Track Time on Jobs
Estimate how long jobs will take and record actual duration after completion. Use this data to improve scheduling, quoting accuracy, and understand your true labour costs.
Why track job duration
Accurate quoting
Use historical job durations to price future work realistically.
Schedule planning
Know how long jobs take to avoid overbooking technicians.
Identify inefficiencies
Spot jobs that consistently take longer than expected.
Labour cost visibility
Understand true time costs even on fixed-price jobs.
Customer transparency
Show how long work took when customers have questions.
Team capacity planning
Schedule realistic workloads based on actual job times.
Estimate duration when creating jobs
Setting estimated duration helps with scheduling and prevents overbooking technicians.
- Create or edit a job.
- Set the Estimated duration field (hours and minutes).
- Use this estimate for scheduling—appears on calendar views.
- Base estimates on past similar jobs or industry standards.
- Over-estimate slightly to avoid schedule conflicts.
Record actual duration after completion
After completing work, record how long it actually took. This improves future estimates and reveals true labour costs.
- Open the completed job.
- Scroll to the Duration section.
- Enter the actual time spent (hours and minutes).
- Add notes about why it differed from estimate if relevant.
- Save—this data feeds into your future quoting accuracy.
Use duration data to improve
- View job history to see estimated vs actual duration trends.
- Use actual durations to refine estimates for similar job types.
- Export job reports with duration data for analysis.
- Track which job types consistently run over/under estimate.
- Adjust pricing or estimates based on duration patterns.
Scheduling with duration estimates
- Leave buffer time between jobs—not every job fits perfectly into estimates.
- Round up estimates for customer jobs, round accurately for internal tracking.
- Factor in travel time separately from job duration.
- Review weekly schedule to ensure realistic daily workloads.
- Update estimates if job types consistently take longer than expected.
Common scenarios
Quick repair
Estimated 1 hour, actually took 30 minutes. Record 0.5 hours actual—next time estimate 45 minutes to be safer.
Complex install
Estimated 3 hours, actually took 5 hours due to unexpected issues. Record 5 hours and note complications for future reference.
Multi-visit job
Estimated 2 hours per visit, 3 visits total. Record actual duration for each visit separately to track total project time.
Duration tracking for billing
- Duration tracking helps pricing, even on fixed-price jobs.
- Know your true hourly cost—compare duration to what you charged.
- Use duration data to justify hourly rate increases if jobs take longer than industry averages.
- Show customers time invested when explaining charges on T&M (time and materials) jobs.
Generate duration reports
- Go to Reports → Jobs.
- Filter by date range, technician, or job type.
- Export CSV with estimated and actual durations.
- Analyze patterns: which jobs run over? Which finish early?
- Use insights to improve future estimates and scheduling.
Best practices
- Always set estimated duration when creating jobs—helps scheduling.
- Record actual duration after every job, even if close to estimate.
- Add notes when duration differs significantly from estimate.
- Review duration reports monthly to improve quoting accuracy.
- Train technicians to record accurate durations, not rounded guesses.
- Use duration data for both billing and operational improvement.
Troubleshooting
Forgot to record duration
- Open the completed job and add duration retroactively.
- Estimate based on technician feedback or customer interaction time.
- Better to have approximate data than none—helps future estimates.
Duration much longer than estimate
- Record the actual time—don't adjust to match estimate.
- Add notes explaining what caused the overrun.
- Use this data to improve future estimates for similar jobs.
- Consider whether estimate was too optimistic or job had unique issues.
Multiple technicians on one job
- Record total labor hours (e.g., 2 technicians × 3 hours = 6 labor hours).
- Or record duration as wall-clock time (3 hours with 2 people).
- Be consistent across all jobs for accurate reporting.