My controller lost it two weeks ago.

23 employees only four time sheets handed in the day before pay day. The rest needed to be hunted down again.

The four coffee and mustard pieces of paper he received resembled lottery tickets padding the odds of the employees pay cheque.

Solution

14 employees have iphones six have iPod touches with cameras the rest got loaners from us. ( small price to pay)

The cheating, inaccuracy and procrastination had to stop. So we searched the app store for a solution. Not easy.

We decided on an app called Time Sheet (Photo Verified) on iTunes

We love two things most about this app.

The first one is the employee has to take a picture to verify the start and end of each day.

When you hit END DAY we can see what the employee completed. Hit submit and everything is summarized and submitted to me the controller and the employee.

We asked the developer to add some stuff and to our surprise they agreed to do it quickly. So here is my plug for their good product and service.

Hi Wirelube, welcome to ECN, mate.

I always remember as an employee, being told rather sternly that if staff did not have their time sheets in by the deadline on Tuesday morning, there would be no pay in your bank account on Wednesday.
That pretty much put that fire out, right there and then!

Wirelube:

Welcome to ECN Forums!!

I have to agree with Trumpy! My electricians learned really quick that no time sheet, no paycheck.

There is also a system called 'JobClock' (which I have no financial interest in) that a few ECs I know use & love. They usually have an ad in Electrical Contractor magazine.

The firm the OP describes sounds like it has some SERIOUS management problems.

Crews scattered all over? Have the leads call in the hours.

Otherwise .. no paper, no paycheck.

One thing with the next generation is quite obvious to me ( I am 55 now ) is the fact that filling out a padded time sheet is common practise. Now they want my controller to prove otherwise, it always turns into a pissing match so this photo verification is a blessing so far.

I think cell phone cameras and cheap disk space are a great tool. My wife has a number of "must do" inspections around her country club and she just has everyone take a picture at the time of the inspection and Email it to the server. They have a time stamped picture of the thing he inspected.

What do they take and send a picture of for a time card "punch"?

This is a no-brainer. No time cards, no paycheck.

The "no timesheet equals no check" policy works wonders.
You still have to pay them, but they get their check next week, not when they were expecting it.
One of the beauties of this policy is at you only have to do it once, everyone will hear about it and get their act together. That will be the last week that the paperwork is late.
That little trick brought several years of late paperwork to a screaching halt in one short week.

I got the impression that Wirelube was talking more about padded time cards than late time cards.

I'm a firm believer in no time card, no paycheck. It's the individual responsibility that their timecards are is turned in to whom ever, filled out correctly, and on time. Or in the words of jack Nicholson, "no tickie, no laundry!"

I do believe embracing technology and modernizing. Like the job clock or apps for smart phones. Employers need to be careful on what they expect from their employees to supply. I remember as a young patawan electrician (that's a apprentice talk in Jedi lingo) I would not be able to afford a smart phone. It's good to see the contractor supplied phones. Smartphones not being cheap is a big investment to supply to their sparkies but if they pay for themselves, why not?

I use my personal iPhone for work mostly. It really don't cost me anything for me and since it is mine, they can't say what I can and can't do with it. Plus I don't have to carry two phones and it makes me more productive and efficent which employers like. I'm not a company man by any means but it I do my part by assisting my employer keeping costs down, the more competitive they can be and more likely I'll have a job Monday morning.

Now that I segwayed from the OP, now we return to our regular scheduled post...

I disagree. There is no timesheet, timeclock, camera or APP that cannot be fiddled by the slackers or incompetents, for they might be useless at everything else but at time-stealing, they are always aces! Nor will this type of management ever stop timesheets being little more than fiction from 50% of employees, because a pack of lies filled out at 4 o' clock on a Friday afternoon is useless for real costing purposes.

Reno has it. A company gets too big & loses control. A good team stays on top of the game with good leadership. Good Leaders do not sit in the office all day shuffling bits of paper. They walk the jobs, [MBWA], assess how the team is performing and manage the team's time themselves. Or better, they work in the team itself. One man job? Set the time allowed. Persistant over-runs? Time for a little chat! Electricians [or indeed any tradesman] should be bending wire or whatever, not biros, 'losing' an hour here and 15 minutes there. Been there, done it.

Here's a nigh-on-perfect team in action, led from the front by a softly-spoken man with a big stick [sound familiar?] - and not a timesheet in sight! Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2VKWkBcxe4

I worked for about as big a company as you can get but it was made very clear to us that accurate time cards were a condition to employment. If they established a pattern of cheating on your time card, you could be fired on the spot.

I now have 9 employees and the time sheets are a nightmare, we are doing jobs far from the city, so the guys want to work overtime, and i can understand and have allowed for it, but 12 hrs everyday, i dont buy it.
I had my secretary put memos in the checks that we are not working more than 10 hrs on the projects per day, timesheets came in this week with 11 hr days on them, these guys are stealing overtime is very expensive.

Trevman...

It is an established fact that only brief moments of overtime are effective.

Chronic long days cause the troops to slow down.

Within two weeks it will take ten hours to do what eight used to do.

In California 12 hour days are 'almost illegal.' That is, you can't compel your troops to work beyond ten hours. California also went after employers using 4 day, 40 hour weeks without paying overtime.

---------

If you can recover their labor waste overtime may be tolerated.

I can't see routine tempos of anything beyond ten-hours.

trevman12:

You may want to check out this equipment....

http://www.exaktime.com/

I personally have not used it, but a few ECs swear by it.

Tell him to try thanking his guys once and awhile... and mean it. Instead of losing it.
They'll come around.
He just has to ask them to, in a different way.

Sure, no time/no cheque (cause you'd have nothing to go by...why is that by the way?, boss?), but regardless, work has been done. So somehow, payment is due. Can't get around that reality.

Technology may help this 'timesheet problem' along, but it doesn't address the issue, in my opinion... never will.

My old boss's comment on timecards (during the boom):
"We can't chase everything all the time."

Another problem with the time cards was that the time on different job numbers had to be properly allocated.

I'm sure those iphones have gps stamping on the pictures.
You could have them snap a photo as they show up at each different site and the job number for that site would be entered (or a drop down list appear or something). Maybe the developer would facilitate that.

When I was in business one of my full time foremen had my nephew working for him. Now his father (which is my brother) would handle payroll. My foreman would drop off my nephew at his house, then come back to the shop. The problem came about when my nephew was being dropped off around 3:45 in the afternoon. My men would be paid to work until 4:30. My brother would ask his son, what time did you get home? After finding out that he was home so early, my brother docked the foreman for 1 hour everyday. The foreman didn't like it and he quit.

Moral of the story, is don't try to fake your hours when you have the bosses nephew working with you.