Friday evening, the sun is low over the construction site, the last crane is slowly coming to a halt. It's almost time to call it a day – almost.

Because before the day is over, there's still time recording to do. Hours are entered into spreadsheets: start of work, break, end, project – line by line. Later, the data is checked, collated and passed on to the accounts department. Week after week.

Time recording is part of everyday life in every construction company – even if it is not very popular, it has to be done. The best-known tool for this is Excel. It can be adapted to individual situations with apparent ease, is easily accessible and, what's more, free of charge. An obvious choice, then. But what does time recording with Excel actually look like for construction companies – and what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Time tracking with Excel – how it works

In order to map complete time tracking in Excel, two tables are usually maintained: an individual record for employees and an overview for supervisors. These tables contain all relevant information – from daily working hours and breaks to projects, expenses, travel and absences.

Standardised templates can be found in Excel under terms such as ‘working time table’ or ‘time tracking’ – however, these are very simple and usually need to be expanded individually and adapted to your own operational circumstances.

Time recording for employees: creating an individual record

A simple Excel table showing each working day of a month is suitable for individual time recording. The vertical axis typically shows the days of the week or the date; the horizontal axis contains information on the project or construction site, start of work, breaks, end of work and the total working time calculated from this.

Formulas can be used to automatically calculate the daily working time and add it up at the end of the week or month to determine the total hours. Additional columns can also be added for expenses and comments or to subdivide working time according to different projects.

Colour coding is often used to provide a better overview, e.g. to highlight weekends or public holidays. Absences can be represented by abbreviations, and drop-down menus are useful for recurring projects or activities – they reduce typing errors and facilitate consistent data entry.

Time tracking for managers: creating an overview

To track the working hours of several employees, a master table is usually used that includes all persons and projects.

The vertical axis lists the names of the employees, while the horizontal axis lists the days and, depending on requirements, expenses, comments or projects. The hours worked are entered in the corresponding cells; abbreviations such as ‘F’ for holidays or ‘S’ for sickness can be used to mark absences. Sum functions can be used to display the total hours per day, week or person.

For more detailed evaluations, pivot tables or charts can be added to summarise working hours by project, team or period. This gives you a quick overview of your team's hours worked, absences and expenses.

Practical use of time tracking in Excel

How does time tracking in Excel work in practice?

In most construction companies, working time files are managed decentrally and merged at the end of the month for checking. Each person enters their own times, saves the file locally or in a shared cloud folder – such as OneDrive, Teams or SharePoint – and sends it to their supervisor at the end of the period. There, the information is checked, corrected if necessary, and then used for payroll accounting or post-calculation.

An alternative option is for all employees to record their hours in the same file. However, this requires the table to be maintained centrally and on site – and quickly leads to a large, confusing file that is difficult to manage.

Limitations of Excel

Excel offers a number of options for expanding existing templates and adapting them to your own construction business. However, creating such tables takes time and requires the specific knowledge of individual employees.

However, it has already become clear, especially with regard to usage, that a lot of back-and-forth copying and forwarding is involved – a clear time waster and a frequent source of errors. What may work for small teams and few projects quickly becomes complex as the size increases, especially for supervisors. Cells have to be filled in manually and entries have to be transferred accurately – subsequent changes, corrections and the resulting different file versions can quickly lead to chaos and a lot of extra work. And besides the loss of time, this is one thing above all else: tedious and unproductive work – which really shouldn't be necessary.

Time tracking comparison: Excel vs. Vanillaplan Time

Vanillaplan's time tracking offers several key advantages over Excel:

1) One tool for everything: Time tracking and resource planning intelligently linked

In EXCEL, you first have to create your own file that reflects the processes of your individual business. However, in addition to the amount of work involved, this remains nothing more than a simple spreadsheet: although columns can be added as required – for projects, expenses or comments, for example – all the information is largely unconnected. Using formulas or references is one option, but in practice this is often time-consuming, confusing, prone to errors and difficult to maintain.

