Multi-Project Time Tracking for Subcontractors: A Field Guide

Multi-project time tracking means every hour a worker logs lands on a specific project, phase and cost code, so each job can be compared against its own estimate. For a commercial subcontractor, the hard part is not the software. It is the day a crew starts at one site, finishes at another, and a foreman has to remember who was where. This guide covers how to set up projects and cost codes, how to split a shift, how to review the numbers, and how to use them before a job goes over budget.

TL;DR

• Track time by project, then by phase or cost code, not by shift alone. Hours only become useful when you can set them against that job’s estimate.
• Make the field crew record time at the moment of switching, using a timer or a quick entry. Reconstructing a week from memory is where the errors come from.
• Keep project time separate from payroll compliance. Daily totals must still reconcile to actual hours worked, or split projects will double count.
• Review weekly, not at job close. Hours per unit of work reveal overruns while there is still time to fix them.
• Use one system for time, change orders and bids so the data does not have to be typed twice.

Table of Contents

• What multi-project time tracking actually involves
• Set up projects and cost codes before anyone clocks in
• How field crews split hours across projects in one shift
• What every time record should contain
• Keep project time and payroll compliance in the same picture
• Review hours weekly, and know what to look for
• Turn project hours into job costing and productivity
• Spot labor overruns early and move people where they are needed
• Our perspective: where multi-project tracking goes wrong
• Where Won2Build fits
• A four-week rollout that sticks
• FAQ
• Sources

What multi-project time tracking actually involves

Project time tracking records the hours a team spends on specific project work so they can be compared with that project’s estimate and budget. It is organized by project and task rather than by shift or workday. A plain timecard says Maria worked eight hours. A project timecard says she worked 4 hours on the hospital addition, 1.5 on the school gym and 2.5 on the warehouse tenant fit-out.

The Project Management Institute describes project time collection systems as labor-recording systems built around projects and activities, usually with timesheets where employees enter the activity and the time worked. That description is nearly three decades old and still holds. What has changed is where the entry happens. It used to be a paper sheet on Friday. Now it can be a phone in the foreman’s pocket at 2:30 on Tuesday.

For a subcontractor, three levels matter:

1. Project. The job, usually tied to a contract and a general contractor.
2. Phase or cost code. The kind of work: rough-in, trim-out, demolition, punch list.
3. Worker and date. Who did it, and when.

Generic project management tools handle level one well. Subcontractors live in levels two and three, because that is where margin is made or lost.

Set up projects and cost codes before anyone clocks in

Most bad time data traces back to a bad setup. If the list of choices on a worker’s phone is long, vague or inconsistent, people pick whatever is closest to the top.

Choose a cost code structure that matches how you bid

Cost codes can identify specific items or phases of a job, and phase numbers can organize work into phases, subphases and steps in logical or chronological order, according to Sage 100’s job cost documentation. The same documentation says grouping codes by cost type suits subcontractors with mostly internal expenses, while using them as phase numbers suits long-duration jobs with mostly external costs.

In practice, ask one question: can I compare the hours on this code to a line in my estimate? If your estimate has a line for “install 2-inch conduit, 100 linear feet,” a code called “misc electrical” will never tell you whether you hit the number. Match your cost codes to your estimate lines, and the comparison writes itself.

A few rules that keep the list usable:

• Keep the field list short. Twelve to twenty codes per trade is easier to use than eighty.
• Use the same codes on every project so a foreman moving between jobs does not relearn the menu.
• Separate productive work from overhead: travel, material pickup, safety meetings, rework.
• Include a code for extra work. If it is not a code, it will not be billed.

Codes also do not have to stop at production work. Closeout tasks such as final cleaning deserve their own line so they stop hiding inside general labor. A post-construction cleaning checklist is a useful way to see how many discrete tasks sit at the end of a job and which ones deserve a code of their own.

Name projects so they sort and search

Use a consistent pattern: job number first, short name second. “2417 Mercy Hospital Addition” sorts properly and cannot be confused with “Mercy Clinic.” Close projects when the work is done, so nobody posts time to finished work by accident.

How field crews split hours across projects in one shift

A crew that changes sites mid-shift is the classic case where time data falls apart. The workable method is simple: create a separate entry each time the worker changes projects.

One practical workflow is to start a timer for the selected project and task, stop it when the work ends or the worker switches, then start the next entry. The example in that guide totals Project A at 4 hours, Project B at 1.5 hours and Project C at 1.5 hours for an 7-hour working block. Whatever the tool, the pattern is the same.

A worked example

Say a three-person drywall crew works an eight-hour day:

Each worker’s day adds up to eight hours. The crew’s three workers add up to 24 labor hours, split into 12 on the hospital, 1.5 on travel and 10.5 on the gym. If the split ever adds up to more than the hours actually worked, someone is double counting.

