Custom Time Clock Software: Mobile Solutions for the Construction Industry
Gain Added Efficiency By Customizing Your Mobile Time Clock Software
Tailoring mJobTime’s Custom Time Clock Software To Meet The Special Needs of Your Business
At mJobTime, we have focused on giving our customers a large number of configuration options to make our application as flexible as possible. However, software programs are designed to accommodate the maximum number of companies possible. We realize that there are going to be situations where mJobTime may not address certain facets of your business processes, but we ultimately strive to provide employee time clock solutions that will be unique to every business.
We look upon these situations as opportunities. This is because we love to get input from our customers about our time clocks for construction as well as our other software. Many times, this input can lead to a new feature or functionality that becomes a standard part of the program. Oftentimes, when the amount of work and time involved is not significant, we will do the work at no charge. Even in those situations where there is a substantial amount of resources required to do the work, if we feel it will improve the product, we often will share the cost of the modification with the customer. In those situations where the customization is very unique to a customer, we will provide a quote for the work and allow the customer to make their own decision.
Whatever the case, our development team has earned quite a reputation for doing outstanding work in a reasonable time period. They will work with you to get a detailed understanding of your needs, propose a solution, develop and test the solution, and follow-up to insure that our employee time clock solutions are working as intended once released. Our customers constantly rave about the amount of time we have saved them with our modifications. Usually, the ROI on our customizations is very short.
Whether it’s a special report or a very specific way to calculate travel or per diem pay, our crackerjack development staff is always ready to meet your custom modification challenges. They thrive on being able to make mJobTime (and our time clocks for construction) meet even your most stringent and unique requirements.
mJobTime Mobile Time Clock Software Customization Examples
- Allow customer to clock in crews with equipment attached, but only post the equipment to one employee’s time card (not the entire crew).
- Allow Supervisor user to transfer individual existing time records to a different company, verifying that all (pronoun) time record fields are valid in the “transfer-to” company, and disabling transfers for “Approved” and
“Exported” records. - Add a new labor report for commercial drivers with the following columns:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Position
- Last Day Off
- Next Mandated Day Off
- Total Hours since Last Day Off
- Hours Remaining (in the cycle)
- Create a delimited file of time and material for our customer to send to their customer, and as a second customization, generate an invoice in their customer’s format.
- Modify our Weekly Time Entry screen to allow for daily distribution of time by sub-job.
- Create new functions to facilitate entry, tracking, and calculation of per diem and travel pay for employees on jobs:
- Allow users to enter per diem and travel rates per job
- Allow users to enter per diem and travel transactions
- Allow administrative users to export per diem and travel transactions to “Bank File” and “Timberline Export”.
- Customize the mJobTime Crew feature to track:
- Day or night shift per crew
- Craft code per employee
- Alternate employee ID per employee
- Per diem code per employee
- Travel code per employee
- Modify the export to accounting to create a text file export and add special calculations described below:
- Specifications
- A maximum of 40 hours per week will be exported for salaried employees
- Salaried employees will be identified by a field in the employee table.
- Time records beyond the 40 hour limit will remain in mJobTime and will be flagged as “exported”.
- For time records that include task codes beginning with “41” populate the “GL Exp Acct” field as follows:
- The second segment of the task code
- Followed by the employee’s department number (two-digit-zero-filled)
- The employee’s dept number will be pulled from a field in the employee table Examples: “500503”, “500603”
- Develop a custom version of the “Daily Time Sheet Entry by Employee” screen:
- To include a five-row header,
- Make the Job Number column header span all columns for the same job.
- As new columns are added, insert them into the grid sorted in ascending order by Job Number, then by the last five digits of the Cost Code, then by Extra.
- Remove color shading of alternate rows in grid and add a solid line between rows
- Shade “REG”, “OVT”, and “DBL” columns in White/Lt Blue/Dark Blue
- Increase allowable distribution columns to 30
- Divide the “Total” column into “REG”, “OVT”, and “DBL” sub-columns and display the appropriate totals for each row broken down into the three Pay IDs.
