The email from the GC's project manager runs three sentences. Two of your invoice lines are approved. Two are held: "Travel — 36.0 hrs — $2,160.00" and "Per diem — 4 men, 12 days — $8,764.80." The note says, "Need backup on these."
Electrician per diem and travel time billing is where most T&M invoices stall, and the reason is structural. Every other line on that invoice has visible work attached to it. Travel and per diem do not.
The customer sees a number and is asked to take your word for it. The charge was probably fair. The explanation was missing.
Almost everything written about per diem and travel for electricians is written to the electrician — what a traveler earns, how to keep a tax home, which locals pay subsistence. This is the other half, written for the person who has to pay the crew, then bill somebody, then defend both.
Two Ledgers, Two Rule Books
What you owe your electrician for travel and per diem, and what you can bill your customer for it, are two different numbers set by two unrelated rule books. Confusing them is the most common way these charges end up written off.
The pay side is federal and state wage law. It does not care what your contract says.
The bill side is your contract. It does not care what the Department of Labor says.
| Question | Pay ledger: what you owe the crew | Bill ledger: what you charge the customer |
| Who decides | FLSA, the Portal-to-Portal Act, state wage law, your CBA | The contract, proposal, or work authorization |
| Travel hours | Compensable or not under 29 CFR 785.35 through 785.41 | Billable only if a clause says so, at whatever rate that clause sets |
| Overtime | Compensable travel counts toward the 40-hour week | Irrelevant to the customer unless the contract prices OT separately |
| Per diem | Accountable plan under IRS rules, or it becomes taxable wages | Reimbursable expense, at cost or with the markup the contract allows |
| Proof required | Payroll records, travel log, receipts or federal-rate substantiation | A line the customer can reconstruct without calling you |
When Is Drive Time Paid Time?
Under federal law, an ordinary commute from home to the jobsite is not paid, but travel that happens after the workday has already started is. That single distinction settles most arguments about drive time.
The governing rules are the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 and the DOL regulations at 29 CFR 785.35 through 785.41. Here is how they land on an electrical crew.
- Home to the jobsite, ordinary day (785.35). Not paid. A journeyman driving from his house to the school job is commuting, even at 60 miles out, even in a company truck.
- Shop first, then the site (785.38). Paid. Once a worker reports to the shop to pick up material, load a bender, or get the day's instructions, the workday has started and travel to the site is hours worked.
- Site to site during the day (785.38). Paid. Driving from the strip-mall service call to the apartment rough-in is part of the day's work.
- One-day trip to another city (785.37). Paid, less what an ordinary commute would have been. Send a crew 200 miles and back in a day and that travel is worktime.
- Overnight travel away from home (785.39). Paid when it cuts across normal working hours, including on nonworking days. If the crew normally works 7:00a to 3:30p and drives out on a Sunday, the hours between 7:00a and 3:30p that Sunday are hours worked.
- Working while riding (785.41). Always paid. A foreman filling out the daily report or taking office calls from the passenger seat is working, whatever time it is.
Travel Hours Push a Week Into Overtime
Compensable travel counts toward the 40-hour workweek. Add a 4.5-hour travel leg to a week that already had 40 on-site hours and those 4.5 hours are owed at time and a half.
Example arithmetic: at a base rate of $38.00/hr, that leg costs $57.00/hr instead of $38.00 — $256.50 instead of $171.00, for one man, on one travel day. Run it with your own base rate.
Your State May Be Stricter
Federal rules are the floor. California treats time under the employer's control as hours worked, which under Morillion v. Royal Packing Co. (Cal. 2000) includes mandatory employer-provided transportation. Washington and Oregon also read travel time more broadly than the FLSA does.
If your crew crosses state lines mid-week, check the rule in the state where the hours were worked before you assume the federal answer applies.
Per Diem: What You Owe, and When It Turns Into Taxable Wages
Per diem stays tax-free to the worker and deductible to you only if you pay it under an accountable plan. Miss that and the entire allowance becomes W-2 wages, with payroll tax on both sides of it.
An accountable plan has three requirements under Treasury Reg. 1.62-2: a business connection, substantiation within a reasonable time, and return of any excess. The safe harbor is substantiating within 60 days of the expense and returning excess within 120 days.
