How man-hours are computed from attendance
For each person and each day, worked hours = paired punch-out minus punch-in, less any unpaid break the shift defines. Sum across the people at a site and across the days in the period. A site with three guards on 12-hour posts for 30 days generates 3 × 12 × 30 = 1,080 man-hours, or 135 man-days at eight hours each. Overtime hours are man-hours too, but they are usually reported separately because they bill and pay at a different rate.
The 8-hour man-day is a convention from the Factories Act's daily limit, not a law about billing. A 12-hour post is 1.5 man-days by that convention, which is why many contracts state hours rather than days to avoid ambiguity. Where a client contract says 'one guard per day', the deployment sheet must say whether that day is 8 or 12 hours.
- Daily worked hours = out time − in time − unpaid break
- Site man-hours = sum of worked hours of everyone deployed there
- Man-days = man-hours ÷ 8 (state the divisor in the contract)
- Report regular and overtime man-hours in separate columns
- Reconcile against the deployment sheet: rostered hours vs actually worked hours
Billing in security, facility management and contract labour
A security agency's invoice is a man-hour statement dressed up: guards deployed × shifts × hours, at a per-hour or per-month rate, plus overtime at the agreed rate, plus statutory loading for EPF, ESIC and bonus. Under PSARA the agency must be able to show which named guard worked which post on which day, so the man-hour report must trace back to individual attendance, not just a total. Clients increasingly ask for exactly that before clearing an invoice.
Facility-management and housekeeping contracts work the same way, often with a per-tower or per-floor breakdown. For contract labour under the OSH Code, the principal employer needs the contractor's muster roll and hours to verify that minimum wages and overtime were paid, since the principal employer is liable if the contractor defaults. See how security agencies bill clients for guard man-hours.
Common mistakes
Billing rostered hours instead of worked hours is the most expensive one: a no-show that was not replaced still appears on the invoice, and the client's own gate log exposes it. Counting a 12-hour post as one man-day while paying the guard for 12 hours creates a mismatch between billing and overtime cost. Forgetting to deduct unpaid breaks overstates hours slightly on every shift, which adds up across 200 guards. And treating a supervisor's site visit as a full man-day on a client's bill, when it was a 40-minute check, is a dispute waiting to happen.
A client site in Pune runs two posts: a day post 08:00–20:00 and a night post 20:00–08:00, each with one guard, for all 30 days of September. Rostered man-hours = 2 × 12 × 30 = 720. Attendance shows one night no-show that was not replaced and one day guard who stayed 2 extra hours on relief. Worked regular man-hours = 720 − 12 = 708; overtime man-hours = 2. The invoice shows 708 regular hours at the contract rate and 2 hours at the OT rate, and the client's gate register agrees.
Attend Mitra's security-guard module records guard attendance with GPS and selfie per post and produces site-wise man-hour exports for client billing, with regular and overtime hours separated and traceable to each guard's punches. The same worked-hour totals feed attendance-linked payroll so billing and wages come from one record.