Using Payworks? Your Construction Crew Deserves Better Time Tracking

Payworks is one of the most trusted payroll providers in Canada. Thousands of companies rely on it to run payroll, manage deductions, and stay compliant. For good reason: payroll is what Payworks does, and they do it well.

But if you run a construction company with field crews, you've probably noticed the gap. Payworks has a built-in time tracking feature. And for an office team sitting at desks, it works fine. For a crew of 40 spread across five job sites with spotty cell service? Not so much.

The reality is simple. Payworks was built to process payroll. WorkxPro was built to track time in the field. When you connect the two, you get a system that actually works for construction.

The problem with web-based time tracking on job sites

Most generic time tracking tools (including the ones bundled with payroll software) share the same design: a web portal where workers log in and enter their hours. That works when everyone is sitting at a computer. It breaks down fast on a construction site.

Here's what you're dealing with:

No location verification. Workers can clock in from their couch, their truck, or a coffee shop. There's no GPS check and no geofence. You're trusting that everyone is where they say they are, and if you've been in this industry long enough, you know how that plays out.

Manual hour entry. Workers type in their own start and end times, sometimes days after the fact. Memory is unreliable. Rounding happens. And when disputes come up at payroll, it's your word against theirs with nothing to back it up.

No offline support. Construction sites are not office buildings. Crews work in basements, rural lots, and new builds with no Wi-Fi. If your time tracking tool needs a reliable internet connection to function, it doesn't function where your workers actually are.

No cost code or job site tracking. When a worker clocks in, you get a timestamp. That's it. You don't know which job site, which cost code, or which phase of the project those hours belong to. Which means your job costing is a guess until you go back and manually allocate time after the fact.

No automatic break handling. In most provinces, you're required to deduct breaks after a certain number of hours worked. Doing that manually, across dozens of workers, every pay period, is tedious and error-prone.

None of these are Payworks' fault. Payroll software isn't supposed to solve field operations problems. But someone has to.

How WorkxPro fills the gap

WorkxPro is a crew management platform built specifically for construction companies with field workers. It handles everything that happens between "the worker shows up at the job site" and "the approved hours land in payroll." And it connects directly to Payworks so you're not re-entering data or juggling exports.

Here's how the two systems work together:

Employee sync from Payworks. When you connect your Payworks account, WorkxPro pulls in your employee list automatically: names, departments, earning descriptions, salaried status. No double data entry. When you add someone in Payworks, they show up in WorkxPro.

GPS-verified clock-ins with geofencing. Workers clock in and out from the WorkxPro mobile app. Every clock-in is GPS-stamped and verified against the job site's geofence. If a worker isn't at the site, the system flags it. You don't have to take anyone's word for it.

Automatic break deductions. Set your thresholds (for example, deduct 30 minutes for any shift over 6 hours) and WorkxPro handles the rest. The system is smart about it: if a worker already took a manual break that meets the threshold, no extra deduction is applied. Deductions only come off the longest entry of the day, and salaried workers are skipped entirely.

Travel time tagging. Workers can tag time segments as travel versus regular work. Those tags map directly to the earning descriptions in your Payworks account, so travel pay is calculated correctly without any manual sorting on the payroll side.

One-click timesheet push. Once you've reviewed and approved time entries in WorkxPro, you push them to Payworks with one click. The entries arrive as approved timesheets with break deductions and travel time already applied. All your payroll coordinator has to do is run the pay.

Preview before you push. Before anything goes to Payworks, you see a full preview of exactly what will be sent: adjusted times, deductions applied, earning descriptions mapped. No surprises when you open Payworks on payday.

The workflow, end to end

The day-to-day looks like this:

1. Employees are synced from Payworks. Your roster stays up to date without manual entry.
2. Workers clock in and out on the mobile app. GPS verifies their location. They select the job site and cost code. The app works offline, so even remote sites with no signal are covered.
3. Admins review and approve entries. The portal shows you every entry with GPS data, timestamps, and any flags. Approve by week, deny with a reason, or edit as needed.
4. Push approved entries to Payworks. Break deductions and travel time are already calculated. What you see in the preview is what lands in Payworks.
5. Run payroll. The hours are there, verified and categorized. No chasing, no reconciling, no re-entry.

The whole point is to remove the manual work between "hours worked" and "hours paid." Your office admin shouldn't be spending a full day every pay period deciphering timesheets and typing numbers into a payroll portal. That time is better spent on work that actually moves the business forward.

Keep Payworks for payroll. Use WorkxPro for the field.

You don't need to replace Payworks. It does payroll well, and switching payroll providers is painful for everyone involved. What you need is a tool that captures accurate, verified time data from the field and delivers it to Payworks in a format that's ready to process.

That's what WorkxPro does. GPS-verified clock-ins. Automatic break deductions. Travel time tracking. Cost codes and job site allocation. And a direct integration that puts approved, clean timesheets into Payworks without anyone touching a spreadsheet.

Start your free 14-day trial at getworkxpro.com. No credit card required. Connect your Payworks account and see verified time entries flowing to payroll within your first week.