Construction Timekeeping: Records, Rules and Digital Options
Good construction timekeeping means recording each worker’s actual start and finish times, breaks, site and task every day, getting a supervisor to approve them, and keeping the records for as long as the law requires. Do that on paper and it works until the sheets go missing. Do it digitally, with a sign-in at the gate and an approval step, and the hours that reach payroll match what happened on site. This guide covers what to record, which UK rules apply, how to choose a method and how to handle awkward cases like missed clock-ins.
TL;DR
- Record actual start and finish times, unpaid breaks, site and task for every worker, every day, then have a named person approve them.
- In Great Britain, working time records generally need to be kept for two years, and CIS payment records for at least three years after the end of the relevant tax year.
- Paper and spreadsheets are slow to check and easy to lose. A digital sign-in gives you a dated record that is much easier to audit.
- Split hours between sites and separate productive time from travel, waiting and rework, so labour cost lands on the right job.
- Our construction timesheet app uses QR site sign-in to log attendance and hours.
Table of Contents
- Why timekeeping matters on a construction site
- What a construction timesheet should record
- The UK rules that affect your records
- Paper, spreadsheet or digital timesheets
- Handling the awkward cases
- From timesheet to labour cost
- Our perspective on site timekeeping
- Put it into practice with LabourBase
- A simple rollout plan
- FAQ
- Sources
Why timekeeping matters on a construction site
Time records on a site do four jobs at once. They decide what people are paid, including overtime. They show what each job really cost in labour. They back up daywork and variation claims when a client queries an invoice. And they show whether working time limits were respected.
That last point is easy to overlook. Acas treats accurate records mainly as a health, safety and wellbeing control, because they show that limits and rest rights were respected, not just that wages were calculated. A tired operative on a ladder or a plant machine is a risk. A record that shows long runs of days without proper rest tells a site manager something before an accident does.
For project managers, the practical benefit is simpler. When a client disputes a daywork sheet three months later, a dated record of who was on site, when and doing what ends the argument quickly.
What a construction timesheet should record
A timesheet that only holds a weekly total is hard to defend. Record the detail each day, and keep it consistent across every trade and every labour supplier on the project.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Worker name, employer or subcontractor, trade and role | Shows who is who when several contractors and labour suppliers share a site |
| Date and site or job | Lets you cost labour to the right project |
| Actual start and finish times | Supports break and rest checks, and is easier to defend than a rounded daily figure |
| Unpaid breaks | Needed for paid hours and rest checks |
| Task or area | Feeds job costing and progress tracking |
| Overtime, night and weekend working | Needed for correct pay rates |
| Daywork or variation instruction reference | Backs up extra charges to the client |
| Lost time and reason (weather, waiting for materials, late delivery) | Explains cost overruns and supports claims |
| Worker and checker sign-off | Makes the record an agreed one |
Two habits make the biggest difference. First, record actual times rather than rounding to a neat eight hours. Second, use one calculation method for everyone, so that overtime and breaks are treated the same on every site.
Separate the types of time
Not every hour on site is productive installation time. Keep separate lines for productive work, travel between sites, waiting for materials or access, rework or snagging, and training or toolbox talks. When these are lumped together, a job looks cheaper or dearer than it was, and you lose the information you need to price the next one properly.
Where someone splits a week across two or three sites, divide their hours between those jobs as they are worked. Allocating the whole wage afterwards to whichever site seems busiest distorts every job’s margin.
The UK rules that affect your records
The rules below apply in Great Britain unless stated. Northern Ireland has its own equivalent regulations, so check the position there separately.
Working time
The Working Time Regulations set limits that your timesheets need to be able to evidence:
- An average of no more than 48 hours a week, normally calculated over 17 weeks. A worker can choose to opt out in writing, but the opt-out must be voluntary and separate from the employment contract.
- A 20-minute uninterrupted break when working more than six hours, 11 hours’ rest between working days, and either 24 hours’ weekly rest or 48 hours’ rest in 14 days.
- Employers must keep records showing compliance with the 48-hour limit, night work limits and the rules for young workers, and retain them for two years.
