Employee Time Tracking Guide for Field Service Teams (2026)

Why time tracking is a compliance problem now

The Toolfy Scaling Bottlenecks review from 17 Nov 2025 documented that SMS onboarding and manual record checks jump to 10–15 hours per week once you’re onboarding 50+ new customers (SCALING_BOTTLENECKS_SOLO_FOUNDER.md, lines 90-104). That same backlog applies to timesheets: if you can’t reconcile hours fast, you pay overtime twice—once in wages, again in tribunal settlements.

Working Time Regulations require retaining proof of hours for two years (source: gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours). HMRC also expects overtime adjustments when you go over the 48-hour average unless employees signed an opt-out. No signed timesheet = you lose disputes immediately.

• 48-hour average cap unless you have written opt-outs.
• Night work limited to 8 hours per 24-hour period—requires medical surveillance.
• Need rest records for at least two years and ideally stored per vehicle/crew.

Signals you need to overhaul timesheets

• Technicians texting dispatch to add travel time later (no GPS proof).
• Payroll team manually editing CSVs each Friday.
• Customer complaints about “phantom hours” that you cannot disprove.
• Average job duration in Toolfy exceeds paid hours by 10%+.

Build an audit-ready timesheet workflow in Toolfy

Use this order of operations so you’re not rewriting policies mid-investigation.

1. Baseline actuals. Export Toolfy job durations for the last 4 weeks and compare them to payroll hours. Anything beyond ±10% variance becomes remediation priority.
2. Publish the policy. Use a short handbook addendum covering clock-ins, meal breaks, drive time, overtime approvals, and disciplinary outcomes. Reference ACAS guidance to keep it defensible.
3. Configure Toolfy mobile. Turn on GPS-required status transitions, enforce photo uploads at arrival/departure, and lock timesheets until the photo exists.
4. Automate approvals. Use Toolfy automations so crew leads sign off on their team’s hours nightly. Late approvals trigger reminders in Slack or email.
5. Store exports centrally. Drop final CSV exports + signed policy PDFs inside Documents /HR/Timesheets/2026 so every record lives beside the job history.

Coach with data every Monday

Run a Monday morning dashboard (Jobs → Reports → Time Variance) highlighting missing entries, jobs with >120% quoted time, and technicians who forgot to end shifts. Repeat offenders get 1:1 coaching, then disciplinary notes if it happens thrice in a quarter.

Automate time checks with ChatGPT Apps

Toolfy’s ChatGPT Apps integration lets you push time entries or reminders via PAT-authenticated tools (docs/CHATGPT_APPS.md). When your GPT spots “Arrived at job in 5” in a conversation, it can call /api/jobs/:id to add a time log, provided you pass the headers below.

Pair that with Toolfy Automations: when a technician forgets to clock out for 30+ minutes after “Job Complete,” send them an SMS + in-app ping reminding them to close the timesheet before payroll locks.

Interactive checklist: time tracking policy rollout