Construction Labour Cost Tracking

AttendIQ commercial management turns your GPS-verified clock-in data into live labour cost tracking: budgets by site, phase and cost centre, actuals computed from real attendance and real pay rates, and budget vs actual visible the same day - not at month end when the damage is done.

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Same day
Labour cost visibility - actuals build from verified clock-ins as the day happens
0
Spreadsheets, manual timesheet collation, or QS data entry required
7 ways
To slice cost: site, cost centre, company, trade, phase, month, or worker

Why labour overspend is found too late

On most sites, labour cost is discovered rather than managed. Hours are collected on paper or in a separate timesheet app, collated at the end of the week, priced up at the end of the month, and compared to budget at the next commercial review. By the time anyone sees the overspend, it has been running for six weeks.

Labour is typically the largest controllable cost on a project, and the one with the fastest feedback loop if you can see it. A gang running 20% over on groundworks is a correctable problem on day three. It is a written-off margin at month end.

Bigger firms plug this with a commercial team and a CVR workbook. Smaller principal contractors usually get nothing: full commercial suites are priced and designed for the QS office, not for a director who just wants to know whether this week's labour is on plan.

How AttendIQ tracks labour cost

AttendIQ already knows who was on your site, for how long, verified by GPS at clock-in. Commercial management prices those hours automatically and holds them against your budget. Nothing is keyed in twice, because nothing is keyed in at all.

Budgets at any level

Set labour budgets in hours or pounds against a business unit, project, site, cost centre or programme phase. Actuals roll up the hierarchy, so a site overspend is visible at project and company level automatically.

Actuals from verified attendance

Costs are computed from approved, GPS-verified hours multiplied by each worker's pay rate. What you see is what the site consumed - not an estimate, a projection, or a re-typed timesheet.

Cost explorer

Break actual cost down by site, cost centre, company, job role, phase, month or individual worker. Find the trade that is running hot and the firm consuming the hours in two clicks.

Budget vs actual, live

A dashboard tile shows this month's spend against budget with the biggest overruns first. The commercial page holds the full picture, with rolling comparisons across the programme.

Deliveries, income and margin

Delivery order values are captured by the office, never at the gate. Record income received and invoiced against the programme and see margin to date alongside your labour cost line.

Money is permission-gated

Site managers track hours against budget without ever seeing pay rates. Pound values appear only for users granted the commercial permission. Subcontractors never see any of it.

Commercial visibility without a commercial team

AttendIQ is deliberately not a full cost value reconciliation suite. The rule we build by: if a quantity surveyor has to key it in, it does not belong here. What AttendIQ computes, it computes from verified data it already holds - labour from clock-ins, delivery values from booked deliveries, income you record once.

For a small or mid-size principal contractor, that covers the question that actually decides the month: is my labour spend on plan, and if not, where and which firm? Custom commercial fields let you record the figures that matter to your business - contract value, retention, client PO numbers - against sites, phases or companies, without forcing a full QS workflow on anyone.

How it works

1

Set a budget

Hours or pounds, at any level: site, project, cost centre or phase. Two minutes of setup per budget line.

2

Work happens, costs build

Workers clock in as they already do. Approved hours are priced at each worker's rate and land against the right site, trade and phase automatically.

3

See the variance in time to act

Budget vs actual updates as the month runs. The overspending site, trade or firm is identified while the correction is still cheap.

Frequently asked questions

Where does AttendIQ's labour cost data come from?

From the same GPS-verified clock-in records that drive your timesheets and payroll. Each worker's approved hours are multiplied by their pay rate, so the cost you see is what the site actually consumed - not an estimate, and not something a QS had to key in.

Can I set labour budgets by site or by project phase?

Yes. Budgets can be set in hours or pounds at any level of your hierarchy - a whole business unit, a project, or a single site - and optionally against a cost centre or a phase of the programme. Actuals roll up naturally, so an overspend at one site is visible at project level too.

Is this a full cost value reconciliation (CVR) tool?

No, and deliberately so. AttendIQ focuses on the costs it can compute from verified data - labour from clock-ins, delivery order values, and income you record - rather than replicating a QS's full CVR workbook. It gives commercial visibility to firms that do not have a commercial team, and a live labour feed to those that do.

Who can see pay rates and cost figures?

Money is permission-gated separately from hours. Site managers can track hours against budget without ever seeing pay rates; only users granted the commercial permission see pound values. All figures stay inside your organisation - subcontractor companies never see your commercial data.

Can I track costs by subcontractor company or trade?

Yes. The cost explorer breaks actual labour cost down by site, cost centre, company, job role or trade, phase, month, or individual worker - so you can see exactly which firm or which trade is consuming the hours on any part of the programme.

Does this replace my accounts package or payroll?

No. AttendIQ sits upstream of both: it tells you what labour is costing while the work is happening, then exports approved hours to your payroll system as normal. Your accounts package remains the financial record; AttendIQ is the early warning system. See our digital timesheets page for the payroll export side.

Built on data you already trust

Every commercial figure in AttendIQ traces back to a verified event: a GPS-tagged clock-in, an approved timesheet, a booked delivery. That is the difference between commercial reporting you check against your gut and commercial reporting you act on. The same data already runs your timesheets and payroll export, your live site boards, and your supply chain compliance - commercial management is what it can tell you about money.

Find the overspend while it is still cheap to fix

See live budget vs actual from your own verified attendance data.

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