HVAC time tracking
HVAC time tracking for techs who work eight buildings before lunch.
HVAC time tracking has to handle a technician who works eight stops in a day: a rooftop unit at one building, a chiller check at the next, a supply house run, a callback and the drive between each. ZeroBadge records it from a company-managed badge. Power on starts the shift, each stop is placed at the customer building you've drawn, drives are measured separately, and the week builds itself into a timesheet.
- Each visit placed at its building
- Drives and waits shown separately
- One month or more of battery life*
*Under qualifying operating conditions. Battery life varies with reporting frequency, signal conditions, usage, and configuration.
Tue Oct 6
- 6:30 AMShop & OfficeClocked in at the shop, loaded fittingsOn site · 25m
- 6:55 AMTransit to RiversideDrive to Riverside Medical PavilionTransit · 40m
- 7:35 AMRiverside Medical PavilionCrew hand-over with Marcus T.On site · 45m
- 8:20 AMTransit to Cascade SupplyDrive to Cascade Supply Co.Transit · 25m
- 8:45 AMCascade Supply Co.Vendor stop: valve pickupVendor · 25m
- 9:10 AMTransit to Harbor YardDrive to Harbor YardTransit · 30m
- 9:40 AMHarbor Yard Distribution CenterOn site with the Harbor Yard crewOn site · 6h 10m
What ZeroBadge does for you
How ZeroBadge helps hVAC contractors
One company badge per worker covers safety alerts, timekeeping, labor analytics and ZeroBadge AI. Here is what each part does in your line of work.
01
Worker safety
A service technician alone on a rooftop or in a mechanical room can press the alert button, and the office sees which building raised it.
Learn more02
Workforce management
See which technicians are at which building now and which scheduled stop has no one there yet, in the cooling-season rush.
Learn more03
Automated timekeeping
Badge on starts the day and each short visit lands on one shift, with no personal phone and no timecard to rebuild on Friday.
Learn more04
Workforce productivity
Compare hours per visit with what each maintenance agreement is priced on, and see which buildings keep going over.
Learn more05
Location analytics
Each customer building is a drawn location, so the record separates time at the unit from drive time and building access waits.
Learn more06
Field logistics
Balance technicians across the week's routes using recorded visit time, and move help to the buildings with callbacks.
Learn more07
AI advisory and analytics
Ask ZeroBadge AI which maintenance agreements take more hours per visit than priced, from your own badge records.
Learn more
Safety alerts support your safety program. They do not replace supervision or training, ZeroBadge does not monitor alerts or contact 911, and in an emergency workers should call 911.
Where service hours hide
Short visits make it hard to see which ones ran long.
Commercial HVAC service is billed in pieces: a flat fee for a preventive maintenance visit, a quoted repair, a time-and-material call. The margin lives in how long each piece took, and the timecard only has one number for the day.
Maintenance agreements priced per visit
A quarterly filter-and-belt visit is quoted at a set number of hours. If the tech averages twice that at one building, the agreement loses money and nobody sees it, because the time went on a day total.
Waiting for the building
Security desks, escorts, a roof key held by the property manager and a mechanical room locked until someone arrives. The tech is on the clock and the work order doesn't show the wait.
Callbacks that nobody bills
A return visit to fix what the last visit missed is real labor at a customer's building. Without the hours by location, you can't tell a one-off from a pattern at a certain site.
Start-up days that run long
A new rooftop unit or a boiler start-up pulls two techs onto one building for a long day of checks, readings and punch items. That overtime sits against that job, not the route.
Heat waves and cold snaps
The first hot week fills every tech's route with no-cool calls and pushes the hours up. Whether it was a busy week or a poorly routed one only shows when you can compare the days.
A cooling-season day
One tech, a July Thursday, six buildings.
Illustrative route for a commercial service tech, from the first call to the last.
Work orders and a day total
- 7:00The tech starts at the shop and loads belts, contactors and a compressor start kit.
- MiddayArrival and departure times are written on tickets, some from memory, some rounded to the hour.
- AfternoonThe last no-cool call runs past quitting time and gets squeezed onto the same ticket as the one before it.
- FridayDispatch and payroll disagree by a few hours. The difference is guessed at.
Badge record
- 7:00Badge on at the shop. Shop time is its own line, the load-out included.
- All dayEach building is a location you've drawn. Arrival, time on site and departure are recorded for each, with the drive between them as transit.
- AfternoonThe last call is its own stretch at its own building, including the part after hours.
- FridayTimesheets are built by building and day. Dispatch and payroll are reading the same record.
Job types and agreements
What the record can tell you about a maintenance agreement, and what it can't.
The badge knows where a technician was and for how long. Whether the visit was preventive, a repair or a callback comes from the work order.
Hours per building
Draw each agreement customer's building as a location. The record then shows how many hours your techs spent there each month, which you can lay beside what the agreement is priced at.
Matching a ticket to the record
Put a work order's arrival and departure beside the badge's. A ticket that says 45 minutes against 2 hours recorded at the building is the first thing to look at.
Preventive versus repair
Not something the badge can tell you. Keep the job type on the work order or in your service software, and use the building and date to line the two up.
Multi-tenant towers
A building with four tenants is one location. ZeroBadge places a person at a building, not on a floor or in a suite, so it won't split a tower by customer.
