Labor: hours, rates and what a job costs you
By the end of this article you will know where a technician’s hours come from, how they are priced, where to read them by day and by week, and how to fix an entry that is wrong.
Where hours come from
A technician records time from the field app, on the job they are working: “Clock in” when they start, “Pause” and “Resume” for a break, “Clock out” when done. The app keeps the entry even without signal and sends it when it has one. One person can be clocked in on one job at a time — tapping “Clock in” on a second job is refused with “You’re clocked in on another job.”
Each entry is one span on one job, with its breaks. Time on a break is not worked time.
How an hour becomes a cost
The moment someone clocks in, their hourly rate at that instant is frozen onto the entry. Changing the rate on their employee record later changes future entries only — last month’s labor cost does not move underneath last month’s books.
Which rate, and whether one is recorded at all, follows the person’s Pay Type:
- Hourly and Both — the entry carries the Hourly Rate ($) on the record, and the minutes, less breaks, are priced at it. Minutes are summed per rate and rounded once, so a day of short entries costs the same as one long one.
- Per Job, Salary and Not set — the hours are recorded but not priced. The job’s cost is the payout on its services, or the salary, not the clock.
That priced time is the labor cost of the job, the “Hourly” column on the payroll report, and the labor expense your books carry when a period is closed.
Reading labor by day and by week
Open Team → Labor. Pick a Technician and a From and To date; the default is the last two weeks.
The first table rolls their worked time up by day across every job — a total the server sums over the whole range, never a page of entries added up on screen — with a chip on any day that went past the company’s daily overtime threshold, if you set one.
By week beneath it re-cuts the same range into whole company weeks, on the day your week starts, with an Overtime column: the hours past the weekly threshold, or past this person’s own Max hours per week if that is lower. Only whole weeks are judged, so the tables snap the range you picked out to week boundaries.
The per-job view is on the job’s own page, under Labor: every entry on that job with clock in, clock out, duration and status.
Correcting an entry
On the job page, anyone who can edit jobs can fix an entry:
- Click Correct on the entry.
- Change the Clock in or Clock out time, or the Note, and give a Reason — one is required.
- Click Save correction, or Void entry to remove the span from every total while keeping its record.
Every correction is kept under Change history on the entry, with who changed what and why. A corrected entry keeps the rate it was frozen with; only the minutes change.
An entry whose labor has already been posted to the books — its period was closed — can no longer be corrected or voided; the app says so. Closed periods are not reopened, so check the Labor page before you close a period, not after.
Overtime thresholds
The thresholds live under Settings → Company, on the Crew Pay tab, in the Overtime card:
- Weekly threshold (hours) — blank means forty.
- Daily threshold (hours) — optional.
- Allow scheduling overtime — on, booking someone past their cap saves with a warning; off, the assignment is refused.
Overtime is flagged, not paid at a premium: the hours are priced at the same frozen rate, and the chips exist so you can see who is over before payroll, not to change what they are owed.
Good to know
- An open entry is not costed yet. A technician who forgot to clock out shows an Open status on the job page; correct it with the real clock-out time and it joins the totals.
- A week is your week. The weekly cut follows the Week starts on setting on the Company tab, so the Labor page and the calendar agree.
- The Labor page is visible to anyone who can view jobs; corrections need edit rights on jobs.