. The neighbour tells you at the end of the week. The relief driver sends a text: 'Mon 10, Tue 12, Wed off, Thu 13'. On Friday you sit down with the envelope, the sheet and the texts, and try to work out what everyone is owed, and whether that text included his break.
Why harvest hours are so hard to record
It is not dishonesty on anyone's part. It is that harvest hours are irregular, long and split across jobs, and the people working them are not used to your paperwork.
| What makes it messy | Why |
|---|---|
| Start times depend on weather | Nobody knows at breakfast when work will begin |
| Finish times are late | The combine stops when the crop is too damp, not at a fixed time |
| Breaks are irregular | Meals are eaten in the cab, or not at all |
| People move between jobs | Trailer in the morning, drier in the evening, different rates perhaps |
| Rained-off days | Whether and how they are paid depends on your arrangement |
Everyone is working from memory at the end of the week, and memory after a fortnight of harvest is not reliable. Rules on working time, minimum wage and holiday pay apply to casual staff too. We do not advise on them. Your payroll provider or adviser does. What we can fix is the quality of the hours going in.
The cost of hours worked out on Friday night
The obvious cost is your time, at the point in the year when you have none to spare. Less obvious is the risk of paying wrongly in either direction. Underpaying a casual worker damages goodwill, and good harvest help is hard to find again. Overpaying is money out of the business with no record why.
There is also a records cost. When a question comes up months later about a worker's hours or pay, the only evidence is the envelope, if it still exists.
A harvest time log that people will actually use
What we build is a simple phone-based time log for the harvest team, and a weekly summary for you and your payroll.
- Each worker gets a link on their phone, with no app to install. They tap start when they begin, tap break and back when they stop to eat, and tap finish at the end of the day.
- If they switch jobs during the day, they pick the new job from a short list, so time on the combine, trailer, drier or yard is recorded separately if you pay or cost them differently.
- If someone forgets to tap, they can add a time afterwards with a note, which is flagged for you to accept.
- At the end of each day you see who is on, who has finished and anyone still showing as working at midnight.
- At the end of the week you get a summary per person: daily hours, breaks, jobs and totals. You check it and approve it.
- The approved summary goes to your payroll provider or bookkeeper in the format they use, or into your payroll software if it takes imports.
Workers can see their own hours as the week goes on, which prevents most arguments before they start.
Friday afternoon at harvest, with the hours already done
On Friday you open the summary. Five casual staff, each with a daily breakdown. One day shows the relief driver with no finish time; his note says the phone died at the end of the day and he finished at ten. You accept it. The student worked two hours on the drier on Wednesday evening as well as the trailer. You approve the week and send it to the bookkeeper, who runs payroll from it without ringing you.
At the end of harvest, the season's labour hours by job are already there for your cost records.
Do your harvest hours look like this?
- Casual staff report hours on paper, by text or verbally.
- Working out pay takes you an evening each week during harvest.
- You are not sure whether reported hours include breaks.
- People doing different jobs are paid or costed differently, and the split is guessed.
- You have had a disagreement with a worker about hours.