Buyer's guide
Most timesheet apps were built for cafes. Your crew works in a basement with no signal.
15 minutes, your EBA, no sales script.
Failure patterns
The five ways timesheet apps fail on site
None of these are exotic. They are the same five problems reported on every site we have walked onto, and each one ends with hours being texted to a foreman instead.
01
The punch needs signal
A clock in that freezes or fails without coverage teaches the crew not to trust it. Once a punch has been lost, workers go back to texting hours to the foreman, and you are running paper again with an app invoice attached. Basements, lift shafts, regional sites and tin sheds are normal, not edge cases.
02
Too many taps
An app that needs a remembered login, a loading spinner and four screens at 6am does not get used. At the gate, in gloves, in the rain, the punch has to be two taps and done. Every extra screen is a percentage of the crew that stops bothering.
03
The forgotten clock out
Nobody clocks out at knock off every single day. Without guardrails you get phantom 20 hour shifts that someone in the office has to notice and fix before payroll. If the fix depends on a human spotting it, some of them get paid.
04
One phone per worker assumed
Flat batteries, workers without smartphones, shared labour hire crews and a new starter who has not installed anything yet all break the one device per person model. Without a kiosk fallback on the shed wall, the day gets recorded on the back of a plan.
05
Time captured, pay calculated elsewhere
Hours get exported to a payroll system that does not know your agreement. The allowance logic then lives in nobody's head, or worse, in one person's spreadsheet. The capture can be perfect and the pay still wrong.
The expensive one
The silent allowance problem
When work type and site are not captured at the source, site allowances, multistorey rates and condition based loadings are simply never triggered. Nothing errors. Nothing looks odd. The pay run balances, the payslips look tidy, and the payroll is quietly wrong.
That is how underpayment claims start. Not with a dramatic mistake, but with an allowance that was never entered for eleven months, discovered by a worker comparing payslips or by a union delegate reading the agreement. By then it is back pay, interest and a reconstruction exercise across every crew that worked that job.
The fix is structural, not procedural: capture the condition and the job at the punch, have the foreman confirm it on the day, and let a rules engine decide what is payable.
Checklist
What to demand from any timesheet app
Take this into the demo. If a vendor cannot show you all seven, you will be carrying the gap yourself.
Offline first punch with queued sync
The clock on must complete on the device with zero signal, queue locally, and sync when coverage returns. Ask to see it in aeroplane mode.
Two tap clock on
Time the demo. From opening the app to a confirmed punch should be seconds, with no login to remember at the gate.
Kiosk fallback
A shared tablet on the shed wall for flat batteries, no phone workers and new starters, using the same records as the app.
Auto clock out guardrails
Missed clock outs detected and flagged as exceptions before payroll, not discovered by an office manager reading a report.
Job and cost code mandatory at the punch
If the job is not chosen at clock on, labour costing is a reconstruction. A day split across two sites should land on two cost codes automatically.
Condition capture at the source
Height, confined space, wet weather and work type recorded by the worker and confirmed by the foreman on the day, not remembered on Friday.
Straight through into an engine that knows your agreement
No CSV step. The hours should flow into a pay engine that interprets your enterprise agreement or award, prices allowances and posts labour to the job.
Full disclosure
This is the checklist we built to
CrewTime exists because we kept meeting builders who had bought a good app for the wrong environment. It is offline first, two taps to clock on, kiosk ready for flat batteries, and every punch carries a job and cost code. Conditions are flagged by the worker, confirmed by the foreman and priced by the rules engine.
The last item on the checklist is the one most products cannot tick: the hours go straight into a pay engine where your enterprise agreement or award has already been built and tested, with no export step in between.
Read how CrewTime works, how we handle enterprise agreement pay rules and what it costs on pricing. If another product ticks all seven, buy it.
Timesheet app questions
Is offline clock on really that important?
It is the single biggest reason crews abandon a timesheet app. One lost punch is enough for a worker to decide the app cannot be trusted, and adoption never recovers.
Can we just fix forgotten clock outs in the office?
You can, and most builders do. The risk is that the fix depends on someone noticing. Guardrails and exception flags move that from vigilance to process.
What if some of our crew will not use an app?
Look for a kiosk mode and a paper bridge. A shared tablet plus photographed paper sheets with human review keeps everyone in the same record while the crew catches up.
Does the timesheet app need to run payroll too?
Not strictly, but every hand off between capture and pay is a place where allowance logic gets lost. If they are separate, be clear about who owns the interpretation of your agreement.
Reviewed August 2026.
Get started
Bring the checklist. We will run through it line by line.
Tell us where your crews work and what you pay under. We will show you the punch, the exceptions and the pay run it feeds.
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