Three habits that make splits reliable

• The foreman owns the switch. One person calling “switching to the gym” and tapping the entry for the crew beats twelve people each remembering.
• Record during or just after the work. Guidance on tracking hours by project recommends logging time during or shortly after the work rather than rebuilding a week from memory.
• Handle signal gaps. Many sites have poor coverage in basements, stairwells and new buildings. Time entry that works offline and syncs later keeps the habit alive. Our guide to offline time tracking for field teams covers how to set that up.

Timers versus manual entries

Use a live timer when workers switch among projects or tasks. Use manual entries for known blocks of time or for corrections. Everhour’s best practices say timers are particularly helpful when people switch among projects. Project Insight’s help documentation lists three capture methods: logging time from a task, entering hours in a timesheet grid, or starting and stopping a timer. For a crew, the grid is usually the foreman’s end-of-day backup, and the timer or quick entry is the primary tool.

What every time record should contain

Everhour’s multi-project guidance says project-level records should identify the project, task, client, person, date, duration and billable status, and that daily totals should reconcile to the actual hours worked.

For a subcontractor, translate that into this checklist:

• Worker name and date
• Project (job number)
• Phase or cost code
• Start and stop, or total duration
• Billable or non-billable, plus whether it is change order or time-and-materials work
• A short note when something is unusual: weather delay, waiting on another trade, rework

That last field is cheap to fill in and priceless in a dispute. A note that says “waiting on framing inspection, 2 hours” can support a delay claim months later.

Keep project time and payroll compliance in the same picture

Tracking hours by project does not replace payroll recordkeeping. They draw on the same hours but answer different questions: one asks where the labor went, the other asks whether people were paid correctly.

Under the Department of Labor’s construction fact sheet, covered employers must comply with the FLSA recordkeeping requirements in 29 CFR Part 516 and pay non-exempt employees for all hours worked, including travel from shop to worksite and back in the situations the fact sheet describes. Overtime is due for hours over 40 in a workweek. The regulation itself requires records of hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek.

What this means for a multi-project setup:

• A worker’s hours across all projects add up toward the same 40-hour week. Overtime is triggered by the total, not by any single job.
• Travel and shop time that is payable still needs a home in your system, even if it is not production labor.
• Prevailing wage jobs may carry additional reporting. Confirm those rules with your payroll provider or counsel.

Overtime that sneaks up on a crew moving between jobs is common. See our piece on field-first overtime tracking for ways to spot it before the week closes.

Review hours weekly, and know what to look for

Collecting time is half the job. The other half is a short, regular review.

Project Insight’s documentation says submitted timesheets can be manager-approved before approved time is used for billing and reporting. Everhour’s guidance says reviewers should check for unusual totals, missing assignments, incorrect billable labels and time posted to closed work.

A 15-minute weekly review might look like this:

1. Check totals. Does each worker’s weekly total match the payroll hours?
2. Look for gaps. Any days with no entries, or hours with no project?
3. Scan for odd codes. A framer posting 20 hours to “cleanup” deserves a question.
4. Confirm extra work. Anything tagged as change order or T&M should have a ticket behind it.
5. Approve and lock. Once approved, the numbers feed job cost.

On change orders, the link between time and money is direct. The hours your crew logged on extra work are the backbone of a T&M ticket. Capturing them in the field, the same day, is what keeps that work billable.

Turn project hours into job costing and productivity

Hours by project become valuable when they meet the estimate.

Compare actuals to the estimate

Tools in other industries do this too. Xero’s U.S. page says workers can record job hours with a start-stop timer or manually, then review total hours for each job and use the data to check project costs, budgets and profitability. For a subcontractor the comparison is labor hours against the labor hours in your bid, by cost code.

Measure productivity in units, not just dollars

In construction, productivity is expressed as the time needed to produce a unit of output, for example hours per fixture or hours per 100 linear feet, rather than just dollars per hour. That is why cost codes should line up with measurable quantities.

Here is the arithmetic. Say you estimated 400 hours to install 4,000 linear feet of conduit, which is 10 hours per 100 feet. After two weeks your crew has installed 1,000 feet and logged 130 hours. Your actual rate is 13 hours per 100 feet, 30 percent over plan. The earned-value approach described by electrical contractor productivity research uses the formula of actual quantity times total estimated hours, divided by total estimated quantity, to find the hours you should have spent: 1,000 x 400 / 4,000 = 100 hours. You spent 130. That 30-hour gap is visible in week two, not at closeout.

For a deeper look, see our 2026 guide to labor productivity tracking.

Use a burdened rate, not the hourly wage

Labor burden has to be in job costing for an accurate picture of profit. It includes payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, medical benefits, retirement contributions and training costs. A $30 wage can cost far more per hour once those are added. Our labor cost calculator guide walks through fully burdened rates.

