Buildertrend’s Time Clock simplifies tracking your team’s shifts on every job with ease and accessibility.

Labor Codes connect time entries to your Budget for accurate job costing and reporting. With Geofencing, clock-ins and clock-outs are tied to real-time locations to improve accountability.

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Using cost codes to track labor in Buildertrend ensures accurate time tracking on specific tasks.

When internal users clock in through the Time Clock and select a cost code, their hours are automatically linked to the job’s budget.

This helps improve job costing, highlights where time is being spent, and keeps your financial reporting accurate and efficient.

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If you're tracking labor using cost codes in Buildertrend, you can assign a default cost code and labor rate to a user so they automatically populate when clocking in.

This streamlines time entry, reduces errors, and ensures that hours and costs are consistently tied to the correct budget category for accurate job costing.

From the individual user's contact, navigate to the Other tab. Select the Default labor cost code from the dropdown and set the Default labor cost.

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Clock In is used in real-time to start a shift. It can be done by a user for themselves or by a Site Supervisor to clock in one or multiple employees at once.

This ensures accurate time tracking from the moment work begins, providing a clear and reliable record of hours worked on the jobsite.

Begin by navigating to the Time Clock from the Project Management dropdown.

 

From the Time Clock dashboard, click Clock In on the right-hand side of the screen and complete the required fields in the Clock In modal. Once all information is entered, click Clock In to begin tracking your shift.

 

When your shift is complete, return to the Time Clock dashboard and click Clock Out using either of the available Clock Out buttons.

 

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Logging a break, such as lunch, instead of clocking out allows you to pause your shift without ending it.

This ensures total work hours are tracked accurately while keeping break time clearly recorded. It helps maintain accurate time records for payroll, compliance, and job costing.

Navigate to the Time Clock dashboard and click Start Break.

When your break is over and you're ready to resume work, simply click End Break from the Time Clock dashboard. This action restarts your shift and ensures your time is logged correctly for the rest of the day.

 

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Users with the appropriate permissions can clock in multiple team members at once, making it easy to get crews started quickly.

This is especially useful when teams arrive on-site together, helping ensure time is captured accurately and efficiently without the need for each user to clock in individually.

Begin by navigating to the Time Clock from the Project Management dropdown.

 

From the Time Clock dashboard, select Clock In Users from the More Actions menu.

From the Clock In Multiple modal, fill out the required fields and use the User dropdown to select all employees you want to clock in. After entering all necessary information, click Clock In User.

 

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Record Shift is used to log a shift that is already in progress or has been completed. It can be done by a user for themselves or by a Site Supervisor to record a shift for one or multiple employees.

This ensures all shifts are accurately documented, even if the clock-in was missed or delayed.

Begin by navigating to the Time Clock from the Project Management dropdown.

 

From the Time Clock dashboard, select Record Shift from the menu.

 

After selecting the Job, record the shift details by choosing the Start Time and End Time from the time pickers or by filling out the total Hours and Minutes worked. 

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Users with the permission to Adjust other user time sheets can record shifts for multiple employees by selecting employees from the Users dropdown.

 

Additional details such as Tags, Notes, Shift Type, Breaks, and Cost Code can be added or updated by navigating through the available tabs. When finished, click Save to record the time.

 

Under Detailed Hours, you can choose a Shift Type. Here is where you can choose to record a regular shift, or add PTO (paid time off). This can be done on a specific job, but we recommend adding PTO shifts on the General "job" as to not skew job costs or projected costs of specific jobs.

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Whether you're preparing payroll in your accounting software or invoicing your client for labor hours worked, approving time shifts in Buildertrend ensures that all recorded hours are accurate.

Internal users with the permissions Review and Approve user shifts can review submitted shifts, make edits if needed, and confirm the details before finalizing.

This process helps prevent time tracking errors, supports accountability, and keeps your job costing and reporting reliable.

 

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Approving individual time entries gives you the opportunity to review and make any necessary edits before finalizing the approval, ensuring accuracy in your records.

From the Time Clock dashboard, select a time entry.

Review the time entry and make any necessary changes. Once the time entry has been reviewed, click Save and Approve.

 

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To expedite the approval process, you can select multiple time entries and approve them all at once.

From the Time Clock dashboard, use the multi-select boxes to the left of the time entries, once time entries have been selected, click Approve Shifts. 

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You can enable location tracking for employees using the mobile app to capture their location at the moment they clock in and out. This helps confirm whether those actions happen within the designated radius of the job site.

If a clock-in or clock-out occurs outside that area, the event is still recorded but flagged as outside the radius and a notification is sent to the assigned Full Admins or Project Managers.

The job must have a complete address to ensure geofencing functions correctly. In the Job Details section, you can review the pinned location of the jobsite.

 

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To begin, ensure that you have this feature enabled for jobs by navigating to Time Clock from your Company Settings.

 

Navigate to the Geofencing settings to enable geofencing for all jobs and establish the radius of the geofence.

Next, enable geofence tracking for each internal user whose location you want to track for time clock entries by going to the Other tab of their internal user contact. Then check Require location on mobile under the Time Clock section.

 

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Shifts where the user clocked in or out within the radius of the geofence will appear with a blue pin.

Shifts where the user clocking in or out beyond the radius of the geofence will be marked with a yellow pin, with the distance from the job site address also provided.

In cases where it's necessary to clock in or out beyond the designated radius, users with the Time Clock permission Review & Approve User Shifts can override the Out of Bounds flag on the user's time entry. Please note that overriding an out of bounds flag is irreversible. 

To override an out of bounds shift, navigate to the shift and select the Map tab. Click Override Out of Bounds Flag from the pin details.

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With Buildertrend’s mobile app, you can clock in and record shifts anytime, anywhere to ensure your time is logged accurately.

Whether you're arriving on-site, managing a team, or reviewing the day’s progress, you can quickly start a shift, log breaks, assign cost codes, add notes, and approve time shifts right from your phone.

This mobile time tracking helps reduce errors, improve job costing, and keep payroll accurate without needing to return to the office.

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Visit the Buildertrend Learning Academy to explore additional learning opportunities — from live group trainings and certifications to on-demand courses and more.

For questions or additional support, contact our Customer Support team via Live Chat, email support@buildertrend.com, or call 1-888-415-7149 — we’re always happy to help.