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Commercial painting contractor time tracking

Commercial painting contractor time tracking for night shifts, weekends and occupied buildings.

Commercial painting contractor time tracking has to follow small crews through occupied buildings, often at night or on weekends, and tell prep apart from coats on each job. ZeroBadge gives each painter a company-managed badge: power on starts the shift, every report is placed at the building you've drawn, and the week arrives split by job, with the start and end of every night shift on record.

Get startedSee prep against coats
  • Night and weekend shifts on record
  • No building Wi-Fi password needed
  • 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 AM3:50 PM
SODOEast WaterwaySR 991st Ave S4th Ave SI-5S Lander St1 · SHOP & OFFICE6:30 AM · 25M2 · RIVERSIDE7:35 AM · 45M3 · CASCADE SUPPLY8:45 AM · 25M4 · HARBOR YARD9:40 AM · 6H 10MLena
Lena · route
© OpenStreetMap contributors
  1. 6:30 AMShop & OfficeClocked in at the shop, loaded fittingsOn site · 25m
  2. 6:55 AMTransit to RiversideDrive to Riverside Medical PavilionTransit · 40m
  3. 7:35 AMRiverside Medical PavilionCrew hand-over with Marcus T.On site · 45m
  4. 8:20 AMTransit to Cascade SupplyDrive to Cascade Supply Co.Transit · 25m
  5. 8:45 AMCascade Supply Co.Vendor stop: valve pickupVendor · 25m
  6. 9:10 AMTransit to Harbor YardDrive to Harbor YardTransit · 30m
  7. 9:40 AMHarbor Yard Distribution CenterOn site with the Harbor Yard crewOn site · 6h 10m
One shift from 6:30 AM to 3:50 PM.

What ZeroBadge does for you

How ZeroBadge helps commercial painting 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 painter working alone on a night shift in a large building can press the alert button or SOS, and the office sees which building it came from.

    Learn more

  • 02

    Workforce management

    See which night crews are in which buildings, and spot a late start or a no-show before the shift loses its first hour.

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  • 03

    Automated timekeeping

    A night shift that crosses midnight stays one shift, and weekend work lands on the right date without anyone rewriting a timecard.

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  • 04

    Workforce productivity

    Compare hours against the bid for prep, first coat and touch-up by date range, and see which phase is running over while the job is still open.

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  • 05

    Location analytics

    Wi-Fi positioning places the badge in the building when it is indoors: which building, not which suite, with nothing installed in the client's space.

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  • 06

    Field logistics

    Move painters between this month's buildings with the record of where each crew spent its nights, so staffing follows the phases running behind.

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  • 07

    AI advisory and analytics

    Ask how many hours prep took compared with the first coat at a building and get an answer from badge records, with each number linked to its source.

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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 painting hours hide

Most of a repaint is done before the first coat goes on.

A commercial repaint is usually bid by the square foot with a production rate behind it. The crew sheet that comes back on Friday rarely shows where those hours went.

  • Prep written up as painting

    Patching, sanding, caulking, masking and covering a tenant's furniture can take longer than both coats together. On the sheet it is all one line called painting, so the next bid repeats the same rate.

  • Night shifts on the wrong day

    A crew starts at 6 PM after the tenants leave and finishes at 2:30 AM. The foreman writes eight hours on the day the shift started, or the day it ended, and nobody can say which.

  • Twelve suites on one line

    A hotel floor, an office suite or a wing of classrooms is many small units in one building. The crew moves room to room all week and the sheet carries one job number.

  • Coming back for the second coat

    Drying time, a tenant who wasn't ready, or a ceiling grid that went in late sends the crew to another job and back again. The return visit often lands on whatever job the crew was nearest.

  • Touch-up after everyone else

    Furniture moves, low voltage pulls and punch walks leave marks on finished walls. The touch-up hours belong to the job and often to a backcharge, and they end up as overhead.

A night repaint of an occupied office floor

Four nights, a weekend shift and a Monday touch-up, and when each one happened.

Illustrative week for a three-person crew repainting a floor while the tenant stays in.

Crew sheet

  1. Mon to ThuShifts from 6 PM to 2:30 AM written as eight hours on each start day. The hours after midnight have no date of their own.
  2. FriCrew sent to a daytime school job. The sheet shows the school, and the 40 minutes back to the office building for a missed corner goes nowhere.
  3. SatA weekend shift on the lobby, written in at the end as a round ten hours.
  4. Next MonTouch-up after the furniture move, filed under general shop time.

Badge record

  1. Mon to ThuEach shift shows its real start and end at the office building, so the hours on each side of midnight are plain to see.
  2. FriSchool hours at the school, the drive as transit, and a short stretch back at the office building.
  3. SatThe weekend shift at the building, 7:12 AM to 4:48 PM, with its exact length.
  4. Next MonTouch-up hours sit at the office building on the date they happened, ready to tie to the furniture move.

Phases and cost codes

How the record lines up with the way a paint job is bid.

ZeroBadge places a painter at a building, not in a suite or on a wall. Phases and units come from dates, which most paint foremen already track.

  • Phases by date

    Prep, prime, finish and touch-up usually run in sequence. Note which nights each phase ran and pull the job's recorded hours for those dates. That is a phase cost without anyone coding a timecard.

  • Cost codes your office already uses

    Wall painting, doors and frames, wallcovering, epoxy floors and specialty coatings can each be a cost code in your own system. The record gives the hours for the dates a code was worked; your cost codes stay where they are.

  • Units inside one building

    Suites, rooms and classrooms in one building are one location to the badge. Track units by date the same way as phases. Separate buildings on a campus can each be drawn, and then they split on their own.

