Labor is the biggest cost variable on most construction jobs. It’s also the hardest one to track accurately when your crew is spread across multiple sites, work phases overlap, and time still gets recorded on paper at the end of the week.
actiTIME is project time tracking software that organizes work in a three-level hierarchy: client, project, and task. For a construction company, that maps to something like developer → job site → work phase. Workers log time against specific tasks — foundation, structural steel, mechanical rough-in, finish work — rather than just against the job in general. That granularity is what makes cost-by-phase reporting possible.
Capturing time from the field
actiTIME’s mobile app (iOS and Android) works offline, syncing entries when connectivity returns. Workers can log hours manually or use a built-in timer, add notes per entry, and submit leave requests from the same app. For crews rotating across multiple sites in a week, this replaces end-of-week memory reconstruction with daily logging — which produces cleaner data and fewer billing gaps.
If you’re comparing construction time tracking options across the category, the main things to evaluate are offline mobile support, approval workflows, and whether the platform lets you track time at the phase or task level rather than just per job.
Budget and cost tracking
Three budget types can be set at the project or task level: a time budget (hours allocated vs. tracked), a cost budget (staff expenses calculated from pay rates, including overtime), and a billing budget (billable amounts by work type). When a phase is burning through hours faster than planned, the progress bar turns red before the overrun is locked in.
Pay rates — regular, overtime, and leave — are set per employee. The Cost of Work Report pulls from those rates to show actual labor spend by project, phase, or worker. The Profit/Loss Report compares billable amounts against costs, which matters for time-and-materials contracts where margin depends on how accurately hours are captured and billed.
Estimates vs. actuals
The Estimated vs. Actual Time Report compares planned hours against hours worked, broken down by project and task. Over multiple jobs, this data reveals which phases consistently run over estimate — useful both for managing active projects and for sharpening future bids. If electrical rough-in runs 25% over on three consecutive projects, that’s worth investigating before the next contract is priced.
Project management features
Beyond time tracking, actiTIME includes task-level project management: estimates, deadlines, priority levels, custom workflow statuses, and a Kanban board alongside the standard list view. Tasks can be bulk-edited and imported from CSV, which helps when setting up a new job site with many parallel work items.
For a broader view of how these features compare to other construction project management tools, the main differentiator with actiTIME is that time tracking and project management share the same data layer — cost reports, budget trackers, and profitability reports all pull from the same time entries workers are already logging daily.
Overtime and timesheet approval
Overtime is calculated automatically based on each worker’s schedule and paid at whatever overtime rate is configured in their profile. The Time Balance and Overtime Report shows who worked over their scheduled hours and the associated cost — useful for project managers running multiple active sites who need to see overtime exposure before scheduling weekend work.
Workers submit weekly timesheets for supervisor review. Approvals happen from any device. Once approved, entries can be locked so they can’t be edited — relevant for companies that bill on time-and-materials contracts and need a clear record from hours worked to invoice sent.
