Labor tracking
- Labor price to the customer
- $6,048
- Crew hours on the job
- 160
- Labor cost to you
- $5,040
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. BurdenRateLedger publishes no wage, no tax rate, no benefit cost and no industry labor percentage: the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own payroll's figures.
Labor tracking is the record of who worked which job for how many hours and what those hours cost, and for the small employer it earns its keep in one place: the comparison of the labor a job was priced at against the labor it consumed. A time clock tells you the hours; payroll tells you the wages; neither tells you what a crew's Tuesday on the Henderson job cost the business at the loaded rate, or whether the job is still inside the price. What labor tracking has to do is small and exact: hold a loaded rate per employee, record crew hours against a job, and read the cost and the price side by side. This guide is about that, and the free construction labor calculator on this site prices a crew's hours with no account.
Try the free labor burden calculator Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
A loaded rate per employee, not a wage
Tracking hours at the wage understates every job by the burden: the employer payroll taxes, the benefits, the workers' compensation and the tools that ride on each hour worked. Labor tracking starts by loading the rate for each person once, from your own payroll's figures, and dating it, because the rate changes when the premium or the plan does.
Crew hours against the job, as they happen
Each day's entry is a person, a job and the hours; the job's crew hours are the entries added up, and its labor cost is each person's hours at their loaded rate. Kept per job rather than per pay period, the record answers the question the pay period never can: what this job has consumed so far.
Cost beside price, so the job can be read
The job was priced at a labor figure; the tracking shows what it has cost at the loaded rate; the gap is the margin still in it or already gone. The paid plan keeps the price, the rate and the hours against every job so that comparison is a line on the sheet rather than a reconstruction at the end of the month.
Labor tracking: common questions
What is labor tracking? Recording which employees worked which jobs for how many hours, and reading those hours at each employee's loaded rate against the labor the job was priced at. A time clock records hours and payroll records wages; labor tracking joins them to the job so the cost of the work can be read while the job is still open.
Is there a free labor tracking tool? The construction labor calculator on this site is free and needs no account: the crew, the hours each, the loaded rate and your markup in, the crew hours, the labor cost and the labor price out, printed as it stands. BurdenRateLedger Pro adds the record: loaded rates kept against each employee and every job's hours and labor filed against it.
How is labor tracking different from time tracking? Time tracking records when people worked, for payroll. Labor tracking records what the work cost, per job, at the loaded rate, for pricing and margin. The same hours feed both, but a time clock does not know the burden on an hour or the price the job was sold at, and labor tracking is about exactly those two figures.
BurdenRateLedger Pro
Keeping what you make
The tools are free forever. Pro turns them into the ledger: every employee's loaded rate kept and dated, every job's crew hours and labor price filed against it, your name and logo on the sheet, no watermark, and an export when the accountant or the bonding agent asks.
- Download as PDF
- No BurdenRateLedger watermark
- Save every rate sheet and job and reopen it later
- Your business name and logo on the sheet
- Export every rate and job in one go
- Job-priced and rate-review reminders emailed to your team
- Connect your own Stripe account and get paid online
- Connect your QuickBooks Online or Xero
$49per month, whole crew
Start BurdenRateLedger Pro PricingRenews monthly at the price above until you cancel. We email you before any price change.
Will it do what you need for Labor tracking?
Tell us what your labor costing needs and we will tell you straight whether BurdenRateLedger Pro does it today, whether it is coming, or whether you are better off with something else. A person reads these and replies.