Pay at or below the federal per diem rate and the worker does not have to prove actual amounts spent, only time, place, and business purpose. That is the entire reason to use the federal rate method: it trades a shoebox of receipts for a travel log.
GSA publishes lodging and M&IE rates by county at gsa.gov/perdiem, with a standard CONUS rate where a county is not listed. The first and last day of travel are paid at 75% of the M&IE portion.
Three Rules That Bite
- The overnight-rest test. Per diem requires travel away from the tax home substantially longer than an ordinary workday, requiring sleep or rest (IRS Publication 463). A long drive out and back the same day does not qualify, however brutal it was.
- The one-year rule. If an assignment is realistically expected to last more than a year, it is indefinite, the worker's tax home moves to the job location, and per diem becomes taxable wages from that point. Assignments that creep from "about eight months" to sixteen are where this lands.
- Never tie per diem to hours worked. In Clarke v. AMN Services (9th Cir. 2021), a per diem that was reduced when workers missed scheduled shifts was held to function as compensation for work rather than reimbursement for expenses, so it had to be included in the regular rate and it raised every overtime hour.
What You Can Actually Bill the Customer for Travel and Per Diem
You can bill exactly what the contract says you can bill, and nothing else. There is no legal right to charge a customer for travel time or per diem — the right comes from a clause, and with no clause the line gets struck.
Nothing in the wage rules above creates a billing right. You can owe an electrician nine hours of travel pay and have no contractual basis to bill a minute of it.
These are the four ways travel gets priced on electrical T&M work.
| Method | How it reads on the invoice | Best fit | The argument it invites |
| Travel hours at the full labor rate | 18.0 hrs at $95.00 | Away jobs where the crew is unavailable to you all day | "I am paying wrench-time rates for someone to sit in a truck" |
| Travel hours at a reduced travel rate | 18.0 hrs at $60.00 | Most commercial T&M, because it splits the difference visibly | Reviewer has to find the travel rate in the contract — cite the article number on the line |
| Flat trip or zone charge | Mobilization, Zone 3, $450.00 | Repeat service work with predictable distance bands | "What is a zone?" Your billing zones are yours to define and are not the CBA's zones — publish the map in the contract |
| Per mile | 512 mi at the current IRS rate | Owner-operator and light service work | Mileage does not cover the man in the seat |
Per diem is normally billed as a reimbursable expense, either passed through at cost or at cost plus a stated percentage. Which one you get is a contract question, not a custom.
Contract Language You Can Copy
Get this into the proposal or work authorization before the first truck rolls. These charges are won at signing and merely collected at invoicing.
TRAVEL TIME. Travel time between Contractor's shop or yard and the Project
site, and between the Project site and any material supplier, is billable
at $______ per hour per worker, portal to portal, from departure from the
shop until arrival on site and from departure from the site until return
to the shop. Travel hours will be documented on the labor backup with
departure time, arrival time, origin, destination, worker names, and the
purpose of the trip.
PER DIEM AND LODGING. For work performed more than ______ road miles from
Contractor's shop and requiring an overnight stay, Owner shall reimburse
per diem at the published GSA lodging and M and IE rate for the Project's
county, per worker per day, with M and IE at 75 percent on the first and
last day of travel, plus ______ percent. Lodging folios and a signed
travel log will accompany each invoice.
RETURN TRIPS. Trips caused by Owner-directed changes, denied or delayed
site access, or conditions not shown in the Contract Documents are
billable as travel under this Article and will be identified on the
invoice by the RFI, change order, or field directive that caused them.
Fill in the blanks with your own numbers. Set the travel rate against your own burdened cost, not against a percentage of your labor rate: take your burdened hourly cost, multiply by 1.5, and make sure the travel rate clears it. The worked example in the next section shows what happens when it does not. The contract governs, not the custom.
The T&M Billing Backup Kit has a work authorization form these clauses drop into, plus the labor backup sheet the travel hours land on. It is free and it does not require an account.
A Worked Example: One Away Job, Both Ledgers
Every number below is an example with its inputs shown. Substitute your own rates and the arithmetic still works.
The scenario
Four electricians, shop in Shreveport, job in Baton Rouge, 4.5 hours each way. They leave Monday the 8th, work ten days, and drive home on the 19th. Twelve per diem days, eleven nights lodged.
