He  knew the material and equipment costs of making customized wood moulding, but could only guess at how efficient his woodworkers were. The problem was that he could not be certain which jobs were money-makers, which were losers, when he wasn’t sure about labor costs of his woodworking products.

Immediately after implementing a computerized custom woodworking job time-tracking system, Stearns noticed that employees weren’t standing around for 10 minutes at the end of each day guessing on their time sheets. When he saw his woodworking profits increase after using the system for more accurate job-costing, he knew he had found the solution. Tracking woodworking labor time on jobs has helped Stearns decide which jobs to seek out and which ones he should turn down. “We’ve found that if it is a smaller job, we have to be much more cautious because we can lose money a lot quicker on those small woodworking jobs” he said.

Woodworking job time-tracking software has been developed specifically for shops by companies like TaskKlock, Trakware and Data-Maxx. Some utilize user friendly technology as simple to use as an ATM, where workers touch a screen and the program records their hours by task, from how long woodworkers spend sanding or running the band saw, to doing non-productive tasks like cleaning the shop or taking a lunch break. Such systems immediately compile woodworker task time for management to see how long it took to complete one job or task versus any other. Worker, or machine productivity may also calculated and reported for management to evaluate which processes, employees or machines complete the task or job most efficiently - generating the most profit.

When it comes to increasing productivity and profitability for your custom woodworking, no shop is too small for job and labor tracking. Time-tracking software is available on the market for wood shops as small as one person. Barrie Nadin owner, operator and usually sole woodshop worker of Phoenix Installations in Orlando, Florida benefits from a system based on an in shop touch screen. “There’s only me here so I’m often interrupted in my work. Because the touch screen is so easy to use, I can switch from one task to another quickly and keep it all recorded.”

For owners of most such small wood working shops, the added burden of task tracking and job time costing often seems too prohibitive of an administrative indulgence. That’s exactly who needs an automated task time tracking system the most: the business owner doubling as the wood shop worker who simply doesn’t have the time to track woodworking time. As Nadin explains, “I’m not a record keeper, so without an automated system I would have no way to realize where I don’t make money. Now I can see where I’m not making profit and so I’m able to address the problems. I can see my own inefficiencies and focus more on the tasks that I can actually bill for.”

And it's not just the woodshop workers who are made more aware and productive. Most importantly, using a software system to track task and labor time has made Corkery himself more precise with his actual job costs. “Most cabinet jobs are pretty much guesswork,” he said. “But this will tell us whether we are making money on a job.” This precision translates into more accurate bidding which creates efficiency on the job right up front.

In Diez's opinion, “It doesn’t matter what size a business is, if monitoring labor is cumbersome we must ask ourselves what we’re not doing instead to be making money with that time. For a smaller shop, because we juggle so many duties, it’s even more important to be using our time more effectively and incorporating as much automation as we can.”

Woodworkers save time and money with TASKKLOCK.COM