What it takes off the desk
- Timesheets captured on site. Hours against the job and the cost code, entered in seconds on a phone, not reconstructed on Friday afternoon from memory.
- Dockets that become variations. The docket records what was actually done, including the extra the client asked for on the day. Anything outside the original scope is flagged while it is still arguable, not after the job closes.
- Leave requests without the paper. Sick, annual and personal leave requested, approved and recorded in one place, with the balance visible to both sides so nobody is guessing.
- Site diaries and daily records. The daily record built from what was already captured, including weather, who was on site and what was delivered, which is the evidence that settles a delay claim months later.
- Tickets, licences and inductions. Every ticket, licence, insurance and site induction watched for expiry and chased before it lapses, rather than discovered at the gate.
- Safety documents in the flow. Safe work method statements and job safety analyses acknowledged before work starts, recorded against the person and the job.
- Payroll inputs, assembled. Hours, allowances, travel and leave collected into the shape your payroll system expects, so the pay run stops being a manual reconciliation.
The realities we build around
The person holding the information is not at a desk and never will be. If it needs a laptop it will not get done, and blaming the crew for that is not a strategy.
Payroll is a legal obligation with real penalties. Underpayment in Australia is now a board-level exposure, and it usually starts with hours captured badly rather than anyone acting in bad faith.
A docket with unbilled extra work on it is the same lost margin as an uncharged on-charge, and it is lost for the same reason: nobody saw it in time.
Ticket and licence currency is checked by the person controlling the site, not by you, and the cost of getting it wrong is a crew standing around.
Where most of these systems go wrong
Most workforce software is an office product with a mobile app bolted on. It assumes someone will sit down and enter things properly, which is exactly the step that never happens. The patterns that fail: timesheets that require choosing from a job list of four hundred entries on a phone screen; dockets that capture a signature but never connect to the variation process, so the extra work is recorded and still never billed; leave systems that hold the request but do not feed payroll; compliance registers that are a spreadsheet somebody updates the week of an audit; and apps that need signal in a basement or a plant room. The test for anything in this category is whether it works one-handed, in bad light, in under thirty seconds, by someone who did not want to install it.
What it connects to
Whatever you run: your job management or project system, your payroll platform, your accounting system, your rostering and time system, and the head contractor platforms you are required to use. Jobpac, Procore, Aconex, CHEOPS, simPRO, ServiceM8, AroFlo and their equivalents all come up. We do not publish a supported-vendor list: line of business applications, online software, on premise or in the cloud. If it holds the data, we integrate with it, and if it is not named here that is not a limitation.
Where the human stays in the loop
Nothing here approves itself. A timesheet is submitted and a supervisor approves it. Leave is requested and a manager decides. A docket becomes a variation when a person says it does, not when software infers it. What the system removes is the assembly, the chasing and the remembering. What it will never do is quietly change someone’s pay, because a system that can do that is a system nobody trusts.
How an engagement runs
- Map the rules. A discovery sprint captures how this actually works in your business today, including the parts nobody has written down. You get a recommended architecture and a fixed-price build quote.
- Build against your systems. Against your real data and your real structure, with the human approval steps designed in from the start rather than bolted on.
- Validate on real work. We run it against what your team actually receives and tune it until it holds up on the messy cases, not the clean ones.
- Hand over and operate. Working, in your environment, with a runbook and full ownership. Extend as a build or a retainer.
What it costs
Most teams start with a discovery sprint from $7,500 to map the rules and produce a fixed-price build quote, or an Automate Your Role engagement from $12,000 for a tightly scoped first version. A full build starts at $40,000 and scales with the complexity of your rules and the number of systems involved.
After the build you choose how to hold it: a monthly subscription covering hosting, monitoring, model costs and ongoing tuning, or a perpetual licence purchased outright, where you own the deployment and support is available separately on a retainer.
Common questions
Will the crew actually use it?
That is the whole design constraint rather than a hope. If it takes longer than about thirty seconds on a phone, one-handed, it will not get used and we treat that as our problem. We also do not require signal at the moment of capture, because plant rooms and basements exist.
Does it replace our payroll system?
No. Your payroll platform stays where it is and keeps doing the pay run. This assembles the inputs it needs, hours, allowances, travel and leave, in the shape it expects, so the reconciliation stops being manual.
What is the difference between a docket and a timesheet here?
A timesheet is a person against hours against a job. A docket is a record of what was done on the job, often signed on site. They are usually captured in the same moment and they answer different questions: one drives pay, the other drives what you can bill.
Can it handle awards and allowances?
It applies the rules you configure, consistently, and shows the cost consequence before a roster or a timesheet is approved. It is not employment law advice and it does not replace your adviser. What it removes is inconsistent interpretation applied at the end of a long week.