A collective or workforce agreement can change some rest and reference period arrangements, but it cannot make anyone opt out of the 48-hour limit. The detailed wording sits in the Regulations themselves.
Agency workers are not a special case. Acas confirms they have the same core working time rights as other workers, including the 48-hour average, the break and the daily and weekly rest. If you use temporary labour, their hours belong in the same system as everyone else’s.
Travel time
Travel is where site timekeeping often goes wrong. Acas says routine travel between home and a fixed workplace usually is not working time, while travel to a customer or client as part of the job usually is. On a multi-site contract, that difference matters: a journey from Site A to Site B in the middle of the day normally needs its own line on the timesheet, not a gap.
CIS and pay records
If you pay subcontractors under the Construction Industry Scheme, HMRC says contractors must keep each payment’s gross amount excluding VAT, any deductions and, where deductions were made, the materials cost excluding VAT, for at least three years after the end of the relevant tax year. HMRC may ask to see them, and failing to produce CIS records can attract a penalty of up to £3,000.
Hours also feed National Minimum Wage and payroll calculations for employed staff, so a clean record protects you on several fronts.
Hourly timesheets and worker status
How people are paid affects how they are classed. HMRC’s guidance on the VAT reverse charge notes that supplying construction workers through an employment business is generally a supply of staff, and that hourly or daily rates and signed timesheets are indicators, not conclusive tests. Payment for a defined deliverable or measured work points more towards labour-only subcontracting. Get your accountant to confirm how a given arrangement is treated before you set up the paperwork.
Paper, spreadsheet or digital timesheets
There is no single right answer for every firm, but the trade-offs are consistent.
| Paper sheets | Spreadsheets | Digital sign-in and timesheets | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set-up | None | Low | A short onboarding |
| Admin effort | Someone retypes every sheet | Manual entry, formulas to maintain | Hours captured at source |
| Accuracy | Depends on handwriting and memory | Depends on the typist | Time stamped at sign-in |
| Audit trail | Weak, sheets get lost or altered | Moderate, edits are hard to trace | Strong, with dated entries and approvals |
| Visibility | Days or weeks later | When the file is updated | Same day |
| Payroll link | Manual | Manual export | Direct export or review |
The practical question is how long it takes between someone finishing a shift and a manager being able to trust the number. With paper, the answer is often a week or more, by which point nobody remembers whether Tuesday’s gang left at 4pm or 5pm. With a digital record taken at the gate, the question rarely arises.
If you are choosing, test it against five points:
- Can workers sign in quickly without an account fight at the gate at 7am?
- Does it record actual times and not just totals?
- Can a supervisor approve or correct entries, with the change recorded?
- Can you see who is on site right now, for example for a fire roll call?
- Can you pull the records out cleanly for payroll, a client query or an HMRC request?
A sensible approval flow
Whatever tool you use, use stages. A simple flow is: draft entry, site approval by the supervisor, payroll approval by the office, then export to payroll. Each stage has one owner, so there is no doubt about who checked what. It also stops payroll processing hours that nobody on site has seen.
Handling the awkward cases
Missed sign-ins. Decide the rule before it happens. A supervisor enters the likely times, marks the entry as corrected, and the worker confirms it at the next sign-in. The point is that the correction is visible and attributed, not silently overwritten.
Corrections. Keep the original entry and the amended one. A record that shows who changed what and when is far more credible in a dispute than a clean sheet with no history.
Poor signal. Many sites, especially basements, new builds and rural groundworks, have patchy coverage. Choose a method that works when the connection drops, or have a fallback such as a supervisor-held list that is entered the same day. Do not let a signal gap turn into an end-of-week guess.
Travel and multi-site days. Put each leg on its own line with the destination site, so the hours cost to the right job and the working time check includes work-related travel.
Mixed labour. Directly employed staff, subcontractors and temporary workers all share the site. Record the employer or subcontractor against each name so you can see at a glance who is whose, and report hours by company when you need to.
