Building cleaning places demands on time tracking that an office solution does not meet: many small sites instead of one workplace, jobs lasting from twenty minutes to eight hours, high staff turnover, a large share of employees still learning the local language – and a client who wants proof, not an assurance. Whatever works here has to be above all fast and free of prerequisites.

No company email, no complicated login

The first practical obstacle in cleaning is mundane and yet decisive: cleaning staff usually have no company email address. Systems that require one fail before the first working day – or a shared address gets created and five people end up using the same account. With Jobilino a phone number is enough; signing in can also work with a one-time code, so nobody has to remember a password. That is not a convenience detail but the condition for every person having their own time entry – the basis for clean invoicing.

Per site, not per day

Anyone cleaning three sites before noon does not need a daily total but hours per site. The fastest solution is an NFC tag at the site: hold the phone against the sticker and the time runs on that site – without picking from a list in which, with eighty sites, the wrong one gets selected regularly. Within a site you can define floors, areas or individual rooms if they are billed separately. The page on object-based time tracking shows what that looks like in detail.

Travel time between sites

The journey from the first to the second site is working time – and in paper processes it almost always falls through the cracks because nobody notes it down. When clocking out, employees can therefore choose “changing site” instead of “end of work”. The gap until the next clock-in is then recorded as travel time and reported separately, without being charged to any one customer. That makes visible an item which until now was either given away or estimated as a lump sum.

Proof for the client

In tenders and complaints it is not the invoice that counts but the record. An NFC tag documents that somebody was physically at the site; if required the camera opens after check-in, for example for the cleared pavement or the condition before work started. At the end of the month the digital cleaning record is ready per client – hours per site, broken down by day and person, as a PDF or a spreadsheet.

If you check quality systematically, inspection rounds can be mapped with checklists: a checklist per site, photos, recorded defects with follow-up, and if desired the customer’s signature directly on the tablet. The completed report is archived as a PDF.

Language is a recording problem

In hardly any other industry do so many people work who are only just learning the local language. An interface that is not understood does not produce errors – it produces empty fields. The app is therefore available in 28 languages, and each person sets their own. Touching an NFC tag works without reading anyway. More on this on the page about multilingual time tracking.

Crews, breaks and the rest of everyday life

  • Crew clock-in: a foreman can clock in on behalf of the team, provided they are authorised – every person still gets their own entry.
  • Paid break per customer: where a paid break is agreed, the allowance can be stored per customer; the remainder of the break stays unpaid.
  • Without a signal: in a basement or underground car park the NFC clock-in is stored on the device and submitted with the actual time once the connection is back.
  • Forgotten clock-out: open entries are closed automatically, and the correction runs through a logged late entry.

Making the switch

Start with one crew and two or three sites, not with the whole company. Attach the tags, assign each one once, invite the employees – about a minute per site. Let the paper sheets run alongside for a week and compare afterwards. In practice the numbers differ exactly where things used to be estimated: on short jobs and on travel time.

Time tracking for building cleaning can be tested free of charge for 14 days – no credit card and no minimum term.