01 · the problem
Contracting work happens away from a desk, which is exactly where paper timesheets and expense forms are hardest to keep current. Cooper Development needed employees to check in at the site, log hours against the right project and file expenses without waiting for an office to do it in. The prize is not tidy admin, it is knowing which projects actually make money while there is still time to do something about it.
02 · what i built
A Flutter app that captures the record at the moment it is true. Employees check in by location, so the time entry is anchored to a place rather than to a memory. Hours go against a specific project rather than into a weekly total, and expenses are submitted from wherever they were incurred. The design principle is that the app has to be quicker to use on site than the paper form was to fill in later, or it simply will not be used.
- Check in by location
- Attendance anchored to the site itself, so a time entry has a place attached to it and not just an hour somebody wrote down afterwards.
- Hours against projects
- Time logged per project rather than as a weekly total, which is the resolution profitability is actually measured at.
- Expenses from the field
- Costs filed where they were incurred, instead of surfacing as a pocket of receipts at the end of the month.