Every shift, the same ticket gets filled in: operator, job number, start and end time, quantity. At month end someone tries to turn those tickets into job cost, time per part, or an estimate for the next quote, and the numbers will not add up. Search for help and you find ticket templates and software manuals; they all list the columns, and none of them says when and how those columns should be filled in. That is the question this article answers.
The short answer: the trouble with a labor ticket is rarely a missing field; it is the moment the fields get written. If time is not captured at the machine when the job starts and when it ends, every field on the ticket is an estimate. The second part is less well known: even accurately recorded job hours do not add up to the hours on the time clock, and they should not. Below we go through the fields of a job record, why each one is there, and where the gap comes from.
The ticket is filled in, but the hours are wrong: it is when, not what
The usual story of a paper traveler or an end-of-shift spreadsheet row goes like this: the operator starts a job on the laser in the morning, switches to another work order before lunch, waits for material somewhere in between, and goes back to the first job in the afternoon. When the shift ends, they fill in the ticket from memory. Memory rounds: “8:00–12:00” goes on paper, while the job actually started at 8:12 and ended at 11:41. Those 31 minutes belong to neither the job nor anywhere else on the record.
Other things get lost on the same ticket. The changeovers between jobs disappear, because nobody writes “spent 10 minutes looking for the next job”. Two operators on the same job book overlapping hours. One hour sometimes ends up on two work orders. None of this is bad faith; nobody can recall a shift to the minute at the end of it. So the main idea of this article fits in one line: the record has to be made at the machine, when the job starts and when it ends. Which fields the ticket carries is the second question.
The seven fields every job record needs
On paper, in a spreadsheet or in software, a time record kept per work order needs these seven fields. The order matters too: they fill in the same order the work happens.
- Who: the operator doing the work, identified by a code rather than a signature or a handwritten name.
- Operation: laser cutting, press brake bending, welding… One work order has several operations; if time is not booked per operation, you cannot see which step takes long.
- Work order and part: scanned or picked from a list instead of typed; one wrong digit moves the time onto someone else's job.
- Start: the moment work begins, not a time written down later.
- Every stop and resume: a separate line each time the job stops; that interval is not booked as work.
- Finish: the moment the job ends.
- Counts: good, scrap and rework, each on its own.
Three more fields are optional but worth having in most shops: the work center (which machine), whether the time was setup or run, and the reason for any scrap. Without the first seven, these three rescue nothing; with the first seven in place, they make the record far more useful.
The “who” field: a code, not a signature
The name field looks harmless and produces more errors than any other: initials, unreadable handwriting, two people with the same name. A code fixes that. In Smartifie Start Stop, the operator scans the barcode or QR code on their badge with a scanner attached to the terminal or with the camera; if the setting allows, they can also pick their name from a list. There is no fingerprint or face recognition.
You can watch these seven fields fill in at the machine in the three-minute video below: the badge is scanned, the operation and work order are picked, START is pressed, the clock runs by itself, and the counts go in at FINISH. For a screen-by-screen walkthrough, see the terminal, step by step in the guide.
Watch how it works
Real screens, start to finish.
Job Time Tracking: Scan a Badge, Time the Job | Smartifie Start Stop
An operator scans a badge, picks the operation and the work order and presses START; the clock runs by itself, and FINISH records good, scrap and rework separately.
The video loads from YouTube when you press play.
Why setup time and run time go on separate lines
A job's time is made of two different things: getting the machine ready for that job (tooling, program, first-piece check) and making the parts. Setup time does not depend on batch size; run time grows with quantity. Lump them into one number and the time per part swings with batch size, so two batches of the same part can no longer be compared.
Example: a job with a 40-minute setup and 30 seconds of run time per part.
| Batch | Setup | Run | Total | Per part (from total) | Per part (run only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 parts | 40 min | 5 min | 45 min | 4.5 min | 30 s |
| 1,000 parts | 40 min | 500 min | 540 min | 32.4 s | 30 s |
Looking at the totals, you would think the same part takes 4.5 minutes in one batch and half a minute in the other. With setup on its own line, both batches tell the same story: 30 seconds a part, 40 minutes of setup. Quoting the next job and asking “why is setup so long?” both start from that split. In Smartifie Start Stop, the split happens before START: by default the terminal shows Set-up and Production buttons, and the operator picks the one they are doing.
Not one time but three: raw, break and net
Should breaks come off the job time? Yes, but the deduction has to be visible on the record. A single merged number misleads: a line that says 3 h 10 min does not tell you whether a break was taken off, or how much. A trustworthy record keeps three numbers side by side:
- Raw time: the wall-clock time from start to finish.
