Playbooks

Playbooks

Tools don’t fix anything by themselves. The way you roll them out does.

This page is where you’ll find step-by-step playbooks for putting new ops, payroll, and HR tools into place without blowing up your crews, your office, or payroll week.

What These Playbooks Are

Each playbook is built to answer one question:

“If I’m a real contractor with real jobs going on, how do I actually switch to this tool or process without chaos?”

Inside each playbook, you’ll typically see:

  • Who it’s for (trade, size, and situation)
  • What you’re changing (paper → app, manual → integrated, etc.)
  • The 3–7 key steps to make the change
  • What to tell your crews so they don’t fight it
  • What to watch in the first 30–90 days

Think of these as field-tested checklists you can hand to an office manager or foreman and say, “Run it like this.”

Featured Playbooks

Moving From Paper Timecards to a Crew App

If you’re still chasing paper timecards or texted hours, this playbook walks you through:

  • Picking the right time tracking approach for your crews
  • Setting up jobs, cost codes, and basic rules
  • Training foremen and crews without overcomplicating it
  • Cleaning up the first few weeks of data so payroll is right

Use this when you’re ready to stop guessing on hours and start trusting your time data.

Setting Up Time Tracking So Job Costing Finally Makes Sense

If you already track time but can’t see clean job numbers, this playbook covers:

  • Defining cost codes that match how you actually build jobs
  • Mapping time tracking to your accounting or job costing system
  • Creating simple rules for foremen so coding stays accurate
  • Running regular job reviews using the new data

Use this when you want to move from “hours are in” to “we know what we made or lost.”

Cleaning Up Payroll and Job Codes

If payroll week is a mess and job reports never match reality, this playbook walks through:

  • Standardizing job codes and pay types
  • Aligning time tracking, payroll, and accounting around the same structure
  • Building a basic review process before each payroll run
  • Fixing small problems before they become habits

Use this when you’re tired of patching payroll by hand every week.

Onboarding New Hires Without Drowning the Office

If growth has turned onboarding into a paperwork pile, this playbook helps you:

  • Decide what needs to be done in the first day, week, and month
  • Use your HR and payroll tools to capture forms and documents once
  • Standardize how you set up new hires in time tracking and scheduling
  • Make sure new people know how you expect them to clock in and report work

Use this when you want new hires to plug into your systems instead of adding to the chaos.

How to Use These Playbooks

  • Pick the playbook that matches the change you’re trying to make right now.
  • Print it or share it with the person leading the change (office manager, foreman, or ops lead).
  • Run the steps in order, one layer at a time, instead of trying to fix everything in a week.

You don’t have to rebuild your entire ops stack at once. One clean change, done well, is worth more than five half-finished tool rollouts.

As new playbooks are added, they’ll be linked here so you always have a simple place to start.