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Specialty contractor time tracking

Time tracking for specialty subs with small crews on many small jobs.

Specialty contractor time tracking has to follow small crews through many small jobs: a two-person team on a retrofit in the morning, a punch list across town after lunch, a stop at the shop between. ZeroBadge puts a company-managed badge on each worker, places every report at the jobsite or shop you've drawn, measures the drives separately and builds the week by job.

Get startedFind your specialty
  • Hours by job, not by crew sheet
  • Shop time and drives shown separately
  • One month or more of battery life*

*Under qualifying operating conditions. Battery life varies with reporting frequency, signal conditions, usage, and configuration.

Oct 5–9

Multi-site

10 of 24

workers this week

Site transfers

3

Transit

19.0 h

  • Riverside
  • Harbor Yard
  • Northgate
  • Shop
  • Cascade Supply
  • Transit

  • Lena O. · Foreman

    4 locations · 46.7 h

    Riverside 0.8 · Harbor Yard 38.1 · Shop 3.4 · Cascade Supply 0.4 · Transit 4.0

  • Ben C. · Journeyman pipefitter

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.0

  • Mateo G. · Sheet metal journeyman

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.1

  • Rosa D. · Journeyman pipefitter

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.0

  • Kenji H. · Apprentice

    3 locations · 47.8 h

    Riverside 44.0 · Shop 0.8 · Cascade Supply 1.2 · Transit 1.8

+ 5 more workers with time at more than one location

Every minute is allocated to the location where it was recorded.

What ZeroBadge does for you

How ZeroBadge helps specialty 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 helper working alone on a small job can press the alert button or SOS, and the office sees which jobsite the alert came from.

    Learn more

  • 02

    Workforce management

    See which small crews are on which jobs and which are at the shop, and answer a general contractor's question about who was on site.

    Learn more

  • 03

    Automated timekeeping

    A foreman-and-helper crew badges on once, and the day splits itself across several small jobs, the shop and supplier counters on one shift.

    Learn more

  • 04

    Workforce productivity

    Compare hours against the bid on each small job and see time-and-material extra work and return trips counted instead of absorbed into the contract.

    Learn more

  • 05

    Location analytics

    GPS outdoors and Wi-Fi positioning indoors place crews at the many addresses you list, so drive time between jobs shows as its own share of the week.

    Learn more

  • 06

    Field logistics

    Balance small crews across jobs using the record of where each foreman spent the week, including mobilization trips and shop days.

    Learn more

  • 07

    AI advisory and analytics

    Ask how much of last week went to driving between open jobs and get an answer from your own badge records, with each number linked to the hours behind it.

    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.

What every specialty sub shares

The work differs by specialty. The way the hours leak is the same.

A fire sprinkler fitter, a drywall hanger and a glazier use different tools. Their crews are small, their jobs are short, and their paperwork gets done at the end of the week.

  • Crews of two to five on jobs of a few days

    A foreman with one helper and a van might start four different jobs in a week. Each one gets a line on a Friday crew sheet, usually the same number of hours rounded to look right.

  • Mobilization and demobilization trips

    Loading the van, driving to a site, carrying material in, and carrying it back out at the end. This is paid time at the beginning and the end of every short job, and it rarely has a line of its own.

  • Shop work that belongs to a job

    Fabrication, pre-assembly, cutting and staging happen at the shop and get installed later. When the hours go on the install, the job looks efficient and the shop looks idle.

  • Phases with waiting in between

    A specialty comes in after one contractor and before another. The crew leaves for a week and returns, and the hours for the second visit have to find the first job again.

  • A general contractor asking who was on site

    The GC wants to know how many of your people were there on a given day. Your answer is a foreman's best memory, and the GC's daily log may disagree.

A specialty sub's week

Four small jobs, a shop day and a punch list, and who was where.

Illustrative week for a two-person crew.

Crew sheet

  1. MonJob A in the morning, Job B after lunch. The sheet reads eight hours at Job A.
  2. TueShop fabrication all morning, then material delivery to Job C. The shop time becomes job time.
  3. Wed to ThuA punch list on a finished job, written up as general overhead with no job on it.
  4. FriThe foreman rebuilds the week from the invoice dates and a notebook.

Badge record

  1. MonJob A and Job B each carry their own hours, with the drive between them as transit.
  2. TueShop hours appear as shop hours. The delivery to Job C is its own stretch.
  3. Wed to ThuPunch-list hours sit at the finished job, so the cost of closing it out is visible.
  4. FriTimesheets arrive already split by job. The foreman clears the flagged items.

The cost of moving between small jobs

Drive time between jobs is a bigger share of the week than it looks.

Take a two-person crew that moves between jobs three times a day, at 25 minutes a move. That is 75 minutes per person per day, or 6.25 hours over five days. Across both people it is 12.5 hours, about 16 percent of one person's 40-hour week.

That time isn't wasted or misplaced; it is part of the job. The question is which job pays for it. When drives are recorded as transit between the sites you've drawn, you can see the total and decide how to bid it, instead of finding it as an unexplained gap between the hours on the invoice and the hours on payroll.

Labor by jobsite

Recorded

1,045.2 h

Overtime

95.7 h

Workers

24

  • Riverside Medical Pavilion

    375.0 h

    ▲ +129.9 h vs prior week · OT 38.3 h◆ Plan 340.0 h

  • Harbor Yard Distribution Center

    300.8 h

    ▼ −97.0 h vs prior week · OT 3.8 hPlan 310.0 h

  • Northgate Tower

    328.9 h

    ▼ −1.4 h vs prior week · OT 17.6 hPlan 330.0 h

What changed

Riverside Medical Pavilion recorded 375.0 hours, up 129.9 hours (+53%) from the week of Sep 28.