Visits at addresses you haven't set up
A new customer's building doesn't vanish from the day.
Service routes change daily and dispatch adds a new customer at 10 AM. A stop at a building that isn't drawn still appears on that tech's timeline, outside your sites, and goes into the review list for the office.
Add the address once and later visits are recorded against it. The review list also carries the usual exceptions: a missing power-off, a late start, time outside your approved sites.
Exceptions
Timesheets
24
Generated
Shifts
120
Recorded
Open items
3
Before payroll
- Corrected
Late start · Hannah P. · Harbor Yard
Mon Oct 5 · Clocked in 7:24 AM; crew start 7:00 AM (24 min after).
- Corrected
Late start · Connor J. · Northgate
Wed Oct 7 · Clocked in 6:52 AM; crew start 6:30 AM (22 min after).
- Needs review
Missing clock-out · Ivan B. · Harbor Yard
Thu Oct 8 · No clock-out recorded. Shift closed at the last badge report (2:55 PM) pending supervisor review.
- Needs review
Late start · Kenji H. · Riverside
Thu Oct 8 · Clocked in 7:18 AM; crew start 7:00 AM (18 min after).
- Needs review
Early finish · Olivia V. · Northgate
Fri Oct 9 · Clocked out 12:15 PM; scheduled finish 1:30 PM (75 min before).
Approved hours go to
- Your payroll provider
- CSVexport
- Excelexport
- PDFexport
Payroll wrinkles
Standby, take-home vans and the first hot week.
On-call and standby
Hours when the badge was on, at a building or in a drive, are recorded. Standby time with the badge off isn't. How standby is paid is set by your policy and your state's rules, and applied in your payroll process.
The drive from home
With a take-home van, the first drive of the day and the last are measured movement, and appear as their own transit lines. Whether the commute is paid depends on state rules and your policy; confirm with your payroll provider or counsel.
Daily overtime in a heat wave
Hours are recorded by day and by building. When a late call pushes someone past the daily threshold you set, the overtime is visible on the day it happened.
Different rates for different work
Every hour carries its location, so hours on a public building and on a private one reach payroll already separated. Rates are applied by your payroll provider.
Why phone punching fails a service tech
The phone already has a dispatch app on it.
A second app for the same hands
Techs carry a work-order or dispatch app and use it all day. Adding a time clock on top is the one that gets forgotten between a roof and a mechanical room.
Rooftops, gloves and heat
A touchscreen on a rooftop in July, with gloves on and a gauge set in the other hand, is a poor place to punch in. The badge is powered on once and left alone.
Routes that change after dispatch
A tech sent to a no-cool call from the middle of another one doesn't stop to update an app. The badge records the move without being told.
A different business from installation
New construction mechanical work, with a fab shop, phased jobs and crane days, reads best through its own page: mechanical contractors.
Many HVAC companies run both. The same badge and the same weekly timesheet cover the service route and the install crew, so the two sides share one payroll record.
Go deeper
Where HVAC contractors usually look next.
- Industry guideMechanical contractorsField, fab shop and supplier time for HVAC, piping and sheet metal crews.
- Industry guideField ServicesService techs on routes: customer stops, drive time and who is where right now.
- SolutionMulti-jobsite time trackingSite transfers, transit and supply runs inside one shift record.
- SolutionLabor cost trackingLoaded rates, job budgets and forecasts from badge-recorded hours.
- SolutionTime tracking without phonesA company-managed badge instead of an app on a worker's personal phone.
- Industry guidePlumbing contractorsService stops, supply-house runs, after-hours calls and new-construction crews.
- Industry guideConstructionGeneral and specialty contractors with crews across several jobsites, the shop and the supply house.
- SolutionPayroll integrationApproved hours sent to your payroll provider automatically. Nobody re-keys a timecard.
ZeroBadge AI
Ask about visits and agreements
Ask in everyday words: ZeroBadge AI answers from your own recorded visits, read-only, with numbers that link to their records.
You ask
Which maintenance agreements take longer per visit than we priced?
Harbor Mall averaged 2.8 hours per visit against 2.0 priced, and City Library 1.4 against 1.5. Each average links to its visits.
You ask
How many hours did Dev spend waiting for building access last week?
Dev recorded 5 hours 20 minutes at the gate or lobby of three buildings before reaching the unit. Each wait links to the location readings.
You ask
How many callback visits did we make to Harbor Mall this quarter?
Harbor Mall had 9 repeat visits within 14 days of a prior visit, totaling 17 hours. The visits link to the badge records.
Answers come only from your company's own records. Every number links to the records behind it. Read-only; admins control access.
How ZeroBadge AI worksQuestions
Questions HVAC contractors ask.
How do you track a service technician's time across many short visits?
Can ZeroBadge tell a preventive visit from a repair?
Does it work on rooftops and in mechanical rooms?
How is on-call time handled?
Is this the same as the mechanical contractors page?
Last updated
Get started
See a service route, a start-up and an agreement in one week's record.
We'll walk through ZeroBadge with your techs' routes, your maintenance agreements and how your payroll runs today.
What we will walk through
- 01How a tech's visits, waits and drives are recorded without a phone
- 02Hours by building for an agreement or a start-up
- 03Weekly timesheets, review and the payroll integration