A GPS Time Clock App Saves You More Time and Money

A GPS time clock app not only tracks the number of hours employees work, but it also improves recordkeeping and worker accountability to reduce labor costs. Coupling a mobile time clock app with GPS makes time tracking even more efficient.

What is a GPS Time Clock App?

A mobile time clock with GPS location tracking uses a mobile phone’s native functionality to track employees. GPS (Global Positioning System) is a US-owned utility that provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. GPS receiver equipment uses information from GPS satellites to calculate a user’s three-dimensional position and time. ExakTime Mobile’s GPS feature utilizes 30 global position satellites to provide exact locations of employees when they clock in or out.

Some GPS time clock apps allow employers to set geofences as well. A geofence is a virtual “barrier” set up to enforce certain restrictions or create certain opportunities. For example, an employer might put a geofence around a worksite, requiring employees to clock in inside the fence, not from their vehicles or a coffee shop across the street. When employees clock in or out, their timestamp will be flagged as either on-site or off-site.

Who Needs a GPS Time Clock App?

Time tracking with built-in GPS is essential for construction and field services workers who work on job sites and travel between them. This technology is also important for remote workers. Since the pandemic, more companies have decided not to renew the leases on their physical locations, opting instead to remain remote. A time tracking app with GPS allows employers to hold workers accountable for their time, whether they’re across the city on a job site or across the country working from home.

GPS Time Clock Apps Reduce Time Theft

Construction is particularly vulnerable to time theft, where workers claim more minutes and hours than were actually worked. This can happen because workers are often spread out and unsupervised or difficult to monitor.

Employee time theft is common with the use of paper time cards. It boils down to employees representing that they were on the job working when they weren’t.

Time theft comes in a variety of forms:

• ​Buddy punching – When one employee punches a time clock for or otherwise poses for an absent employee.
• ​Hour-rounding – When employees round up their time worked for the day or week as they fill out their time cards or time sheets.
• ​Late starts or early stops – When employees start a few minutes late and leave a few minutes early every day. This may seem minor, but with many workers doing this daily, it adds up.
• ​Misremembering – When workers honestly forget that they left early one day for personal reasons or took an unpaid day off the week prior.

Time theft is a problem because it costs companies, especially small companies, a lot of money. According to Second Wind Consultants, service-based industries can spend as much as 50% of their budget on payroll. Manufacturers are closer to 30%. Small discrepancies can have a big impact on the bottom line.

Other Benefits of Using a GPS Time Clock App

• ​Documentation for more secure compliance. A time clock app provides irrefutable, digital documentation of the time your workers actually worked. An app coupled with SaaS software will store the information in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about it taking up room on your company’s server when you save your documentation for the three years required by the FLSA. That data is available in seconds should an audit ever occur.
• ​Little to no room for human error. Employees’ start and stop times are recorded digitally in the GPS time clock app, so there’s no opportunity for misremembering or incorrect recording. The data is transferred to your accounting program, eliminating manual entry errors.
• ​Increased efficiency with real-time data. A time clock app with GPS makes tedious processes faster, such as eliminating the need to fill out time cards or timesheets onsite. The best time clock apps integrate with major accounting systems. Payroll staff can simply sync the numbers, and in seconds the data is moved to payroll. If anyone’s time punches are missing, that can be seen during the week, preventing last-minute scrambles to ensure all time sheets are in by the payroll deadline.
• ​Reduced costs. A GPS time clock app reduces time theft by recording time accurately. This saves employers from paying employees who round up numbers or clock in before they actually get to the jobsite. It also saves the time and hassle of tracking employees on paper time cards. Most contractors who adopt digital time tracking with GPS find that they save more money than they anticipated.

ExakTime's GPS Time Clock App

ExakTime’s powerful, easy-to-use GPS time clock app never tracks workers while off the clock, saving both data and battery usage. Additionally, ExakTime’s time clock software can produce instant reports on project time or labor time across the company using your digital labor data stored in the cloud. This allows you to speed up or adjust client expectations and provides insight into where your projects tend to drag and where they excel. This insight is essential for improved budgeting and bidding.

Stop wasting time and money on time-consuming, error-prone time tracking methods. Contact ExakTime today.