Spot labor overruns early and move people where they are needed

Reports are only useful if they trigger a decision. Three views do most of the work for a multi-project subcontractor:

• Hours to date versus budget, by project. The percent of labor budget used should not run far ahead of percent complete.
• Hours per unit, by cost code. This is the productivity view above, and it finds problems earliest.
• Hours by worker across projects. This shows who is stretched over too many sites, who is waiting for work, and where overtime is building.

When one job is trending 20 percent over on a key code while another is ahead, you can shift a strong crew, adjust the schedule, or open a conversation with the GC about conditions or extra work. That is resource allocation driven by data instead of by the loudest phone call.

Our perspective: where multi-project tracking goes wrong

We built Won2Build from a working subcontractor’s point of view, and the same mistakes keep showing up.

The first is treating time tracking as an office task. If the people holding the phones are not part of the design, the data will be late, rounded and guessed. That is why we push for a foreman-led pilot on one crew before rolling out company-wide, as we describe in our one-foreman pilot guide.

The second is keeping time, change orders and bids in separate places. Hours logged in one system, extra work tracked in a spreadsheet and estimates sitting in a third tool means someone retypes the same numbers, and some never make it across. A single sign-on across connected apps removes the double entry.

The third is waiting until the job ends to look. By then the overrun is spent money. A weekly look at hours against budget, by project and cost code, is the cheapest margin protection we know.

— Jen Reese

Where Won2Build fits

Time Budge is our labor tracking app for subcontractors: field workers log hours to projects, the office sees them, and the data flows into per-project reporting. It connects through one login to CO Hub for change orders and T&M tickets, Bid Track for bid management, and Takeoff for digital plan quantification. You can use the all-in-one bundle or pick individual apps.

Pricing is published on our pricing page: Time Budge is $199 per month per company, plus $2 per month per active field worker. CO Hub is $59 per month per company. Bid Track is $199 per month per company. Takeoff and The Hub are $0 per month.

To see how it handles split shifts and cost codes, look at the Time Budge product page, or compare the full Won2Build product suite.

A four-week rollout that sticks

If you are moving from paper or spreadsheets, do not switch everything at once.

1. Week 1: set up. Build your cost code list from your estimate lines. Load two or three active projects.
2. Weeks 1 to 2: pilot one crew. Pick a foreman who is willing and has at least two projects running. Compare their entries to what they remember.
3. Week 3: add a weekly review. Run the 15-minute check above and fix the codes people misuse.
4. Week 4: expand. Add the next crews, with the pilot foreman showing how it works.

Our 2 to 4 week pilot guide lays out this approach in more detail, and the timecard best practices cover the habits that keep entries clean.

FAQ

How do I track time for workers who move between projects during the day?

Create a separate entry every time the worker changes projects, with the project and cost code on each. Use a timer or quick entry at the moment of the switch. The entries for the day should add up to the hours the person actually worked.

Should I track time by project or by cost code?

Both. The project tells you which job the hours belong to, and the cost code tells you which kind of work was done. Without the code, you cannot compare actual hours to the specific lines in your estimate.

Does project time tracking replace my payroll records?

No. Federal rules in 29 CFR Part 516 still require records of hours worked each workday and each workweek for covered employees. Project time is a breakdown of those same hours, so the two should reconcile. Ask your payroll provider or employment counsel about state and prevailing wage requirements.

How often should I review project hours?

Weekly is a good default for active jobs. It is frequent enough to catch an overrun while you can still change crews or schedules, and light enough to finish in under 20 minutes if entries are made daily.

Can I use generic project management software for this?

It can work for office-based teams, but field crews need quick mobile entry, cost codes tied to estimate lines and a link to change orders. A tool built for subcontractors usually handles those without extra setup.

Sources

• Project time tracking software (Asana)
• Project time collection (Project Management Institute)
• Using Cost Codes (Sage 100)
• Task Time Tracking: How to Track Employee Hours by Project (Day Off)
• How to track time across multiple projects (Everhour)
• Time tracking best practices (Everhour)
• Time Tracking Add-On Overview (Project Insight)
• Fact Sheet #1: The Construction Industry Under the FLSA (U.S. Department of Labor)
• 29 CFR Part 516, Records to Be Kept by Employers (eCFR)
• Time Tracking Software and App for Your Small Business (Xero)
• Measuring the Labor Productivity of Electrical Contractors (GTECA)
• GC/Subcontractor Partnership: A Discussion on Change Orders (ASAMW)
• Post-construction cleaning checklist

Recommended

• Mobile Timesheet for Subcontractors: A Field-Ready Guide
• Subcontractor Time Tracking Benefits That Cut Costs
• Time Theft in Construction: How Subcontractors Stop It
• How to Create Subcontractor Time Cards That Hold Up