You're managing a multi-trade project. Your direct employees are on site, but so are two electrical subcontractors and a mechanical team you've brought in for a phase of the work.

You trust the leads (you've worked with most of them before), but you're busy and can't be on site for every clock-in. So, when the invoices arrive at the end of the week, you pay them, because what's the alternative?

For M&E contractors, this is a routine problem. Not being able to verify subcontractor attendance and hours means you're paying invoices you can't validate. It could also mean accepting labour claims you can't dispute, and building your project costs based on figures you have to take on trust.

TimeKeeper changes that by giving you independent, auditable verification of every clock-in, from any location, without requiring a site manager to be present.

Why Subcontractor Time Theft Is Harder to Spot Than You Think

Fraud and time misrepresentation in construction and M&E is more common than most businesses think. According to Twin FM, 26% of UK construction companies have been targeted by fraud in the past year, and 40% of those targeted say the financial impact nearly forced them to close.

But not all of this is organised or deliberate.

It's a subcontractor recording a 7:30am start when they arrived at 7:50am.

It's a crew logging a full day when they left early to beat traffic.

It's a team clocking in from the site entrance rather than the work face.

Individually, these are small, but across a large project with multiple subcontractors over several months, they add up to a cost that margins might not be able to absorb.

However, the deeper problem is that without verified data, you can't raise or resolve disputes. If a subcontractor challenges your view of their hours, you need documented evidence.

Paper records signed by someone on their own team don't provide that.

TimeKeeper does.

The Triple Lock™: How TimeKeeper Verifies Subcontractor Hours

TimeKeeper's verification framework (the Triple Lock™ System) was designed specifically for the verification challenges faced by construction businesses managing subcontractors.

It operates on three independent checks, all applied at the point of clock-in:

Right person: Facial recognition technology verifies the identity of each operative clocking in. The system captures and matches a photograph at every clock-in, ensuring the person recording time is the person who should be on site (and not a colleague doing them a favour).
Right location: GPS tracking and geofencing confirm the operative's physical location at the point of clock-in. You define the geographic boundary for each job site within TimeKeeper, and any clock-in attempt from outside that boundary is flagged automatically. Your subcontractors must be on site to clock in.
Right time: Clock-in times are verified server-side, preventing any retrospective manipulation of timestamps. The time recorded in TimeKeeper is the actual time the operative was on site. It's not a figure entered hours later from memory or convenience.

Together, these three checks produce a clock-in record that's reliable, auditable, and defensible. Every entry carries a timestamp, a GPS coordinate, and a facial recognition match. This creates a bulletproof evidence trail that's much harder to dispute than any paper-based system.

Live Visibility Without Being On Site

Beyond verification, TimeKeeper gives M&E contractors real-time visibility over their subcontractor workforce through the live Who's In dashboard. You can see at any moment which operatives are currently on each site, when they arrived, and whether any clock-ins have been flagged as unusual.

This visibility is valuable not only for managing costs, but for project coordination. Knowing that the mechanical team has arrived and is already working when you need to brief a client, or confirming that the electrical subcontractors are on site before a scheduled inspection, removes the need for phone calls and improves the accuracy of your project reporting.

Resolving Disputes With Confidence

One of the most practical advantages of using TimeKeeper for subcontractor management is what happens when a dispute arises. If a subcontractor's invoice doesn't match your records, you have a complete, independently verified log to reference.

Every clock-in is timestamped, GPS-tagged, and matched to a facial recognition record. That's a very different position to be in than when you're trying to reconcile conflicting paper records.

TimeKeeper's audit trail protects your business in both directions. It gives you grounds to challenge inflated claims, and it gives subcontractors confidence that their legitimate hours are accurately recorded and will be paid correctly.

Integrating With BrightPay for Seamless Payroll

For M&E contractors paying workers and subcontractors through BrightPay, TimeKeeper's integration completes the workflow. Verified, approved hours are transferred into BrightPay for payroll processing.

This eliminates manual data entry, reduces the risk of payroll errors, and giving your payroll team a clean, structured dataset to work from.

TimeKeeper was built for the realities of construction and M&E project management. It doesn't require expensive hardware, an IT team, or a lengthy implementation. Your subcontractors can be onboarded quickly, and you can be capturing verified attendance data from day one of your next project.

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