Time & Attendance
Timesheet Software for Tradies That Fills Itself In
The Friday-night timesheet is a work of fiction — everyone knows it, everyone signs it anyway. AxiomBlue logs hours against the job as they happen: tap to clock on, GPS check-in on the entry, billable and non-billable split automatically, and a clean export to your payroll system when the pay period ends.
Quick answerTimesheet software for tradies logs hours as the work happens instead of relying on a sheet filled in from memory on Friday. In AxiomBlue, technicians clock on and off jobs from their phone with GPS check-in, billable and non-billable time split automatically, and each employee's hours export by job and date to feed your payroll system. From $29 AUD per seat per month, free plan with no time limit.
Key facts: timesheets in AxiomBlue
The short version first. Timesheets in AxiomBlue are part of the job management platform — every hour is captured against a job, which is what makes the numbers useful.
| Price | $29 AUD per seat/month (Basic) · $59 (Professional) |
| Free plan | No time limit, no credit card required |
| Platform | Native iPhone & Android apps + the full platform in any web browser |
| How hours are captured | Clock on/off per job from the phone, GPS check-in on entries |
| Billable vs non-billable | Split automatically, with break deductions applied |
| Payroll | Hours export by employee, job, and date to your payroll system |
| GST & accounting | GST automatic on invoices; two-way Xero sync; MYOB sync |
| Built for | Australian trade & field-service businesses; data hosted in Australia (Sydney) |
What is timesheet software for tradies?
Timesheet software for tradies replaces the paper sheet filled in from memory with hours logged as the work happens: the technician clocks on and off jobs from their phone, GPS check-in records where each entry was made, and the hours attach to the job they were worked on. AxiomBlue is timesheet software built into a full job management platform for Australian trade and field-service businesses.
The problem it solves has a specific shape, and every trade business owner knows it: it's Friday night, the crew's sheets are due, and someone is reconstructing Tuesday. Nobody remembers exactly when they arrived at the Kellyville job three days ago, so the day becomes "start 8, finish 4" — and the rounding always goes the wrong way. The early start disappears. The hour split across two sites gets booked to one of them, or neither.
Rounded hours cost money on both sides of the ledger: under-billed jobs when the extra time never reaches the invoice, and wages calculated from numbers nobody fully trusts. Capturing the time when it happens — against the job it was spent on — fixes both at the source.
What makes a timesheet "job-linked" — and why does it matter?
A job-linked timesheet records every hour against the specific job it was worked on, not just against the week — and that link is what turns a timesheet from a payroll chore into a business record. In AxiomBlue, the clock-on happens from the job: the technician opens the job they're standing on and taps start, so the entry is born attached to the right work. There's no end-of-week allocation step, which means there's no end-of-week allocation errors.
Once an hour belongs to a job, the same captured number does three jobs at once:
- Job costing — the hour rolls into that job's live labour cost, so estimated versus actual profit updates while the job is still running.
- The invoice — billable hours flow onto the job's invoice with GST correct and two-way Xero sync, so labour is never missed or re-typed.
- The timesheet export — the hours total by employee, job, and date, ready to feed your payroll system.
A weekly-total timesheet — paper or app — can only ever do the third of those, and only after someone tallies it. That's the difference in one sentence: a job-linked timesheet is captured once and used three times; a weekly timesheet is reconstructed once and argued about twice.
How does AxiomBlue capture hours during the day?
Hours are captured with a tap: the technician opens the job on their phone, taps to clock on, and the GPS check-in records where the entry was made; tapping off closes the entry. Everything else — the job link, the billable split, the break deduction — happens automatically behind that tap.
Clock On From Any Phone
Free iPhone and Android apps — or the mobile browser, no download needed — so technicians clock on and off standing on the job, not sitting at the kitchen table on Friday.
GPS Check-In on Every Entry
Location is recorded when the entry is made, so every hour is tied to where the work happened, not just when. When a customer queries "you were only here two hours", the record answers.
Billable vs Non-Billable
Time splits into billable and non-billable automatically, and break deductions are applied without anyone doing maths. What lands on the invoice is what was actually worked.
Corrections, Kept Honest
Forgot to clock off before the drive home? The technician or the office fixes the entry in seconds, and the change is kept in the job record's change history.
Feeds Job Profitability Live
Logged hours roll into estimated-vs-actual labour on the job as it runs — so a job blowing out on labour shows up Tuesday, while there's still time to raise a variation.
Export for Your Payroll System
Each employee's hours, by job and date, for any pay period — exported in one go, no manual tallying, ready to feed into whatever payroll system you run.
How do timesheet hours get into my payroll system?
AxiomBlue exports each employee's hours by job and date for any pay period — one clean, already-tallied file to feed into your payroll system, whatever award or pay structure your business runs under. The Sunday-night ritual of collecting sheets, deciphering handwriting, and adding columns simply goes away.
Worth being precise here, because it's where timesheet software gets oversold: AxiomBlue does not run payroll. No pay rates, awards, or payslips live in it — your payroll system keeps that job. What AxiomBlue fixes is the input, which is where most payroll pain actually starts. A payroll run is only as accurate as the hours going in, and hours reconstructed on Friday are wrong before your payroll software ever sees them. Hours captured on site, per job, with a GPS check-in on the entry, start from the truth — and they arrive already added up.