  • Owner extras and time-and-material work

    An accent wall added on Wednesday night or a second color in the corridor is billed on hours. The record shows who was at the building on that night and for how long, which is the support behind the ticket.

Payroll wrinkles

Night premiums, weekend shifts and the week boundary.

  • Shift differentials

    If you pay a night or weekend premium, it is applied in payroll. The record supplies the start and end of each shift, so the hours that qualify under your policy are there to apply it to.

  • A shift that crosses midnight

    A 10 PM to 6:30 AM shift touches two calendar days. Weekly timesheets run Saturday to Friday by default, so a Friday night shift also touches the next week. The record shows when the shift started and ended; how it is assigned for pay and overtime is your payroll rule, so confirm it with your payroll provider.

  • Summer school blitzes

    Long days to finish classrooms before students return show up on the days they happened, at each school, so the overtime goes against the job that needed it.

  • Public repaints

    Federal prevailing wage rules list painting and decorating as covered construction work (29 CFR 5.2). If you repaint schools or other public buildings, see public works contractors for how hours by contract and by day support that work.

Why phones fail a paint crew

Wet paint, a spray rig and somebody else's building.

  • Paint on your hands

    Nobody wants to take out a phone with primer on their gloves, and nobody wants primer on their phone. The badge is switched on once and stays clipped on.

  • A respirator and a sprayer

    Spraying a ceiling means a mask on and both hands busy. Stopping to punch out in an app is exactly the step that gets skipped.

  • The building's Wi-Fi is not yours

    In an occupied building you don't get the tenant's Wi-Fi password, and you shouldn't need it. The badge has its own cellular connection and never uses the building's network or a worker's data plan.

Inside occupied buildings

What the badge does indoors, and what it doesn't.

  • Indoors

    Inside a building the badge uses Wi-Fi positioning, which learns each site over the first visits, with GPS outdoors and cellular continuity in between marked as low confidence. Every reading stores its method.

  • Which building, not which suite

    The record answers which jobsite a painter was at. It will not tell you whether the crew was in suite 410 or 412, and it doesn't try to.

  • Off between shifts

    Power on starts the shift and power off ends it. Between shifts the badge is off and records nothing, which matters to painters who do side work on their own time.

  • Nothing installed in the building

    Each building is a geofence drawn in software from its address. There are no beacons, kiosks or clocks to ask a property manager about.

Rolling it out

Start with the night crew.

  1. 01

    Draw this month's buildings

    Type each address and adjust the geofence. Add the paint store your crews use most, so supply runs show as their own stops.

    Office · first day

  2. 02

    Badge a night crew first

    Night work is where hours are hardest to check from the office. One week of real start and end times shows the gap quickly.

    Office · first week

  3. 03

    Set the foreman's phase dates beside the hours

    Ask the foreman to note which nights were prep and which were coats. Divide the hours by the area and compare with your production rates.

    Estimator · week two

  4. 04

    Approve and send

    Clear the exceptions, approve the week, and approved hours are sent to your payroll provider, with CSV, Excel or PDF export.

    Payroll · weekly

Go deeper

Where painting contractors usually look next.

ZeroBadge AI

Ask ZeroBadge AI about your painting crews

Questions go in as plain English, answers come from your own records, and every figure opens the records behind it.

  • You ask

    How many hours did prep take compared with first coat at the Maple Street offices?

    Prep ran 214 hours from Oct 5 to Oct 11, and first coat 138 hours from Oct 12 to Oct 18, using the foreman's phase dates. Each total links to the nightly shifts.

  • You ask

    Which night crews started late this week?

    Two crews started after the planned 7:00 PM: Crew 2 on Tuesday at 7:41 and Crew 3 on Thursday at 7:26. Shifts that crossed midnight stay on their start date.

  • You ask

    Which building used the most overtime?

    Maple Street used 38 overtime hours, mostly on the weekend shift. The overtime is listed by date and shift and linked to the 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 works

Questions

Questions commercial painting contractors ask.

How do painting contractors separate prep hours from painting hours?
By date. Prep, prime, finish and touch-up usually run in sequence, so the foreman notes which nights each phase ran and the job's recorded hours for those dates give the phase total. Divide by the area for each phase to get a rate you can compare with your bid.
Can it show which suite or room a painter was in?
No. The badge places a painter at a building, not in a suite. Track units by date, the way most foremen already do, and use the recorded hours for those dates.
How does a night shift that crosses midnight show up?
With its real start and end time at the building. Because the shift touches two days, and a Friday night shift touches the next Saturday-to-Friday week, confirm with your payroll provider how those hours are assigned for pay and overtime.
Do we need the building's Wi-Fi or anything installed on site?
No. The badge has its own cellular connection, and each building is a geofence drawn from its address. Indoors it uses Wi-Fi positioning from the networks it can see, without joining any of them.
We also do daytime new-construction work. Does that change anything?
No. A new building is a jobsite like any other, and a painter who works days on new construction and nights on a repaint carries both on one timesheet. Short jobs at several sites are covered on multi-jobsite time tracking.

Last updated

Sources

  1. 1.29 CFR 5.2, Definitions (construction, prosecution, completion, or repair includes painting and decorating) · Electronic Code of Federal Regulations

Get started

See a week of night shifts and a repaint's phases in one record.

We'll walk through ZeroBadge with your crews, the buildings you're working in now and the way your bids are built.

Get startedSee the platform

What we will walk through

  • 01Night and weekend shifts with real start and end times
  • 02Prep and coats by date against your production rates
  • 03Weekly timesheets, review and the payroll integration