Temporary and contingent labor is a common practice in the completion of many construction projects and has become increasingly popular in recent years. Contractors often rely on 1099 workers to complete larger projects and stay on schedule.
However, tracking time for these workers is a hassle. Most time tracking systems are designed for full-time, hourly W-2 employees, rather than being built to accommodate 1099s or staffing agency labor.
Generally, the information of temporary labor workers is not added to ERP systems or payroll solutions, making it difficult to separate temporary workers’ hours from those of W-2 workers. Without a better way to track them, many contractors fall back on paper timesheets, rough estimates, and manual workarounds, which waste time and lead to billing disputes.
SmartBarrel is designed not only to track your own W-2 employees but to track time for all hourly workers on your jobsite, including temporary or contingent labor, and any hourly subcontractors. SmartBarrel makes it easy to separate workers by company, allowing you to report time separately for your own employees and for temporary labor or hourly subcontractors.
In addition, if you are working with several staffing agencies or subcontractors, breaking it down by company allows you to properly report on hours by company, even giving access to the dashboard for companies to see the time for their own employees, and creating an invoice report, and sharing it with staffing agencies or subcontractors themselves. It’s that easy.
Why Temp Labor & Contingent Labor is so Hard to Track
Temp labor or contingent labor creates unique time tracking challenges for construction teams. It keeps jobs moving, but can also create chaos when it comes to tracking hours, assigning costs, and staying compliant. Most systems just aren’t built for the way subcontractors actually work. Here’s why managing temp labor on a construction jobsite is a constant challenge:
A Fluctuating, Decentralized Workforce
Temporary labor is always in motion. Crews rotate frequently. New workers are pulled in for a specific phase, then gone the next. And with jobs spread across multiple locations, tracking who’s on site and when becomes almost impossible without the right structure in place.
Manual Processes That Don’t Scale
Contractors often rely on paper timesheets or spreadsheets to track contingent labor or hourly subcontractors. Staffing agencies usually have their own processes, often causing disputes as the invoice provided doesn’t match the hours you have tracked on a paper timesheet.
No Real-Time Visibility
When temp labor hours are submitted late, sometimes at the end of the week, sometimes not at all, without live tracking, it’s hard to catch issues like no-shows, inflated hours, or schedule delays. And by the time the back office spots the problem, it’s already too late to fix it.
Lack of Accountability and Trust
You didn’t hire these workers yourself. You don’t know their history or skill level. Without verified punches, you can’t be sure who actually showed up or when they left. Buddy punching, misreported hours, and vague logs are all too common. And when there’s no verified audit trail, there’s no way to approve invoices or verify billed time confidently.
How SmartBarrel Simplifies Temporary Labor Tracking
SmartBarrel was built for the realities of construction jobsites – tracking time for mixed crews made up of W-2 employees, hourly subcontractors, and contingent labor from staffing agencies.. Unlike most time tracking tools, SmartBarrel gives you a clear and reliable way to track all hourly workers on your jobsite, whether they’re your own W-2 employees or temporary and contingent labor.
Track Staffing Agency Labor by Company
SmartBarrel has a multi-company structure, allowing you to track time for your own company and your subcontracted companies. That means you can track and report hours by company, keeping W-2s and contingent labor separate, with no spreadsheet gymnastics required. You can even create invoice reports to share directly with staffing agencies.
Whether they’re your own employees or labor provided by a staffing agency, every punch is verified by biometric facial verification and geofencing. Workers punch in and out on a SmartBarrel Timeclock or kiosk mode on a shared device. You won’t have to ask workers to individually download an app, and there will be no buddy punching.
Role-Based Access for Staffing Agencies
You can give staffing agencies access to the SmartBarrel dashboard to view their workers only, so they can monitor hours and pull reports without viewing your own sensitive payroll data. This keeps your records secure, accessible where needed, and makes it easier to approve invoices. SmartBarrel helps you stop wasting time manually validating temp labor.
Ready-to-Go Reports
SmartBarrel’s dashboard automatically groups time entries by worker, project, company, or classification. You can assign custom rates, apply per diem rules, and track additional expenses.
Confidence in Every Line Item
You don’t always know who staffing agencies are sending to your jobsite. SmartBarrel offers that extra layer of trust because it backs every labor hour with facial verification and location data, giving you confidence in what you’re paying for and a digital trail to prove it. Verified punches = data that you can trust.
Back Office Benefits of Tracking Temporary Labor with SmartBarrel
Manual temp labor tracking creates a ripple effect of extra work, delays, and errors for your office team. From chasing down hours to cross-referencing paper timesheets, it slows down payroll, creates confusion around who worked where, and leaves you open to billing disputes.
SmartBarrel eliminates that chaos by giving both you and your labor vendors one single source of truth. Hours are verified in real time, stored in one central system, and visible to the right parties. Staffing agencies can log in to see exactly how many hours to invoice for, while your team sees the same verified timesheets to approve payments. This alignment removes mismatched records, cuts down on back-and-forth, and speeds up processing.
Whether you’re working with a single staffing agency or multiple temp vendors across multiple sites, SmartBarrel groups every hour worked by the vendor. Admins can quickly filter hours, assign the right cost codes and custom rates, and export reports that match your accounting system’s format.
Need to verify the time before paying an invoice? Every punch is backed by facial verification and GPS, no more guessing or re-entering totals manually.
You can even give temp agencies read-only access to view hours worked by their crews, which cuts back on back-and-forth emails and speeds up invoice approvals.
By giving your back office verified data that’s already broken down by vendor, SmartBarrel turns a fragmented process into a simple one with fewer errors, faster payroll, and clear audit trails.
A Simpler Way to Track Temporary Labor
SmartBarrel gives subcontractors a verified, vendor-aware way to track every hourly worker on the jobsite, whether they’re internal crews or contingent labor from staffing agencies. Hours are grouped by vendor, backed by facial verification, and ready to report. No more paper timesheets, missing hours, or invoice disputes.