What does the end of the Friday-night timesheet look like?
It looks like this: the hours already exist, already attached to jobs, and the office reviews and approves instead of chasing and typing. Here's the honest three-way comparison — paper, a standalone timesheet app, and job-linked capture.
| Paper timesheet | AxiomBlue Job-linked timesheets | Standalone timesheet app | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When hours are recorded | ✗ Friday, from memory | ✓ As they happen, on site | ✓ As they happen |
| Hours tied to a job | ~ Guessed at week's end | ✓ Clock-on happens from the job | ~ Manual allocation, if at all |
| Billable / non-billable split | ✗ Rarely separated | ✓ Automatic, with break deductions | ~ Depends on setup |
| Labour reaches the invoice | ✗ Whatever's remembered | ✓ Flows on automatically, GST correct | ✗ Re-typed into invoicing |
| Feeds job costing | ✗ Not connected | ✓ Live estimated-vs-actual labour | ✗ Separate silo |
| Input to your payroll system | ✗ Manually tallied | ✓ Export by employee, job, date | ✓ Export, but not job-linked |
A standalone timesheet app is half the fix: the hours are accurate, but they live in a silo, so someone still re-keys them into invoicing and costing — and every re-key loses a few. Job-linked capture records the hour once, where everything that needs it can reach it. That's the same one-record principle behind the rest of AxiomBlue's job management platform.
What do accurate timesheets do for job profit?
Accurate, job-linked timesheets are what make live job profitability possible: every logged hour rolls into that job's cost report, comparing estimated labour against actual as the work progresses — so a job running over on hours shows up while there's still time to do something about it. Raise a variation, re-scope, or at least stop quoting the next job off the same wrong assumptions.
This is the quiet payoff that paper can never deliver. A paper timesheet, even a perfectly honest one, tells you about labour weeks after the job closed — when the number is a piece of history, not a decision. And a business costing its jobs off rounded hours isn't just billing wrong; it doesn't actually know which of its jobs make money. For most trade businesses, that discovery — which job types are quietly underwater — pays for the software many times over.
What does timesheet software cost for a trade business?
AxiomBlue costs $29 AUD per seat per month on the Basic plan and $59 AUD on Professional, with timesheets and time tracking included alongside quoting, scheduling, job management, and invoicing — not sold as a separate module. There is a free plan with no time limit, and no credit card is required to start.
Against that, price the status quo honestly: the office hours spent chasing and typing up sheets every week, the billable time that rounds itself off every crew member's day, and the invoices that go out light because nobody remembered the extra hour. On a crew of four, 30 under-captured minutes per person per day is ten hours a week of work that was done and never recorded — at trade rates, that's the subscription covered many times over before you count the admin time back.
Run the test on your own numbers: put one crew on it on the free plan for a fortnight and compare their captured hours against what the old sheets would have said. The free plan is the business case.
Timesheet Software for Tradies — Common Questions
Timesheet software for tradies replaces the paper timesheet filled in from memory with hours logged as the work happens: technicians clock on and off jobs from their phone, GPS check-in records where each entry was made, and the hours attach to the job they were worked on. AxiomBlue is timesheet software built into a job management platform for Australian trade and field-service businesses.
A job-linked timesheet records every hour against the specific job it was worked on, not just against the week. In AxiomBlue that means the same captured hour feeds three things at once: the job's live labour cost, the invoice for that job, and the timesheet totals you export to your payroll system — with nothing re-keyed.
Yes. When a technician clocks onto a job from their phone, the GPS check-in records where the entry was made, so every logged hour is tied to a place as well as a time. Location is recorded at clock-on and clock-off against a job — not continuously through the day.
Yes. AxiomBlue exports each employee's hours by job and date for any pay period, with no manual tallying — a clean, job-linked set of numbers to feed into your payroll system. AxiomBlue does not run payroll itself; it makes sure the hours going into your payroll system are the hours that were actually worked.
Yes. Billable and non-billable time are tracked separately in AxiomBlue, and break deductions are applied automatically. The hours that end up on an invoice are the hours actually worked on the job, not a rounded estimate from memory.
No — nothing forces an install. There are free native AxiomBlue apps for iPhone and Android on the App Store and Google Play, with clock on/off and GPS check-in built in, and the full platform also runs in any phone browser — so a technician can open their job and tap to clock on from a link before they've downloaded anything.
Yes. Billable hours flow onto the job's invoice with GST applied correctly, and AxiomBlue syncs two-way with Xero (MYOB sync is also available), so invoices, payments, and contacts stay matched without double entry.
AxiomBlue starts at $29 AUD per seat per month, with time tracking and timesheets included alongside job management, scheduling, quoting, and invoicing. The Professional plan is $59 AUD per seat per month. There is a free plan with no time limit, and no credit card is required to start.
Retire the Friday-Night Timesheet
The hours are being worked either way — the only question is whether they get recorded, billed, and paid right. Let them log themselves against the job, and take Friday night back.
No credit card required • Free plan, no time limit • Cancel anytime