- Replace the “Save” button acknowledgement dialog with the following custom dialog:
- “Entries will be recorded with the following Date: ##/##/####”
- Allow user to click “OK” or “Cancel”
- Allow users to save selected distribution columns for multiple jobs and have them default whenever a job is selected for time entry.
- Add Edit, Review, and Approve functions to the Daily Time Entry screen.
Let us provide you with a personalized demo today. As you can see, a custom time clock from mJobTime can supply your business with many helpful resources.
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Is Your Construction Company Missing The Renewable Energy Boom? Part 2 - Solar
Solar Power
As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, construction spending has been on the rise for several years now, but there are many factors that could slow this down in the future. Among them are rising interest rates, lack of political will for governmental spending on infrastructure, the age of the current bull market, and a tight labor pool. Given this environment, this post explores the new opportunities arising from the field of renewable energy. Specifically, we will look into the area of solar power. Although the first working solar cell dates back to 1883, solar power did not gain any momentum until 1999 when Germany instituted a “100,000 Solar Roofs” program. Within 6 years, they had created 300 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) power, but it was not until the 21st century when, with various federal, state, and local governmental tax credits and rebates made available, solar power became a popular option in the US.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, solar prices throughout the supply chain have fallen 62% since 2009, and by 2025, solar could become cheaper than coal.
Supporting this claim, the International Renewable Energy Agency sees a further drop in solar costs by 2025 of 43% – 65%.
Obstacles of Solar While the price of solar power has been dropping quickly and substantially, and more dramatic price declines are expected in the future, there are other concerns to consider.
The average U.S. consumer pays about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, including the cost of generating power, transmitting it to our homes, and the business cost. To be competitive, the cost of generating renewable energy has to be in the range of 2 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. But the wind doesn’t blow nor does the sun shine 24 hours a day. How is power generated during these periods? We Americans are quite spoiled when it comes to feeling comfortable and are not really concerned about where the power comes from, just that we have it when we want it. Having power accessible to us 24 hours a day means that there must be another source available to us when renewable energy is not. Most people think that having solar power on their roofs will give them power when the grid goes down. This is actually not true in most cases. Because of net metering, all power generated by the solar panels goes directly into the grid, offsetting your actual consumption. When you actually use power, it comes from the grid, so any outages will leave your home with no power.
Backup and intermittent services for large-scale power have traditionally been provided by peaking power plants also known as “peaker” plants. They generally provide power during peak usage when demand is the greatest. These plants are generally gas turbines burning natural gas. Since they only run occasionally, peaker plants charge a much higher price per kilowatt hour.
Today, new residential battery storage systems such as the Tesla PowerWall are providing not only backup services, but also allow their users to use the battery during high-cost peak hours and use the grid when demand subsides. On a commercial basis, utility-scale battery storage is exploding. A giant natural gas leak at a peaker plant near Aliso Canyon in Southern California left energy regulators in a particularly sticky situation. Their solution? 19,000 battery modules wired together in racks. Since then, many other utility scale projects have been completed including Tesla’s 100 MW battery farm in southern Australia. As storage production increases, battery storage costs will decrease, leading to even cheaper, safer, and cleaner systems.
The solar power industry has seen tremendous growth in the last 10 years and the prospects for the future are very promising. Costs continue to fall and, apart from an administration supporting fossil fuels, we should continue to see significant growth. It might be worth your while to check out the possibilities available in this rapidly growing field.
If you are needing to upgrade your labor tracking system in the field, please check us out. We specialize in mobile time tracking for the construction industry, but we have customers in many other industries. Our professional sales staff will discuss your situation and help you find the right solution. Please call us at 800-387-1109, email us at info@mjobtime.com, or request a demo at mjobtime.com/request-a-demo.