With VANILLAPLAN, on the other hand, time recording is directly linked to resource planning. This means that working hours, projects and other services are automatically interlinked. Assignments created in the planning stage appear immediately in the time recording system – including project references.

Instead of working in multiple tables, everything comes together in one central, clear system: with a single click, you can select projects, employees or service types and switch from one view to another – everything is clearly structured, fully linked and specially developed for the requirements of the construction industry.

2) Recording working hours: Automatic transfer from resource planning

In EXCEL, time recording is done entirely manually. Start of work, breaks, end of work and project affiliation are entered by hand – additional information such as expenses, travel or materials require additional columns or separate tables.

In VANILLAPLAN, however, recording is completely automatic: as soon as the assignments are created in resource planning, they are transferred directly to time recording. Employees only need to confirm the entries with a single click. Conversely, absences or holidays recorded in time recording flow directly back into resource planning. True to the motto ‘full transparency instead of annoying duplication of work’.

3) Monitoring working hours: Centralised access to all entries

In EXCEL, working hours are usually monitored manually and across multiple files. Each employee's individual document is transmitted separately – either by email or via approval processes in the cloud. The entries then have to be checked, copied and transferred to an overall overview manually. This results in a patchwork of different files that have to be processed and merged individually.

In VANILLAPLAN, all individual entries are automatically merged and made available centrally in an overview. This allows managers to see all of their team's recorded working hours, expenses, absences and travel at a glance. Without copy-paste and file chaos, entries can be checked, adjusted and approved collectively – for several employees and days at the same time.

Various filter functions – such as by service type (e.g. working hours or expenses) or by department – also allow relevant entries to be checked in a targeted manner.

Coloured symbols indicate whether entries have already been approved, settled, rejected, etc. This allows you to keep track of the approval status at all times.

A summary is automatically displayed at the bottom, which bundles all the data recorded in the entries – for a quick overview of the total expenditure.

4) Up-to-date and transparent – no more updates

In EXCEL, changes such as working hours, projects or absences have to be entered manually. This not only takes time, but also easily leads to outdated data when changes are added retrospectively and several people are working on different versions at the same time.

With VANILLAPLAN, on the other hand, time recording always remains up to date. Thanks to real-time synchronisation, every change in resource planning is immediately visible in the time recording system – automatically and without any additions. New assignments, holidays or schedule changes are transferred directly, so that everyone involved is working with the same, up-to-date information at all times.

5) Mobile app – time recording on the go

In EXCEL, time recording is usually done on a computer in the office. Although there is a mobile version, it is hardly suitable for use on the construction site, as the tables are difficult to use on a smartphone. In practice, working hours are therefore usually entered later on a computer, which can easily lead to inaccurate or forgotten entries.

With VANILLAPLAN, time tracking is just as easy on the go. Using the mobile app, employees can confirm or adjust their assignments, expenses or absences directly from the construction site – easily, quickly and intuitively.

At the end of the day, a push notification automatically reminds them of any outstanding entries so that no hours are forgotten.

Conclusion

For many construction companies, Excel is an obvious choice for time tracking – it is familiar, flexible and inexpensive. It is easy to use for tracking individual working hours, but as soon as multiple projects, employees and changes come into play, the spreadsheet solution reaches its limits. Manual entry, unconnected inputs and a lack of real-time synchronisation quickly make the work time-consuming and prone to errors.

Vanillaplan's time tracking has the great advantage of being directly linked to resource planning. This means that working hours, projects and much more are automatically transferred and synchronised in real time. The mobile app also allows data to be recorded directly on site – easily, quickly and without any additional entries.

Excel may be a free tool, but the high level of manual effort involved causes hidden personnel costs. At first glance, Vanillaplan involves costs, but it saves time every day through automation and real-time synchronisation – making it the more economical solution in the long term.

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