Every hour tracked,
every job costed

A field service time app allows field technicians on jobsites to immediately and accurately track the time spent on the job using their phone or mobile device. They can add labor hours immediately after completing work so that no time is missed. Because the time is tracked in the app and then synced immediately, the time tracked can be leveraged by other roles in the company, adding hours as line items to invoices automatically, or linking to payroll for your field technicians.

For the complexity of commercial work, a field time app can’t just be a separate tool. By far, the most important “feature” is that time tracking is directly connected to other aspects of the entire field operation, as this is what helps keep commercial jobs and projects fully aligned with everything else that’s happening. Look for a field time app that has these features directly tied to time tracking:

1. Technician Mobile App—Sync data instantly right from field to office, across all team members, in real-time.
2. Scheduling & Dispatching—Optimize tech schedules based on skills and industry certifications, and proximity to jobsite, so techs spend more time on site and less time traveling.
3. Invoicing—Invoices that can leverage labor hours tracked automatically.
4. Reporting & Analytics—Create custom reports and dashboards based on field tech profitability.
5. Integrations—With any other essential financial tools or your ERP. Most platforms should integrate with key tools used by field teams like QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, and Viewpoint.
6. Project Financials—Connect field activity directly to the bottom line with real-time visibility into costs, billing, and margins to catch drift before it becomes a problem.
7. Resource Planning—See every crew, every project, and everything you need in one platform where everything is connected to your project plans and your people.

We think it depends most on the type of work you do.

For commercial field service teams in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire & life safety, and refrigeration, BuildOps is built specifically for you. It's the only field time app that was designed from day one for how commercial trades actually operate, connecting time tracking, quoting, service work, projects, financials, and AI in a single system.

For residential contractors focused primarily on home service and repair, tools like Jobber or Housecall Pro may be a better fit for simpler time tracking. Those platforms are designed around the residential workflow with shorter jobs and homeowner-facing features.

The key difference: residential tools weren't built to handle the complexity of commercial construction time tracking like multi-phase schedules, GC coordination, long-term margin scope tracking, or formal document control. If your work involves any of that, you need a commercial field time app that actually speaks the language of commercial projects.

Of course we do! Using BuildOps, our customers have seen significant efficiency improvements including:

• Certified Fire saw service employee billable time increase from 75% to over 95%, monthly service billing rose 54%, and an incredible 250% increase in profit margins
• Jackson Mechanical saw a 100% increase in tickets handled with no headcount added, a 50% reduction in time taken to create a job and get it scheduled, and a 30% growth in revenue
• Service 1st went from 3-4 systems down to 1, saw 2x faster invoicing, and had a record year
• Layer One fixed their job costing process, saving 1 week of manual work every month‍
• Classic Electric unified their whole operation in a single platform, achieving 300% growth‍
• Jolma Electric saw a 50% leap in overall efficiency

There’s a clear reason why scaling commercial teams use BuildOps to track every labor hour.

Approved time entries flow to your ERP mapped to jobs, cost codes, and labor types, with regular, OT, and double time separated and ready for export. BuildOps tracks and organizes the hours. For payroll calculation including complex OT, prevailing wage, union rules, and certified payroll, BuildOps exports structured time data that works with the payroll platform your business already runs. For QBO/QBD customers, time data exports via file for import into payroll, while complex OT rules may require manual adjustment on the QuickBooks side.

Yes. Technicians and crew clock in and out on the BuildOps mobile app, tied to the job, cost code, and phase they're on. Time logs to the right job record so the office sees hours as they build. For project work, field teams can now track time directly on projects including cost codes, phases, and meal breaks without going through a daily report.

You can set daily and weekly OT thresholds once in Labor Settings. BuildOps applies them in bulk across a pay period, so there’s no more editing timesheets line by line to split regular and overtime.

BuildOps supports basic overtime thresholds and labor type assignments per employee, which works well for contractors with straightforward union and non-union crew structures.

For contractors who need certified payroll, prevailing wage calculations, or complex union rule sets, BuildOps exports clean, job-coded time data that integrates with payroll platforms built for that purpose.

Yes. Supervisors review and approve time entries by employee and pay period. Approved hours lock and flow to payroll so corrections happen before export, not after. Unapproved, disputed, or reopened timesheets are visible across the team so nothing slips through before payroll closes.

In BuildOps, every hour logged is tied to a job and cost code. Labor costs roll into job reports and T&M invoices so you see true profitability per job before the invoice goes out.