Techs Use Time Cards? Love / Hate 'EM?

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Ethan Ace
Aug 12, 2016

Integrators (present and past), two questions:

Do you use time cards/time sheets? Physical versions? Web or PC based? None?

Second, how much do you break time tracking down? Do you just gather hours? Do you break it down into rough tasks, like cabling, termination, programming, training? Or do you have more detailed methods (camera termination, patch panel termination, power supply termination, etc.)?

For those using detailed tracking, what sorts of detail are you using? How do you break it down and do you think it's useful information?

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Ethan Ace
Aug 12, 2016

Bonus question: how do your employees feel about tracking time? Do they hate it or do it without issues?

I've been at employers that range from barely detailed to extremely. One company introduced detailed time tracking with something like 90 time codes...it was maddening and everyone hated it.

I've never worked for anyone in installation that did not track time at all, but I imagine there's gotta be someone out there!

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Tyler Blake
Aug 13, 2016
BCI Integrated Solutions

We use a job suite software out of Australia called simPro. We track time by the job and each person on the job. We can break up jobs into multiple cost centers so like separating fire alarm from security on the same job as well as by division of project if need be e.g. Pulling wire separate from programming.

How we actually use it is techs log time against jobs and cost centers that are assigned or scheduled to them and put in their own work notes and inventory used off their truck that is separate from the inventory boxed from our warehouse.

Really hasn't been a need to track down to the individual tasks level or stage of the project due to the size of projects in our market. The only separation on jobs we track time difference is security vs fire alarm which are two separate company departments for us.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Aug 15, 2016

I don't think they hate them, but they get lazy about filling them out so we have to roll out the threats from time to time.

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