Your quote's labour is a guess. Logging the hours you really put in tells you which jobs ran over, and lets you charge for them when they did. Your crew can send their hours in themselves from their phone, and nothing counts until you've approved it.
Logging your own hours
Open a job and tap the Log time row under the quote or invoice (it's also in the job's ⋯ menu). Then:
- Who worked it: you, or someone on your crew (once you've added anyone).
- Day: Today, Yesterday, or Other day for the calendar.
- Hours: type them (7.5) or tap 1h, 2h, 4h or 8h.
- Note (optional): what you did, like "rough-in".
- Charge for this time: leave it on. Turn it off for a warranty callback or a quote visit; it's kept on the job but never invoiced.
Tap Log and the row shows the hours logged against the hours quoted, and how far over you are. Tap an entry to change it, or the bin to delete it.
You can also just tell Mate: "put 3 hours on the Smith job" or "Jake did 6 hours yesterday on the deck". Mate shows a card, and nothing's logged until you tap Log it.
Charging the hours you logged
When the job's invoice charges fewer hours than you logged, the time row offers Charge 12 h logged, not 2.5 h with the difference in dollars. Tap it to see the old and new total, then Charge to update the invoice's labour. Your quoted hours are remembered, so quoted vs logged still means something afterwards. If the invoice has already gone out, send the customer the updated one.
It's only offered when the hours can be charged cleanly: an unpaid invoice with no deposit or payment taken, not pushed to Xero, and labour charged by the hour at one rate. Set-price (lump-sum) labour is left alone, because the hours are already inside that price.
Your crew sending in their own hours
Go to Settings → Crew and tap Add someone: their name, their email (optional), and what they cost you an hour (optional, and only you see it; it's for costing your jobs, never a quote or invoice). If they're a subbie who invoices you with an ABN, turn on Contractor with an ABN (see what your crew costs below).
Tap Email link and they get an email from your business with their own link. It's theirs to keep, and it stays the same until you send them a new one. There's no app to install and no account to set up. They only see your open jobs (name and address), never prices or your customers' details.
Their link opens on their week, with today already picked. A strip across the top shows each day's hours, the arrows go to other weeks, and the week's total sits underneath. They tap a day, then Add hours, pick the job and the hours, add a note if they like, and save. Hours they've sent stay waiting until you approve them, and until then they can tap them to change or delete them. Once you've approved them they're locked on their side; if something needs fixing, they ask you. The page also shows them how to add it to their phone's home screen, so it sits there like an app.
No email address? Send link opens your phone's share sheet so you can text it instead.
When hours come in you get a push notification ("Hours sent in, tap to approve"). Waiting hours don't count towards anything (the job's total, the invoice or your timesheet) until you approve them.
Sending a new link turns the old one off, so once someone has a link the button says New link and checks with you first. Turn off stops a link straight away, and Take off crew removes them and their link. Hours they already worked stay on your jobs under their name.
You can switch the crew notifications off under Settings → Push Notifications → Crew Hours.
Timesheets: everyone's hours, and changing anything
Timesheets shows every job's hours a week at a time, grouped by person with their totals. Open it from any job (the Log time sheet's See all timesheets, or the job's ⋯ menu), or from Settings → Timesheets. Filter to one person, or use Approve all for everything waiting.
Each crew member's total shows what their week cost you, once they have a cost rate (see below). Waiting hours from other weeks show up at the top, with a tap to jump to that week.
Tap any entry to change anything about it: who worked it, the job (handy when hours went on the wrong one), the day, the hours, the note, or whether it's charged. Waiting hours have Approve and Save, keep waiting. On a job's own Log time sheet you can also tap waiting hours to change them before approving, and move any entry to a different job.
What your crew costs you
Your quote says what you'll charge for labour. This shows what that labour actually cost you, so you can see whether a job's labour paid its way.
On Settings → Crew, under your crew list, What your crew costs has two settings:
- Super: 12% to start with, which is the super guarantee. Change it if you pay more.
- Other on-costs (optional): workers comp, payroll tax, leave. Most trades land somewhere between 5% and 15%. Leave it blank if you're not sure.
Both go on top of each person's hourly cost. So an apprentice who costs you $30 an hour, with 12% super and 5% on-costs, costs about $35.10 an hour. A contractor with an ABN gets nothing on top, because their invoice is already the whole cost.
Then you'll see it:
- On the job: the Log time sheet shows something like "Crew cost about $1,310 incl. super · labour quoted $2,400". It turns orange when the crew cost more than the labour you charged.
- In Timesheets: each crew member's week, like "Costs about $1,487 · $1,328 + $159 super".
- In Insights and the timesheet export: see below.
- From Mate: ask "what did the labour cost me on the Smith job?"
A few things to know:
- Your own hours aren't costed. For most owners, your time is your profit, so it's shown as "plus your 12 h, not costed" rather than given a price.
- Hours you don't charge for still count. A warranty callback doesn't go on the invoice, but you still paid the wages.
- Only approved hours count, like everywhere else.
- A pay rise doesn't rewrite old jobs. Hours keep the rate they were approved at.
- It's for costing, not payroll. It doesn't work out PAYG tax, payslips or bonuses, or report to the ATO. Your payroll software or bookkeeper still does that. The figures are a close estimate (strictly, super isn't due on overtime).
Seeing which jobs ran over, and timesheets
- Insights → Quoted vs actual hours lists your finished jobs with logged hours against quoted, and how far over or under each one ran. Where your crew have cost rates, each job also shows what the crew cost against the labour you charged.
- Insights → Reports → Timesheet shares the hours for the same period as your accountant statement, as a PDF or a spreadsheet (CSV), with totals by job and by person. Once anyone has a cost rate, it includes what the hours cost, with super and on-costs.
Logging hours, your crew's links and the crew cost on each job are on every plan. The quoted vs actual card and the timesheet export are part of Pro.