The inputs
| Input | Example value |
| Crew size | 4 electricians |
| Base pay rate, what you pay | $38.00/hr |
| Working bill rate | $95.00/hr |
| Contract travel bill rate | $60.00/hr |
| Travel, round trip | 9.0 hrs per man, 36.0 hrs total |
| Per diem, standard CONUS example rate | $110 lodging plus $68 M&IE, $178/day |
| First and last travel day | M&IE at 75%, so $51 |
| Contract per diem markup | 10% |
Pay ledger: what you owe
| Item | Arithmetic | Amount |
| Travel wages, straight time | 36.0 hrs at $38.00 | $1,368.00 |
| Per diem, day 1, lodging plus 75% M&IE | 4 men at $161.00 | $644.00 |
| Per diem, days 2 through 11 | 4 men, 10 days, $178.00 | $7,120.00 |
| Per diem, day 12, M&IE only at 75% | 4 men at $51.00 | $204.00 |
| Total owed | Sum of the four lines above | $9,336.00 |
Bill ledger: what the contract lets you charge
| Item | Arithmetic | Amount |
| Travel | 36.0 hrs at $60.00 | $2,160.00 |
| Per diem, at cost plus 10% | $7,968.00 times 1.10 | $8,764.80 |
| Total billed | Sum of the two lines above | $10,924.80 |
Now add the overtime the pay ledger created
Both travel legs land in weeks that already hit 40 on-site hours, so those 36 travel hours are owed at $57.00/hr, not $38.00. Travel wages become 36.0 hrs at $57.00, or $2,052.00.
Total owed rises to $10,020.00, and the spread on the whole travel-and-per-diem block drops from $1,588.80 to $904.80.
Look at where that $904.80 actually comes from. The per diem markup is $796.80, which is $7,968.00 at 10 percent. The driving is the other $108.00 — thirty-six hours of it, four men, two trucks, for $108.00 gross. And that is before burden. Once payroll tax, comp, and liability ride on top of the $57.00, a $60.00 travel rate loses money on every overtime travel hour.
Your customer's rate does not move because your week went into overtime. Schedule travel legs into the front of a workweek where you can, and set the travel rate high enough to survive the ones you cannot.
If drive time is eating your margin on local work too, that is a different problem with a different fix — drive time versus wrench time covers the internal side of it.
The Line That Gets Struck, and the Line That Doesn't
A travel or per diem line survives review when the customer can rebuild it without calling you. Both versions below bill the same money for the same work.
This one gets held:
Travel .......... 36.0 hrs at $60.00 .......... $2,160.00
Per diem ........ 4 men, 12 days ............... $8,764.80
This one gets paid:
TRAVEL - Mobilization, Mon 6/08
Crew of 4 (Ruiz, Delgado, Hanley, Batiste) departed Shreveport shop
5:10a, arrived Baton Rouge site 9:40a. 4.5 hrs each, 18.0 hrs total.
Two trucks, hauled the 500 ft MC reel, 200A temp panel, and hydraulic
bender per RFI-04. Contract travel rate, Article 7.2.
18.0 hrs at $60.00 ........................... $1,080.00
TRAVEL - Demobilization, Fri 6/19
Same crew departed site 2:15p after final megger readings, arrived
shop 6:45p. 4.5 hrs each, 18.0 hrs total.
18.0 hrs at $60.00 ........................... $1,080.00
PER DIEM - crew lodged Baton Rouge, nights of 6/08 through 6/18
4 men, 11 nights lodging, 12 M and IE days at the published GSA
rate for the Project county per Article 7.3, first and last day
M and IE at 75 percent. Folio copies attached. Cost $7,968.00
plus 10 percent.
............................................. $8,764.80
Note the 5:10a departure, because the pay ledger and the bill ledger part company right there. Under 785.39, only the portion of an overnight leg falling inside normal working hours is owed to the men riding — the driver is working the whole leg under 785.41. The pay ledger above pays all four portal to portal because the contract bills it that way and because splitting one truck two ways on a payroll register costs more in bookkeeping than the trimmed hours are worth. Decide which way you do it before the trip, not after the invoice.
