Timesheets and payroll for field crews: how to track time and follow the federal rules

Why do field crews need a real timesheet system?

Because paper time cards and texted hours don't survive a busy season. Crew leads round to the nearest half hour, someone forgets a Saturday, the owner re-types everything into payroll on Sunday night, and nobody can say how long a job actually took. A phone-based timesheet fixes all three problems at once: accurate hours, a clean payroll file, and labor attached to each job.

Time records also carry legal weight. Federal law sets rules for overtime, for which breaks are paid, for what counts as work time and for which records you must keep. Getting them wrong is expensive, and an accurate timesheet is your best evidence if a wage question ever comes up.

How does phone-based time tracking work day to day?

1. Clock in at the shop or the first job, from the crew member's phone or a shared crew phone.
2. Switch jobs as the crew starts each stop. Time between stops is recorded as travel.
3. Record breaks as rest or meal, with start and end times.
4. Clock out when the last task is done. If someone forgets, the system flags it for the manager instead of guessing.
5. Review and approve weekly. Managers fix mistakes with a note explaining why, and the crew member sees the change.
6. Export to payroll as a file your payroll provider can import, with regular and overtime hours already split.

The same records feed job costing, so you learn what each job cost in labor without a second system.

What are the federal overtime rules?

The Department of Labor's overtime fact sheet sets out the basics for employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) who aren't exempt:

• hours over 40 in a workweek must be paid at no less than one and a half times the employee's regular rate;
• a workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, and it doesn't have to match the calendar week;
• averaging hours over two or more weeks is not allowed, so a 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week still owes 10 hours of overtime;
• the FLSA does not, by itself, require overtime for weekend or holiday work.

Pick your workweek (for example, Monday 12:00 a.m. through Sunday 11:59 p.m.), write it down, and set your system to it. Federal rules let you change the start of the workweek only if the change is meant to be permanent and isn't designed to avoid overtime (29 CFR 778.105).

The FLSA has no daily overtime rule, but some states do, and many states set their own overtime and minimum wage rules. The higher standard applies. Your timesheet system should be able to apply your state's rules, not just the federal ones.

Which breaks are paid?

Federal law does not require breaks at all, according to the Department of Labor. But if you give them, federal rules decide whether they're paid:

States are another matter. The Department of Labor keeps a table of state meal period laws; California, for example, requires a half-hour meal period for work over five hours a day, with limited waivers. Look up your state before setting break rules.

A common mistake is automatically deducting 30 minutes for lunch every day. If the crew worked through lunch, that deduction cuts paid hours they actually worked. Have crews record meal breaks they actually take instead.

Is drive time paid?

It depends on which drive. The Department of Labor's hours worked fact sheet says ordinary travel from home to work before the workday and back home afterward is not work time. Moving between job sites during the day, by contrast, counts as work. If you want to cut that paid time, plan tighter days; our route optimization guide explains how.

For field crews, that leads to a few practical rules:

• if crews are required to report to the shop for instructions or to pick up tools, the drive from the shop to the job counts as hours worked under 29 CFR 785.38;
• drives between stops are always on the clock;
• a supply run in the middle of the day is work time;
• special situations, such as a crew member taking the company truck home or overnight travel, have their own rules, so check with the DOL or an employment attorney.

The same fact sheet covers waiting time and on-call time. A crew member told to wait at a job site for materials is generally working.

Can you round time, and what records must you keep?

Federal regulations allow rounding start and stop times to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter hour, as long as it averages out so employees are paid for all the time they actually work (29 CFR 785.48). Rounding that always favors the employer fails that test. With phone clocks recording to the minute, the simplest choice is to pay to the minute.

The DOL's recordkeeping fact sheet lists what you must keep for non-exempt workers, including hours worked each day, total hours each workweek, straight-time earnings and overtime earnings. Payroll records must be kept for at least three years; records used to compute wages, such as time cards and work schedules, for at least two. Employers may use any timekeeping method that is complete and accurate.

That last point is why edits need a trail. If a manager changes a clock-out time, the system should keep the original, the new value, who changed it, when, and why.

How should timesheets get into payroll?

As a file, not by retyping. Most payroll providers can import a spreadsheet of hours per employee per pay period. Your timesheet system should produce that file with:

• employee identifiers that match your payroll provider;
• regular and overtime hours already split per workweek;
• paid time off, holiday and other pay types in their own columns;
• the pay period dates, and a locked state so the file can't change after export.

A plain export file keeps you free to change payroll providers without rebuilding your timesheets.

What are the common timesheet mistakes?

• Automatic lunch deductions on days the crew didn't stop.
• Starting the clock at the first job when the crew really started at the shop.
• Overtime calculated per pay period instead of per workweek on biweekly payroll.
• Edits without a trail, which leaves you with no evidence when a crew member disputes their pay.
• Two systems for time, one for payroll and one for jobs, that never agree.

When is it worth building custom timesheets?

Standalone time-tracking apps and the clocks built into field-service software work for many crews. Custom makes sense when time must be tied to your own jobs, routes and costing, or when your pay rules (crew lead premiums, different rates for different work, several companies sharing staff) don't fit a generic tool. Our own companies' timesheets, in software we wrote for them, apply paid rest breaks, unpaid meal periods of 30 minutes or more, a fixed Monday to Sunday workweek and overtime over 40 hours, then exports a payroll CSV. Our custom CRM service builds the same around your state's rules and your pay plan.

Frequently asked questions