From timesheet to labour cost
The real payoff of tidy timekeeping is not compliance alone. When hours are recorded daily against a job and task or cost code, with overtime and non-productive time separated, they can flow into payroll, job costing and management accounts. That gives you earlier warning of a job running over on labour, and better data for pricing the next tender.
What payroll needs from site is straightforward: who worked, in which pay period, how many basic and overtime hours, any rate changes, absences and approved adjustments. If your site records already hold those, the weekly payroll run stops being a detective exercise.
Budget conversations also get easier. A project manager who can show that 14% of a job’s labour hours went on waiting for materials has an argument for changing how deliveries are scheduled. A manager with only a weekly total has an opinion.
Our perspective on site timekeeping
We built LabourBase because timekeeping and hiring are really the same problem: you need to know who is on your site, that they are who they say they are, and what they worked.
Most firms hire through an agency, then get an invoice with hours they cannot easily check, plus a margin on top. Our owner’s view, which we stand behind, is that agencies often take around 20% of what is paid. We charge a flat £1 per hour per worker, so the worker’s full rate goes to the worker and you can see exactly what you are paying for.
That only works if the hours are trustworthy. So the attendance and timesheet side matters as much as the hiring side. Workers sign in on site by QR code, hours are logged against attendance, and you can see worker performance and work history before you hire. Everyone knows where they stand: you communicate and pay directly.
If you take one thing from this guide, make it this: record actual times, approve them in stages, and keep them. Whether you use us or not, that habit protects your margin and your people.
Harry
Put it into practice with LabourBase
If you are replacing paper sheets, our construction timesheet app gives you QR site sign-in and attendance records for the people working on your projects. It sits alongside our direct hiring platform, where you can hire vetted construction workers directly for a flat fee of £1 per hour per worker, with qualifications and right-to-work checks and compliance tracking built in.
Building a team in London? See our pages on temporary construction labour in London and the general labourers, carpenters and groundworkers available to book. If your crews work on a self-employed basis, our page on hiring self-employed construction workers explains how that works.
A simple rollout plan
Changing how a site records time works best when it is small and visible.
- Pick one site. Start with a live job where the supervisor is keen, not your most chaotic one.
- Agree the fields. Use the table above, and add only what you will genuinely use.
- Brief the gang on day one. Explain that sign-in protects their pay as much as your records.
- Approve daily, not weekly. A five-minute check by the supervisor catches errors while people remember.
- Review after two weeks. Compare the new records with what payroll would have paid. Fix gaps in the process, then extend to other sites.
- Set your retention rule. Keep working time records for at least two years and CIS records for at least three years after the end of the tax year, and store them somewhere you can retrieve them.
FAQ
How long should I keep construction timesheets?
Working time records that show compliance with the 48-hour limit, night work limits and young worker rules should be kept for two years. CIS payment and deduction records must be kept for at least three years after the end of the relevant tax year. Many firms keep everything for the longer period so there is one simple rule.
Do agency or temporary workers need timesheets too?
Yes, their hours need recording in the same way. Acas says agency workers have the same core working time rights as other workers, including the weekly average limit, breaks and rest. Recording their actual start and finish times on your site also helps you check that the supplier’s invoice matches what was worked.
Is travel between sites counted as working time?
Usually, travel to another site as part of the job counts, while the ordinary commute from home to a fixed workplace usually does not, according to Acas. Record each leg of a multi-site day separately so the time is costed to the right job. Your payroll adviser can confirm how it affects pay in your contracts.
What is the best way to track time for construction workers?
The best method records actual times at the point of arrival and departure, lets a supervisor approve or correct them, and keeps a history of changes. For most firms that means a digital sign-in rather than paper or spreadsheets. With LabourBase, workers sign in on site by QR code and attendance and hours are logged for you to review.
Sources
- Understanding the Working Time Regulations, Acas
- The 48-hour weekly maximum, Acas
- Agreeing a change: relevant agreements, Acas
- Agency workers’ employment rights, Acas
- The Working Time Regulations, legislation.gov.uk
- CIS record keeping, GOV.UK
- VAT reverse charge manual: scope of the construction reverse charge, HMRC