Thursday night, payroll is due
The office has a pile of paper timesheets, some filled in, some half filled, one missing. One crew member texted his hours. Another says he did a Saturday that nobody else remembers. The crew leader says the rain stop on Tuesday was two hours, not three. The overtime rule depends on whether the extra hour was travel or work, and nobody wrote that down either.
The office manager spends the evening reconciling it all, then keys the hours into payroll. On Monday two people query their pay.
Why landscaping hours are so messy
A crew might start at the yard, load up, drive to a site, move to a second site, go to the tip, and drop kit back. Maintenance crews might visit eight sites in a day. Different parts of that day may be paid differently under your own rules, and the weather adds another layer.
- Times are written at the end of the week from memory.
- Travel, yard time and site time are not separated.
- Rain stops and early finishes are handled case by case.
- Overtime rules are applied by the person keying the hours.
- Hours are keyed into payroll by hand.
How travel, wet time and overtime should be paid is decided by your contracts of employment and your payroll adviser. The system applies the rules you give it and does not decide them.
What messy hours cost
Overpayments slip through and are hard to recover. Underpayments cause bad feeling and, if repeated, can become more serious. The office spends hours every pay period on reconciliation. And because hours are not tied to jobs, the labour cost of each job and contract is a guess.
The phone timesheets we build
- Each crew member, or the crew leader for the whole crew, taps in at the start of the day, and records moves between the yard, sites and the tip with a couple of taps.
- Each block of time is tagged as site work, travel, yard, or weather stop, and linked to the job or contract where relevant.
- Your pay rules are written into the system: how travel counts, what happens on wet days, when overtime starts, weekend rates.
- At the end of the week, the crew leader and the office review a summary for each person, with anything unusual flagged, such as a missing finish time.
- Approved hours are sent to your payroll software, such as Xero Payroll, Sage or BrightPay where an import or API is available, or exported in the format your bureau wants.
- The same time data feeds job costing, so labour on each job and contract is known.
| Part of the day | How it is recorded | Paid according to |
|---|---|---|
| Yard loading | Tapped as yard time | Your rule for yard time |
| Driving between sites | Tapped as travel | Your travel rule |
| Work on site | Tapped against the job | Standard or overtime rate |
| Rain stop | Tapped as weather stop | Your wet time rule |
| Tip run | Tapped as travel or yard | As you decide |
Payday without the pile
The office reviews flagged exceptions instead of rebuilding every timesheet. Pay rules are applied the same way for everyone, which cuts the queries. Crew members can see their own hours during the week, so problems are raised early. And the labour cost of each job is recorded, not estimated.
Is payroll week a scramble?
- Timesheets are paper, texts or memory.
- Pay queries come up most weeks.
- Travel and rain stops are handled inconsistently.
- Hours are keyed into payroll by hand.
- You cannot say what labour a particular job cost.