Same dollars either way. The second version answers the questions the PM was going to ask, in the order he was going to ask them, before he asks.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is not a software feature. It is a sentence somebody wrote down while the truck was still warm.
The Five Fields a Travel Line Needs
Every defensible travel line answers five questions. Miss one and the reviewer has a reason to hold it.
- Date. The specific day, not "week of."
- Who. Names, not a headcount. "Crew of 4" is a claim; four names is a record.
- From where to where. Shop to site, site to supply house, site to shop.
- How long or how far. Departure and arrival times, or odometer readings.
- Why the trip happened. The load hauled, the RFI number, the directive that sent them back.
Per diem lines need their own four: nights lodged with dates, headcount, the rate basis you used, and where the crew stayed. Attach the folios and the argument ends.
Return trips to a local job are a separate line item with separate rules — the mobilization and remobilization charge is worth getting right before you fold it into travel.
Getting the Crew to Write the Travel Note
The obstacle is not the form. It is that nobody wants to fill one out at 7:00 p.m. in a hotel parking lot after nine hours of driving.
So do not ask for a form. Ask for one sentence, at the moment the truck stops, from the man who was driving.
- Ask at arrival, not at the end of the week. A note written Friday about Monday's drive is a guess. A note written when the parking brake goes on is a record.
- Give them the sentence. "Left ____ at ____, got to ____ at ____, hauled ____." Five blanks takes fifteen seconds and produces a billable line.
- Tell them why. Not "so I can see where you were," which earns nothing and deserves nothing. The honest version is better: the PM is going to try to strike this line, and the note is what stops him.
- One person per truck. The driver writes it. Four men writing four notes about one drive produces contradictions, which is worse than no note at all.
- Never argue with a note. If a note says something inconvenient, fix the underlying problem. The moment writing a note starts a conversation the crew did not want, the notes stop.
If you already run a time app, check whether it lets the crew leave a free-text note at clock-out and whether that note prints on a customer-facing document, because most bury it in an admin export. FieldTimesheet captures that note and prints it on a billing packet at the job's bill rate, but it has no travel category, no mileage field and no per diem handling at all, so travel goes in as its own entry with the note carrying the from and the to, and the per diem line still gets added to the invoice by hand.
A paper log in the glovebox does the same job. The kit above has one, and the sample billing packet shows what the finished document looks like once the notes are in it.
Travel and Per Diem on Prevailing Wage Work
On Davis-Bacon and state prevailing wage jobs, treat travel and subsistence as separate from the wage determination, and confirm the specifics with the contracting agency before you rely on them.
Davis-Bacon covers laborers and mechanics for work performed on the site of the work. Travel to and from that site is generally not hours worked under the DBA, though the FLSA rules above still govern the paycheck and the overtime.
Travel and subsistence paid under a collective bargaining agreement are generally treated as reimbursement for expenses rather than bona fide fringe benefits. Paying subsistence generally does not reduce what you owe in fringes.
If your crew is under an inside agreement, the travel and subsistence schedule is already written for you — a free-zone radius measured from the local's center, then zone pay or subsistence beyond it. Pull the current addendum before you price an away job, because the zone boundaries and the subsistence amounts change with each agreement, and the zone you bill the customer under Article 7.2 is a different line from the zone you owe the crew.
On certified payroll, report the hours worked on site as required on form WH-347. Keep travel hours and subsistence in your own cost records so you can show a reviewer why gross pay exceeds certified hours times the determination rate.
That separation is a job-costing problem as much as a compliance one — job costing for electricians covers keeping those buckets apart.
What to Send When the GC Rejects the Line
Send the authorization, the log, and the receipts in one reply, and do not send a defense. The reviewer is not accusing you of anything. He needs something to staple to his own approval so his boss does not ask him the same question.
Send four things, in this order.
- The signed authorization, with the travel and per diem article highlighted. This is the whole argument. The rest is arithmetic.
- The travel log, one line per leg, with the five fields filled in.
- The lodging folios, or your accountable-plan travel log if you paid at the federal rate and have no itemized receipts.
- The arithmetic, restated in one line so nobody has to do it themselves.
Marcus, here is the backup on the two held lines.
