How to organise attendance, hours and daily reports

Why attendance and reports get lost

In most small companies the working day is rebuilt afterwards: a sheet on site, a message in the evening, an Excel file updated at the end of the month. The result is that hours reach administration days late, jobs get mixed up and nobody can say precisely how many hours went into one customer.

The problem is not a lack of tools: attendance, hours and the description of the work are collected at different moments and by different people. Organising them means writing them at the same time and in the same place, while the work is still running.

1. Record the crew's attendance

The first useful piece of information is who is there today. Start from the crew assigned to a job and mark the people actually present, including absences and late arrivals. Not every worker needs an account: the manager, who knows the site better than any automatic sensor, can record attendance.

Recording attendance at the start of the day avoids two typical mistakes: hours assigned to someone who did not work, and days rebuilt from memory weeks later.

2. Assign hours to jobs and customers

Hours only make sense when linked to a destination. Record the start, the end and the break, then split the time across the day's jobs: for instance eight hours per person, thirty-two for the crew, eighteen on the Rossi site and fourteen at the Bianchi customer. That split is what shows how much work each job absorbed.

Better a few clear destinations than dozens of lines: the split supports decisions, it is not analytical accounting.

3. Close the daily report

The report gathers what was carried out, with concrete descriptions rather than generic phrases such as “plant works”. The attached photos document progress, the work completed and what remains: they are also the simplest evidence in case of a dispute.

Before closing the day, check four things: people present, total hours, the split by job and the activities described. The report is exported as PDF for the customer or the archive, while the data in Excel is used for administration.

Mistakes to avoid

Putting the entry off to the next day, confusing recorded employees with app users, or using the spreadsheet as the only archive. A shared tool also removes the most common problem: the same day told in three different ways by the owner, the crew leader and the office.