Labour Accounting — Time Keeping and Time Booking

Before any wage can be computed or any hour of labour charged to a job, cost accounting must record how long each worker was present, and what that time was spent on. These are the functions of Time Keeping and Time Booking.

Time Keeping

Time Keeping is the recording, for every worker, of the time of arrival, the time of departure, and hence the total attendance time for each day/pay period. It is the very first stage of labour-cost accounting — the basis for computing time-rate wages, for absorbing overheads on a labour-hour basis, for maintaining a statutory attendance record, and for enforcing punctuality and discipline.

Methods of Time Keeping:

• Manual methods — (i) Attendance Register: a bound register in which a timekeeper manually notes each worker's arrival and departure time; (ii) Metal Disc (Token) Method: each worker is given a numbered metal disc hung on a board at the gate, which the worker removes and drops into a box on arrival — any disc still on the board identifies an absentee instantly.
• Mechanical/electronic methods — (i) Time Recording Clock (punch card): the worker inserts a printed card into a clock that automatically stamps the exact time; (ii) Dial Time Recorder: a rotating dial machine with one hole per worker, which prints the time against the worker's own number.

Time Booking

Time Booking records how a worker's attended time was actually spent — against which specific job, operation or process. It is the data cost accounting needs to charge labour cost to the correct job/product and to measure a worker's efficiency job by job.

Methods of Time Booking: Daily Time Sheet, Weekly Time Sheet, Job Card (Job Ticket — one card per job, on which start/stop time is recorded as work happens), and the Combined Time and Job Card (records both attendance time and job-wise time on one document, cross-checking one against the other).