TRADE Time cards for field crews
A time card app your crew will actually use.
One tap when the day changes, with the words your crew already uses. It works with no signal, follows your own pay rules, and prints a weekly card that matches the one in your file cabinet.
Why paper cards go wrong
Written up on Tuesday night, from memory
A paper time card is usually filled in at the end of the week, from memory, in a truck. Start times get rounded, drives get forgotten, and job numbers get guessed. The office then spends Wednesday morning reading handwriting and adding up columns, and a wrong card is a wrong paycheck and often a wrong invoice too.
A time card app fixes that by recording the day as it happens. The trick is making it fast enough that a man with dusty hands at five in the morning actually does it.
How it works
One tap per change in the day
For the crew
- Big buttons in your words. In Saw Time they read In route, On the job, Job complete and Done for the day, because that is what the crew says.
- No gaps in the day. When one line ends the next one starts, so every minute between the first tap and the last belongs to something.
- Works with no signal. Taps are saved on the phone and sent when it has signal again.
- Stays signed in. A four-digit PIN, not a password every morning.
- His own card only. A crew member can see his own hours and nobody else's. That is enforced in the database, not just hidden on the screen.
For the office
- Your pay rules, worked out for you. Your pay week, your travel rule and your overtime rule are set up during the build.
- Rounding if you want it. Saw Time rounds each line to the nearest quarter hour, up or down, from a date the owner chose.
- Fix it, with a record. Correct a line or add a missed punch. Every change keeps who made it, when, and what it was before.
- A location on each tap. Stamped for the office only. Never printed on the card or shown to the crew.
- Approve and send. Lock the week, send each card to payroll as a PDF, and export the hours for payroll and job costing.
The weekly card
It prints like the card you file today
Your columns, in your order, with day totals, a week total and overtime. When the last tap of the pay week is made, the card can sign itself with the crew member's name and the date.
Travel rules
Travel is where most cards go wrong
Crews that take their trucks home start the day wherever they slept, so a fixed shop start time does not work. Many companies treat the drive to the first job and the drive home differently from the driving between jobs. In Saw Time, for one example, the first hour of the drive to the first job and of the drive home is unpaid, everything past that hour is paid, all driving between jobs is paid, and a day that starts at the shop pays all travel.
That is one company's rule, not a default we push on anyone. Your rule is written down with you before the build, and the office can see exactly how each line on the card was worked out. The time is always recorded, even when a part of it is not paid.
Questions
About the time card app
Does the time card app work with no signal?
Yes. Each tap is saved on the phone first and sent when the phone has signal again, so a crew in a basement or a parking structure keeps working and nothing is lost.
Can it follow our own travel and overtime rules?
Yes. Your pay week, your travel rule and your overtime rule are set up for your company during the build, and the office can see how each line was worked out.
Do the crew see the GPS?
A location is stamped on each tap for the office. It is not printed on the time card, not shown on the crew's phone and not sent with the payroll export.
Can the office fix a wrong time?
Yes. The office can correct a line or add a missed punch, and every change is kept on record with who made it, when, and what it was before.
Do we have to stop using paper straight away?
No. The app runs beside your paper cards until the two match week after week, and you decide when the paper stops.
Does it connect to our payroll company?
Saw Time sends each card as a PDF and exports the hours as a spreadsheet. A direct connection to your payroll system is something we would look at and quote for you; we won't promise one we haven't built and tested.
Part of one system
Send us your time card. We'll show you it on a phone.
Tell us how your pay week, travel and overtime work. We'll answer plainly: what we'd build, how long it would take, and what it would cost.