- Break: the break that fell inside that interval.
- Net time: what is left once the break comes off the raw time.
Where the break came from should be on the record too. Usually it is not measured; it is assumed from the shift calendar: if “12:00–12:30 lunch” is defined, the time inside that window comes off. That is a legitimate method, but the record should not present it as a measurement. That is why Smartifie Start Stop always shows raw, break and net time separately and marks a calendar-based break as “calculated”; this display is not a setting you can turn off. How the break is worked out from the shift calendar is answered in the FAQ on the page for a terminal that times each job from a badge scan.
Counts: good, scrap and rework are counted separately
A single “quantity made” column is not enough for a finished job. Example: 4 hours (240 minutes) of net time went on a job, and 100 parts came off the machine; 90 good, 6 scrap and 4 set aside for rework. If the ticket just says “100”, time per part looks like 2.4 minutes. But only 90 parts will ship, and the time per good part is 2.67 minutes. The 4 parts set aside for rework will also take more time later.
So the three numbers are kept apart, and any scrap gets a reason; scrap without a reason tends to come back for the same reason on the next job. In Smartifie Start Stop, pressing FINISH asks for good, scrap and rework separately; with the default setting, a job with scrap above zero cannot be finished until a reason is picked. The quantity entered cannot exceed what is left on the work order; a rework job is the exception, because the same part goes through a second time. The waste percentage of the material is a different calculation; what a waste percentage actually counts is covered in another article.
Stops: why the clock paused should be on the record
Once a job has started, it can stop: material runs out, a tool breaks, quality has to sign off. On a paper ticket that interval is either added to the job or quietly dropped, and either way the information is gone. The right way is to give the stop its own line: no job time is booked to that interval, and the interval itself and its reason go on the record.
In Smartifie Start Stop, the operator presses STOP and the job pauses; for a long enough stop, the terminal also asks for the reason. How stop reasons are set up, and the Pareto that shows which stops cost the most time, are the subject of the next video and article.
Why job hours don't match clocked hours (and shouldn't)
Once the records get accurate, most shops run into the same thing: the hours an operator booked to work orders across the day add up to noticeably less than the span between clock-in and clock-out. The first reaction is to assume the records are wrong. Usually it is the other way round: if the two numbers “matched” on paper, it was because the gaps had been booked to a job.
Every shift has time that belongs to no work order. An example shift:
| Clock-in to clock-out | 8 h 30 min |
| Break (from the shift calendar) | − 30 min |
| Between jobs: finding the next work order, moving to the machine | − 25 min |
| Waiting for material before any job has started | − 20 min |
| Cleanup | − 15 min |
| Shift meeting | − 25 min |
| Net time booked to work orders | 6 h 35 min |
The 1 h 55 min in between is not an error; it is its own line, and seeing it is the point of the record. If the meeting runs long, if material shows up late every morning, or if finding the next job takes 25 minutes, you only see it when job time is recorded honestly. By the same logic, one hour must not be booked to two jobs: by default, Smartifie Start Stop refuses START on a second job while the operator still has one running. When several operators work the same job, each one finishes their own part and the job closes when the last one finishes.
This is job time, not attendance: a time clock record is a different record with a different purpose, and it is not covered here. The clock-in line in the table is only there to show the gap.
A wrong entry is not erased; it is corrected
The operator forgot to press START, or noticed the next morning that FINISH was never pressed. On paper the fix is to cross it out and write it again; in a spreadsheet, to overwrite the cell. Either way, the old value and who changed it and why are gone. When someone questions a number at month end, there is nothing to look back at.
In a trustworthy record the old value stays, and the correction is added as a new line with who, when and why. In Smartifie Start Stop, event records are never deleted or overwritten: a correction is a new entry carrying the before and after values, and it cannot be saved without a reason; this rule is not a setting you can switch off. The terminal also catches part of the forgotten-job problem: with the default setting, a job still open at the end of the shift is paused automatically and flagged for a supervisor. The correction screen is described in the guide; run correction is available on paid plans and is not part of the trial.
The first step off paper: badges and a work order list
Moving the ticket to the machine does not take a big system. Two things are enough to start: a barcode badge for each operator and a list of work orders the terminal can offer. The rest is the seven fields above filling in as the work happens. You can try Smartifie Start Stop free for 15 days, no credit card required. The trial runs in the cloud, in the browser; the desktop and Android editions are not released yet. Run correction and Excel export are not part of the trial.