A customer calls about an invoice. Not angry — just asking. "Three guys for two days. On what?"
You have the ticket in front of you. It says 8.77 hours, three names, and a job number. Every number on it is true, and none of it answers the question.
That call is why a lot of shops start pricing service van GPS tracking for electrical contractors. Put boxes in the trucks, pull the log, show the customer the van sat at their building from 7:02 a.m. to 3:48 p.m.
The log is real and it is worth having for other reasons. It just doesn't settle this one. Nobody in that conversation is disputing that your truck was there.
The charge was fair. The explanation was missing.
Below: what a van tracker actually records, the three things it structurally cannot record, the wording that gets a usable note out of a crew, and the page you hand a general contractor. All of it works with any GPS vendor, or none.
What a service van GPS tracker actually records
A vehicle tracker records the vehicle. Location, ignition on and off, route, idle time, and whether the van moved at two in the morning.
That is useful information. It is also, in every case, information about a truck rather than about a person.
This site doesn't sell GPS hardware or vehicle telematics, so take the following as a straight read on what the boxes do.
| Device type | How it goes in | What it records | Watch out for |
|---|
| OBD-II plug-in | Plugs into the diagnostic port under the dash, minutes | Ignition, location, trip history, some driver events | Can be unplugged; the shop needs that port for scan tools; a knee finds it eventually |
| Hardwired | Spliced to power and ignition, typically 30–60 minutes per van by an installer | Same as above, plus tamper detection | Install labor per van; removal before a lease return or trade-in |
| Battery / magnetic asset tracker | Stick it on a trailer, gang box, or spool cart | Periodic location pings, not a live feed | Battery life is measured in months; you get an interval, not a trail |
What the log genuinely handles well: dispatching the closest van to a callback, recovering a stolen truck, spotting after-hours use of a take-home vehicle, mileage and fuel reconciliation, maintenance intervals, and holding an arrival window you promised a customer.
Those are real problems and hardware is the right answer to them. Buy it if that's your problem. Just don't buy it expecting it to answer the invoice question.
The question your customer is actually asking
Your customer is not asking where the truck was. They are asking what the hours bought, and a location record has no field for that.
Here is the same day, recorded two ways.
| What the record says | What the customer does with it |
|---|
| Van 4 — on site 7:02a–3:48p. 8.77 hrs, 3 men. | "On what?" |
| Thu 7:02a–3:48p — 2nd floor east wing, panel LP-2: pulled and terminated circuits 12–18. Existing conduit was full; ran new 3/4" EMT from the j-box. On site, verified. | Signs it. |
The first is a location record. The second is a scope record. Only one of them explains a charge.
A geofence timestamp has no field for what got installed. That isn't a gap in one vendor's product — a truck can't type, so there is no scope field in a breadcrumb anywhere.
Which means the GPS log's honest job on an invoice is corroboration, not explanation. It backs up a line that already says something.
If you want to price out what the argument itself costs before you spend anything on hardware, run the numbers on a disputed invoice with your own hours and rate. The broader mechanics of billing T&M work are in the T&M billing guide.
One van, three electricians
Payroll is per person. Invoices are per person. A van tracker produces one record no matter how many people rode in it.
That gap is not a detail. It is the reason a vehicle log can't function as a timesheet.
Federal recordkeeping rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 CFR 516.2) require hours worked each day and total hours each workweek — for each employee. On prevailing-wage work, certified payroll on form WH-347 requires each worker's daily hours by classification.
A vehicle log satisfies neither, because the unit of record is wrong.
Here is what that looks like on an ordinary week.
| What happened | What the van log shows | What the payroll and the invoice need |
|---|
| Apprentice dropped at the site, van leaves for the supply house | Van off site 9:40–11:05 | Apprentice on the clock and billable the whole time |
| Two men in one van | One arrival, one departure | Two payroll records, two billable lines |
| Journeyman rides with the GC's super to the second building | Van never moves | Three hours on a different job number |
| Downtown job, van parked in a garage four blocks over | Arrival at a parking garage, not the address | A full day at the customer's address |
| Prefab in the shop until 9:30, then out | Van at the shop | Payable hours, sometimes billable ones |
| Tech takes his own truck to pick up gear | Nothing at all | Hours and mileage |
Any "recovered labor hours" number computed from van-hours is computing vehicle time, not labor time. On a three-man commercial crew rolling in one truck, van-hours undercount labor-hours by two-thirds.
