BETTER TIME-KEEPING

Accurate work time tracking is essential if the objective of CMMS use is to track personnel cost. However data entry of this data may not be accurate.

A simple system ensure accuracy in time data is by copying what accountants have been doing in their double-entry accounting system. The system works as such:

1. Get the total work hours of all personnel. For example, a person may work 8 hours per day, five days a week, giving total of 40hours a week.

2. Then open a work order and in the problem description, call it "non-work time" and set the work type to something non-essential. Print the work order and attached to it a time sheet form.

3. Get all personnel to jot down their non-work order time at the end of each working day. These are times not used in completing a work order but for stuff like meetings, trainings, lunch etc.

4. At the end of the week, record all these times into the "non-work time" work order and close the work order. Then generate a report that gives the detail and total of all work order time by work order or by personnel.

5. Compare the total recorded in the report to the total hours that the personnel must be available for work as ascertained in the first step. If there are differences, then there may be a discrepancy in data entry that needs to be investigated.

Note: if overtime is also recorded, the report may need to be segregated between the different type of times.