Travel and per diem are authorized under Articles 7.2 and 7.3 of the
signed T and M authorization dated 5/28, highlighted on page 2 attached.
Travel: two legs, Shreveport shop to the Baton Rouge site and back,
4 men, 4.5 hrs each way. Departure and arrival times and the material
hauled are on the attached travel log. 36.0 hrs at the contract travel
rate of $60.00 equals $2,160.00.
Per diem: 4 men, 11 nights lodged 6/08 through 6/18, 12 M and IE days
at the published GSA rate for the Project county per Article 7.3,
first and last day at 75 percent. Folios attached. Cost of $7,968.00
plus the 10 percent in that Article equals $8,764.80.
Let me know if you need the daily reports for those days and I will
send them over.
Two things that reply does not do: it does not argue, and it does not offer a discount. If the paperwork is complete, discounting it teaches the customer that holding a line works.
If lines like these get held often enough that you have started noticing, price out what the argument costs before deciding how much documentation is worth building.
Splitting a Travel Day Across Two Customers
When one trip serves two jobs, split by a rule you can state out loud, write the rule on both invoices, and never bill the same hour twice.
Three splits that hold up:
- By leg. Shop to Job A is Job A's travel. Job A to Job B is Job B's. Job B back to the shop is Job B's. Simple, defensible, slightly generous to the first customer.
- By time on site. Six hours at Job A and two at Job B splits the day's travel 75/25. Best for two stops on one route.
- By distance. Split the round trip by the miles attributable to each stop. Best when one job is well out of the way.
What is never billable: the trip back for a part somebody forgot, the run for stock you should have had on the truck, and the trip to fix your own defective work. Those are overhead, and billing them is how a contractor burns the credibility that gets the legitimate travel lines through.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to pay my electricians for drive time to the jobsite?
Not for an ordinary home-to-site commute. You do owe it once the workday has started — after a stop at the shop or supply house, for travel between sites during the day, and for travel away from home that falls within normal working hours, under 29 CFR 785.35 through 785.39.
Can I bill my customer for travel time?
Only if your contract, proposal, or work authorization says you can. There is no default right to bill travel, which is why the clause belongs in the authorization the customer signs before work starts, not in a conversation after the invoice lands.
Does travel time count toward overtime?
Yes. Travel time that is compensable under the FLSA is hours worked and goes into the 40-hour workweek calculation, so a travel leg on top of a full week is owed at time and a half.
Is per diem taxable to my employee?
Not if you pay it under an accountable plan at or below the federal rate and the worker substantiates time, place, and business purpose. Pay it outside an accountable plan, or on an assignment realistically expected to run past a year, and the whole allowance becomes taxable W-2 wages.
Can I mark up per diem on a T&M invoice?
Only as far as the contract allows. Many T&M agreements permit reimbursable expenses at cost plus a stated percentage, and some require pass-through at cost. Marking up a line the contract says is at cost is the fastest way to get every other reimbursable questioned.
Does per diem count toward the overtime rate?
It should not, if it is paid by the day away from home. If per diem varies with hours worked or gets docked for a short shift, it can be treated as compensation and pulled into the regular rate, raising every overtime hour. That was the issue in Clarke v. AMN Services (9th Cir. 2021).
What records back up a per diem charge if the customer challenges it?
Nights lodged with dates, the workers by name, the rate basis you used, and either the lodging folios or a travel log showing time, place, and business purpose. Attach them to the invoice rather than waiting to be asked for them.
Who pays travel and per diem on prevailing wage work?
You do, under your CBA or your own policy. Travel and subsistence are generally treated as expense reimbursement rather than bona fide fringe benefits, so paying them generally does not reduce your fringe obligation under the wage determination. Confirm with the contracting agency for your specific job.
The Short Version
Run two ledgers. Wage law tells you what you owe the crew. Your contract tells you what you can bill the customer. Neither one answers for the other.
Get travel and per diem authorized in writing before the trucks roll, because these lines are won at signing and only collected at invoicing.
Then make the invoice line reconstructable: date, who, from where to where, how long, and why the trip happened. A travel line the customer can rebuild without calling you gives the reviewer something to staple to his own approval, which is what he actually needs. The note that makes it possible takes the driver about fifteen seconds while the truck is still warm.