3 workers (Ben C., Mateo G., Rosa D.) recorded time at Riverside from Tue Oct 6 after working at Harbor Yard. Their time accounts for 108.8 of the added hours.

Overtime rule shown: after 8 hours in a day or 40 regular hours in a week. Overtime cost adds a 0.5× premium on base wage to the loaded hourly rate. Your own payroll rules apply.

Shop time and phases

How the record handles the shop, the phases and the return trips.

  • The shop

    Draw the shop as an office location. Fabrication and staging hours appear as shop hours on every timesheet, and you can total them by week or by month.

  • Phases by date

    A phase is a stretch of dates on a job. Pull a job's recorded hours for the dates a phase ran, including a return visit three weeks later, and the second visit is on the same job as the first.

  • Supplier counters

    A supply house or a distributor's counter is a location like any other. A stop appears as its own line instead of disappearing into the next job's hours.

  • Jobs inside one building

    ZeroBadge places a person at a building, not on a floor or in a room. Two jobs in the same building on the same day are one location unless you draw them as separate buildings.

Payroll wrinkles and the GC's questions

Mixed rates, extra work and the manpower request.

  • Public and private work in one week

    Every hour carries its job, so hours on a public project and a private one reach payroll already separated. Rates, fringes and certified payroll forms are handled in your payroll process; confirm each contract's rules with your payroll provider or counsel.

  • Time-and-material extra work

    Extra work is billed on hours. The record shows who was at the job on each day and for how long, which is the support behind a change-order or T&M ticket.

  • Manpower asked for by the GC

    Export hours and headcount by job and day for your own employees as CSV, Excel or PDF. That is the evidence behind your side of a daily-log or manpower disagreement, and it is not a feed into the GC's own system.

  • Overtime on a rush job

    A few long days to hit a milestone are visible on the days they happened, by job, so the overtime goes against the job that caused it.

Why phone clocks fail a small specialty crew

The foreman is the clock, and the foreman is busy.

  • A helper without a company phone

    Helpers and apprentices come and go. Installing an app on a personal phone for each new one is a chore that gets skipped, and the foreman punches for them from memory.

  • Many sites, one geofence list

    A phone app has to know each new job before the crew arrives. A job added on Tuesday morning is not on the list yet, and the hours go nowhere.

  • Tools in both hands

    Overhead work, a lift and a roof edge are poor places to take out a phone. The badge is turned on once and left alone.

Find your specialty

Each specialty has its own days, phases and payroll questions.

The badge and the weekly timesheet are the same for every one. These pages cover what is specific to the work.

Rolling it out

Badge the crews that move the most first.

  1. 01

    Draw the shop and this month's jobs

    Type each address and adjust the geofence. Add the supply houses your crews use most. Add new jobs as they are awarded.

    Office · first day

  2. 02

    Start with the foreman-and-helper crews

    These are the crews with the most jobs a week and the most hours lost to a crew sheet. Add the rest once the first week looks right.

    Office · first week

  3. 03

    Check one week against your invoices

    Compare recorded hours by job with what you billed. The gaps point to unrecorded shop and drive time.

    PM · week two

  4. 04

    Approve and send

    Weekly timesheets run Saturday to Friday. Approved hours are sent to your payroll provider.

    Payroll · weekly

Go deeper

Where specialty contractors usually look next.

ZeroBadge AI

Ask ZeroBadge AI about your small jobs

No reports to build first. Ask, read the answer from your own records, and open any number to see what is behind it.

  • You ask

    How much of last week went to driving between the six open jobs?

    Crews recorded 47 hours of transit out of 392 total hours, 12%. Drive time between jobs is listed by crew and day.

  • You ask

    Which jobs had a crew on site Tuesday?

    Three jobs: Eastgate with 22 hours, Park Place with 18 and Mill Street with 9, each with arrival and departure times. That is the answer to a manpower request.

  • You ask

    How many shop hours did we record last week?

    The shop recorded 96 hours on its own line against the jobs it fed. Each shop shift is listed by worker.

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 specialty contractors ask.

How do specialty subcontractors track hours across many small jobs?
Draw each job and the shop as locations and give each worker a badge. Every report is placed at one of them, so a week of short jobs becomes a list of stretches by job, with drives and shop time as their own lines. Nobody rebuilds it from a notebook.
Can a specialty sub use ZeroBadge if its specialty isn't listed?
Yes. The badge records where people are and for how long, which works the same for any specialty. The specialty pages cover the details that differ, such as phases and shop work, but none of them changes how the badge works.
How do I answer a general contractor's manpower request?
Export hours and headcount by job and day for your own employees. It gives you a record for your side of a daily-log disagreement. It doesn't connect to the GC's systems, and it shows only the people who wore your badges.
Is drive time between small jobs recorded?
Yes, as transit, separate from time on site. Whether and how it is paid follows your policy and your state's rules; the record shows it so you can apply them.
Does it handle a crew that works for several general contractors in a week?
Yes. Each project is a location, whoever the GC is. Hours by job reach the weekly timesheet and payroll with each job kept separate.

Last updated

Get started

See your small jobs, your shop and your drives in one week's record.

We'll walk through ZeroBadge with your crews, your active jobs and the way your hours reach payroll today.

Get startedSee the platform

What we will walk through

  • 01How a two-person crew's day across several jobs is recorded
  • 02Shop time and drives, separated from time on site
  • 03Weekly timesheets, review and the payroll integration