## Time Booking
Time booking records how each employee's attended time is spent across different jobs, operations, and idle periods. It provides the granular data needed for accurate costing.
### Purposes of Time Booking
| Purpose | How Time Booking Helps |
|---|---|
| Costing | Calculates labour cost per job based on actual time spent |
| Efficiency Measurement | Compares actual time vs. standard time to assess worker efficiency |
| Responsibility Fixation | Identifies variances; distinguishes controllable from uncontrollable causes |
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## Types of Time / Job Cards
### A. Job-Based Time Card (One card per job)
- A separate card exists for each job or operation
- All employees working on that job record their time on the same card
- Advantage: Complete picture of labour contribution to a specific job — easy to compute job cost
- Drawback: An individual employee's time is scattered across multiple cards; requires periodic summarisation to find total productive time vs. idle time per employee
### B. Employee-Based Time Card (One card per employee)
- Each employee has one card per day or week
- All jobs, operations, and idle time are recorded on this single card
- Advantage: Easy to reconcile job time with attendance time for each individual; comprehensive record of how time is distributed
- Drawback: Consolidating data to determine total time on each job requires abstracting data from many employee cards
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### Reconciliation Principle
Regardless of card type, total booked time must equal total kept time:
```
Time Booked = Direct productive time + Indirect time + Idle time
Time Kept = Total attendance time (from time-keeping records)
```
Any gap signals an error in recording that must be investigated.