Time Tracking is the bridge between what your tech said they were doing and what you bill the customer for. Done well, it surfaces hidden labor cost, justifies tier increases, and turns time-and-materials disputes into one-click resolutions. This guide walks the conceptual model — what to track, how to track it without burdening the field tech, and the metrics that turn raw timestamps into business decisions.
Note: A dedicated Time Tracking & Timesheets surface is currently in development. This guide covers the concepts you can apply today (job duration tracking via the Job detail page, dispatcher manual logs) and previews what the dedicated feature will offer. Watch GH issue #2010 for shipping updates.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Why Time Tracking is the most underrated metric
Most contractors track jobs completed, invoices paid, and customer ratings. Few track time-per-job-type carefully. The result: pricing drifts, profitability per service diverges, the contractor finds themselves doing 3-hour jobs at a 2-hour quote without noticing — until margin collapse forces a reckoning.
Time data tells you four things that nothing else does:
- True hourly margin per service — labor cost / revenue ÷ hours = real $/hr. Often shockingly different from your billable rate.
- Tech utilization — billable hours ÷ paid hours. Healthy is 65-80% (the rest is drive time, parts runs, admin, lunch). Below 50% means you’re paying for slack; above 90% means you’re burning out the team.
- Estimate accuracy — quoted hours vs actual hours, by service. Drift signals the price book needs an update.
- Overtime liability — labor-law compliance for hourly W-2 techs.
Without this data you’re flying blind on the largest cost in field service: labor.
What to track (the minimum useful set)
Three timestamps per job is usually enough:
- Travel start — tech leaves previous location toward this job
- On-site arrival — tech’s clock-in at the customer property
- On-site departure — tech’s clock-out, leaves for next job (or home)
From these you derive:
- Drive time = arrival - travel start
- On-site time = departure - arrival
- Total billable = on-site time (most contractors don’t bill drive)
Add a fourth optional timestamp — completion — if your tech writes paperwork in the truck after leaving the customer’s view. Improves accuracy of admin overhead.
How to capture timestamps without slowing techs down
Three patterns, in order of accuracy:
Pattern 1: Mobile app tap-to-track (best)
Tech opens the job in the Exoserva mobile app, taps Start Travel when leaving, Arrived at the customer, Complete when finishing. Three taps per job. Captures GPS location automatically — useful for verifying drive distance.
This is the gold-standard pattern. If your team will use the mobile app daily, this gives clean data with minimal friction.
Pattern 2: Dispatcher logs from radio updates
Dispatcher updates the job in Exoserva based on tech’s radio/text checkin: “Mike just arrived at Garcia”, “Sarah finished at Wilson”. Less accurate than self-tap but works for teams not yet on mobile.
Pattern 3: End-of-day reconstruction (worst)
Tech reconstructs their day at 6 PM in the office: “I think I left Wilson around 11”. Don’t do this — humans are bad at recall, every estimate is rounded to nearest 15 minutes, the data isn’t useful for serious analysis.
The metrics worth the time
Once you have timestamps for ~90 days, run these analyses:
Tech-level utilization
For each tech: total billable hours ÷ total paid hours, weekly. Anyone consistently below 50% is a candidate for either coaching or part-time conversion. Anyone consistently above 90% is at burnout risk.
Service-type margin
For each service in your Price Book: average billable hours × your loaded labor cost vs. the price you charge. Surface services where margin is below 30% — those need a price update or scope clarification.
Estimate accuracy
For each service: estimated hours (from price book) vs. actual hours (from tracking). Services with drift > 25% in either direction need a price book update.
Drive-time burden
Total drive hours ÷ total paid hours. >25% means routing is broken (see Route Optimization). Healthy operations are 12-18%.
What to do with the data
Three immediate actions for most contractors who first see clean tracking data:
- Raise prices on low-margin services — usually 1-3 services that look profitable on quoted price but lose money on actual hours. Quick fix; small effort, immediate margin recovery.
- Reschedule the chronically over-loaded tech — utilization > 95% predicts a burnout exit within 6 months. Cost of replacing that tech: $15-30k. Cheaper to redistribute work now.
- Update price book quote times — if your “AC tune-up — 60 min” actually averages 92 min, change the quote to 90 min and raise the price proportionally. Customers don’t care about the per-minute rate; they care about predictability.
Compliance corner
For W-2 hourly technicians, time tracking is also a legal compliance tool:
- Overtime accrual — US federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires 1.5x pay over 40 hr/week
- State-specific overtime — some states (CA, AK, NV) have daily overtime over 8 hr/day
- Record retention — most jurisdictions require 2-3 years of tracked time records
A field-service platform that captures this data automatically — vs. paper timesheets reconstructed at end of week — eliminates the most common labor-law violation contractors get hit with: missing overtime pay claims that surface 18 months later in a state audit.
What the dedicated feature will add
The shipping Time Tracking surface (in development per GH issue #2010) will provide:
- A unified Timesheets page with per-tech / per-week views
- Approval workflow — tech submits → manager approves → exported to payroll
- Payroll integration — direct push to Gusto / ADP / Paychex
- Compliance reports — overtime, state-specific rules, audit trail
- Mobile clock-in / clock-out — separate from job-level tap-to-track for all working time (not just on-job time)
For now: use the per-job timestamps from the Jobs detail page (Creating and Managing Jobs) and export to CSV for analysis in a spreadsheet.
Where to start in Exoserva
- Creating and Managing Jobs — per-job timestamps live here today
- Reports and Analytics — pull duration data into custom reports
- Setting Up Your Price Book — calibrate quoted hours from real time data
- Route Optimization: Reduce Drive Time — drive time is the most-easily-fixed labor leak
Need help? Post in the Tech Support category or contact support@exoserva.com.