What should a job sheet include about hours?
A job sheet is the shared record between technician, office, and customer of what happened. For hours, the important thing is that someone who wasn’t there can later see exactly what was done and how long it took.
Materials go on the job sheet too, but this article focuses on time—where most of the losses happen.
- Customer and location, plus the project or work order for larger customers.
- Date, start and end time, or the total duration of the job.
- What you did, in a sentence the customer understands: ‘Fixed boiler breakdown, replaced ignition electrode’.
- Extra work on its own line: anything the customer asked for on the spot that wasn’t in the order.
- Travel time and miles, separate from work time.
‘Could you look at the water heater too?’ That half hour isn’t on the work order. Write it down right away as its own line, or it never makes it to the invoice.
How do you keep travel time and work time separate?
In installation work, travel is a big part of the day. Whether it counts as working time and how you pay your employees depends on the collective agreement and employment contract. How you bill it to the customer is a separate agreement, and it can vary by customer.
So log the drive and the work as two separate items. That way, you can decide for each customer how to bill travel later, without changing the work hours.
| Agreement with the customer | When it fits | What you need to log |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed call-out fee per drive | Households and small repairs | Number of drives to the customer |
| Amount per mile | Customers spread out over a wide area | Miles per drive |
| Travel time at part of the hourly rate | Regular maintenance customers | Travel time per drive |
| No separate charge, built into the rate | Fixed-price agreements | Work time only |
How do you log urgent call-outs that weren’t scheduled?
Urgent jobs are the hardest to capture, because they come up between other jobs and often at the end of the day. That’s exactly when the office calls the next morning to ask how long you were there.
Log a call-out before you get back in the van. Two minutes on your phone is enough when customer, time, and description are already known.
- Create a separate activity for urgent or breakdown work, with its own hourly rate if you charge a surcharge.
- Log the job for the customer, with start and end time as they happened that day.
- Describe the issue and what you did in the description.
- Log the drive there separately, so the call-out fee or travel time is billed too.
What do you need to record for van drives?
Drives are logged per vehicle, because tax rules differ by vehicle and country. In the Netherlands, for example, an employee can get a ‘statement of exclusively business use’ for a van used only for business; it’s valid indefinitely but not retroactively.
Where a full trip log is kept, the Dutch Tax Administration expects make, model, license plate, and period of use, and for each drive: date, start and end odometer readings, departure and arrival address, the route if it’s not the usual one, and whether the drive was business or private. More in Mileage logs.
If a technician uses their own car, in the Netherlands you may reimburse up to €0.25 per business kilometer tax-free in 2026. Whether they’re entitled to it depends on the contract, collective agreement, or your own policy.
Why approve hours before invoicing?
The scheduler knows what was planned that week and spots issues faster than the office: a job logged twice, extra work without a description, a drive without a customer.
Approving first and invoicing after means only checked hours go to the customer. That saves credit notes and disputes. How to set it up without it becoming a weekly chore is in Approving hours. Which hours are billable and which aren’t is in Billable hours.
Approve weekly, not monthly. A technician still remembers last Tuesday a week later; after a month, they don’t.
How Half5 does it
In the Half5 app for iPhone and Android, you log hours by customer, project, and activity. Each activity can have its own hourly rate, for example for urgent work. With automatic ride detection, the app prepares your drives for review, optionally with a Bluetooth beacon in the vehicle. You set the purpose of each drive (business, personal, or commute) and confirm the week. Unconfirmed drives are only visible to you. Your location history stays encrypted on your phone; the office only sees the drives you confirm. For each vehicle, you select a tax regime, which determines which fields the drive form asks for.
For each customer, you set how drives are billed: a fixed amount per drive, an amount per mile, or travel time at part of the hourly rate. These amounts show up in reports; drives don’t become lines on the draft invoice. With ‘Approve hours before invoicing’ turned on, an admin or department manager—like the scheduler—approves or declines hours (with a reason), and only approved hours go into ‘Create draft invoices from report’.
Frequently asked questions
Does a technician’s travel time have to be paid as working time?
That depends on your collective agreement and employment contract. Either way, log travel separately from work time so you can apply whatever your agreements require.
How do I make sure extra work doesn’t go unbilled?
Have technicians log extra work as its own line with a separate description, while still at the customer. The scheduler then sees it separately during approval and the office can add it to the invoice.
Can I bill call-out costs differently for each customer?
Yes, as long as drives and work are logged separately. Then you can choose for each customer: a fixed amount per drive, an amount per mile, or travel time at part of the hourly rate.
What goes into a Dutch trip log?
According to the Dutch Tax Administration: make, model, license plate, and period of use of the car, and for each drive: date, odometer readings, departure and arrival address, any unusual route, and whether it was business or private.
Is a digital job sheet on a phone enough?
For hours, yes—if customer, date, time, and description are included and someone checks them. How you record materials or a customer signature is up to your own job sheet process.
