5 guide sections

Time Cards Help

Record employee hours by project and send them to job costs.

Time Cards records the hours your own employees worked, on which project, and against which cost code. One card covers one person on one date, and its lines split that person's day across the jobs they touched. Coded hours become project payroll costs automatically.

Start here

Common task recipes

  • Log a full week for a crew member: Open Time Cards, select Add Time Card, pick the Person and Date, then add a line for each project they worked on. Repeat for each date.
  • Split one day across two jobs: In a single time card, add two Line Items with different Project values and the hours that belong to each.
  • Pull last week's payroll numbers: On Time Cards, group by Person, filter Date to the period, and export the grid to PDF.

Record hours

Add a time card

You need a record of what your own employees worked so payroll and job costs agree with each other. A time card is that record: one person, one date, and one or more lines that say where the hours went.

  1. Open Time Cards from the organization menu, between Directory and Global Reports.
  2. Select Add Time Card. On a phone this is the + button in the header.
  3. Choose the Person and the Date. Both are required.
  4. Under Line Items, select Add Line Item and fill in the Project and Hours.
  5. Set Cost Code and Cost Type if they aren't already filled in, and add Notes for anything the payroll clerk would otherwise have to ask about.
  6. Add more lines for every other project that person worked that day.
  7. Attach anything supporting under Attachments — a signed paper sheet, a photo of the crew board.
  8. Save.

If the employee has an hourly cost rate set up in Organization Settings, we fill in the cost code and cost type for you and tell you so: Cost code is set by the employee's hourly cost rate and Cost type is set by the employee's hourly cost rate. You can still override them on the line.

Note: A person can only have one time card per date. If you start a second one for the same person and day, we open the existing card instead and tell you: A time card already exists for this person on this date. Switched to that entry. Add another line item rather than another card.

There's no submit or approval step. A saved time card is immediately visible to everyone whose role lets them see it, and immediately eligible for cost sync.

You now have the day's labor captured against real projects and cost codes.

Log time cards from a Daily Log

Most hours get remembered at the end of the day, when someone is already writing the Daily Log. So you can enter them there without leaving the log.

Open the day's Daily Log and find the Time Cards section. Select Add Time Card and fill in Employee, Cost Code, Cost Type, Hours Worked, and Notes. The entry sheet opens over the log — you don't navigate away and lose your place. Editing and deleting work the same way from that section.

If the same crew worked the same scope yesterday, select Repeat — Time Cards from last log — and we copy the previous log's time card lines onto today's date. Fix the hours that changed rather than retyping everyone. On a phone the button shows only Repeat.

Anything you enter here is the same record you'd see under Time Cards at the organization level; there's no separate daily-log-only version of it. When nothing has been entered yet, the section reads No employee hours logged.

Note: The Time Cards section appears in Daily Logs only when an administrator has turned on Time Cards Section under Organization Settings → Daily Log Settings.

Related: Add a time card for the full entry form and attachments.

Review and report

Find, group, and export time cards

The Time Cards grid lists one row per line item, so a person who worked two jobs on Tuesday appears twice — once for each job's hours. That's what you want when you're reconciling costs, and it's why grouping matters when you're reconciling payroll.

The grid shows Person, Date, Project, Hours, Cost Code, and Notes, newest date first and ungrouped. Group by Person / Date to see each person's day as a single block with its lines underneath, or by Person, Date, or Project depending on what you're totalling. Filter by Person, Date, or Cost Code.

A pinned total row at the bottom of the grid sums Hours for everything currently in view, and each group you collapse carries its own hours subtotal. Filter to a pay period and the number you need for payroll is sitting at the bottom of the screen — no export and no spreadsheet.

Editing and deleting happen from the row itself: the pencil opens the entry, and the trash removes it. Deleting the last remaining line on a card deletes the whole time card — we ask you to confirm that with Delete Time Card instead of Delete Line Item. Both confirmations say the action can't be undone, and there's no way to restore a deleted time card from the interface, so check the date before you confirm.

Export the current grid to PDF from the grid controls. What you exported is what you had on screen — the columns you were showing, in the grouping you chose.

For hours across projects alongside other reporting, the Time Cards card in Global Reports and the Daily Logs - Time Cards Report in project Reports cover the same data in report form.

Send time card hours to Non-Committed Costs

Hours are only half the job — the other half is getting labor cost onto the project without anyone rekeying it. We do that for you, and it's on by default.

Automatically Sync Time Cards to Non-Committed Costs lives in Organization Settings → Financial Settings. When it's Enabled, a time card line creates and keeps updating a payroll cost in Non-Committed Costs as long as the line has all three of these:

  • a Project
  • a Cost Code
  • an hourly cost rate on file for that employee

A line missing any of the three is still a valid record of hours; it just doesn't produce a cost. That's usually the explanation when hours are logged but the project's actual costs look light.

Note: Turning the setting off doesn't just stop new costs — it removes the payroll costs that time cards had already created. Turn it off only if your organization brings labor cost in some other way.

Cost rates themselves live under Organization Settings → Hourly Cost Rates. Change a rate and the costs generated from later hours follow it.

Related: Non-Committed Costs for how those costs then appear in project reporting.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshoot Time Cards

Time Cards is missing from the organization menu

Your role needs View time cards.

You can only see or edit your own hours

View time cards and Create, update, and delete time cards each carry a level. Level of time card access and Level of time card write access can be set to All time cards or Only my time cards. Employees get Only my time cards by default; an administrator can raise it on the role.

The Time Cards section is missing from Daily Logs

An administrator turns it on with Time Cards Section under Organization Settings → Daily Log Settings.

Hours are logged but no cost appears on the project

Check the line has a Project and a Cost Code, that the employee has an hourly cost rate, and that Automatically Sync Time Cards to Non-Committed Costs is Enabled.

A second time card for the same person and date will not save

There's only one card per person per date by design. We switch you to the existing card — add a line item to it.

A deleted time card needs to come back

It can't be restored from the interface. Re-enter it.