Where the tracker goes dark
GPS degrades in exactly the places electricians work, and cellular reporting fails there too.
The U.S. government's GPS program office states that GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within about a 4.9 m (16 ft) radius under open sky, and that accuracy worsens near buildings, bridges, and trees.
Underground parking, elevator machine rooms, metal buildings, basements, and new construction with no service are not degraded conditions. They are no-sky conditions.
In the log, that shows up as a gap, a position that drifts across the block, or an arrival stamped at the curb instead of the suite.
None of this is a defect. It's physics. It does mean "the log will show it" fails most often on the jobs where a dispute is most likely.
Getting the note out of the crew
The whole thing lives or dies on one line per man per day. It usually dies because nobody told the crew what the line is for.
"Write down what you did so I can check on you" gets nothing. "Write down what you did so the customer can't chisel us on work you already performed" gets a line, because now the electrician is protecting his own job.
Say it at the tailgate, once, in about this many words:
When we bill this job, the customer is going to ask what the hours bought. If the ticket says eight hours, they argue. If it says you pulled and terminated circuits 12 through 18 in the east wing, there's nothing to argue about. That line is what keeps them from taking money back on work you already did. One line, end of the day, before you clock out.
The three-part note
- Where on the job — "2nd floor east wing, panel LP-2"
- What got done — verb, device or circuit, quantity: "pulled and terminated circuits 12–18"
- Why it took longer, if it did — "existing conduit was full; ran new 3/4" EMT from the j-box"
| Doesn't survive a dispute | Does |
|---|
| Worked on lighting | Set 14 recessed cans, north corridor, whips run and connected |
| Rough-in | Roughed 22 boxes, offices 210–218; stubbed 3/4" to the corridor j-box |
| Troubleshooting | Traced dead receptacles in suite 210 to a shared neutral in the wrong panel; separated and re-fed |
| Panel work | Terminated 18 circuits in LP-2, labeled and updated the schedule |
| Extra work per super | Added 4 receptacles at the break room island per Mike (GC) — see CO log #7 |
The rules that make it stick
- One line per man per day. Not per task, not per week.
- Nouns and numbers. No adjectives, no apologies.
- Written at clock-out. A note reconstructed on Friday is a guess and reads like one.
- The foreman writes his first, out loud, in front of the crew, for about a week.
- Never send one back for spelling. Send it back only if you can't tell what got installed.
- Tape the job's scope items inside the van door — circuits, devices, fixtures, panels, gear. Most guys write nothing because they don't know what you want, not because they won't.
- Twenty seconds. If it takes longer than that, your format is wrong.
Where it gets written doesn't matter — the back of the paper ticket, a text to the foreman, a note field in whatever clock app you already have. When it gets written is the part that matters.
What the backup page looks like
One page per invoice. Per-person lines, dated, with a bill rate and a reference for anything outside base scope.
These are the columns.
| Date | Worker | On site | What was done | Hrs | Rate | Amount | Auth |
|---|
| Thu 7/30 | R. Delgado (JW) | 7:02a–3:48p | 2nd flr east wing, LP-2: pulled and terminated circuits 12–18. Conduit full; ran new 3/4" EMT from j-box. | 8.77 | $95.00 | $833.15 | Base |
| Thu 7/30 | A. Pike (App) | 7:02a–3:48p | Same wing: pulled 12–18 with JW; set and leveled 9 boxes, offices 214–218. | 8.77 | $62.00 | $543.74 | Base |
| Thu 7/30 | R. Delgado (JW) | 3:48p–5:18p | Added 4 receptacles, break room island, at super's direction. | 1.50 | $95.00 | $142.50 | CO #7 |
Rules for the page:
- One line per man per day for base scope, and a separate dated line with its own time window for anything billed outside it. Never a weekly total — weekly totals are what customers dispute.
- Hours match the window on the same line. If you deduct an unpaid lunch or bill less than the full window, the reason goes on the line, not in your head.
- The "what was done" cell is the crew's note copied over, not summarized by the office. Summarizing is how the detail that wins the argument gets deleted.
- Bill rate only. Never cost.
- Anything outside base scope carries a change-order or work-authorization reference on the same line.
- If you have GPS, it appears as three words — "on site, verified" — not as coordinates. A page of latitude and longitude reads like you're arguing.
- Signature line for the GC's rep at the bottom. Signed weekly beats perfect monthly, every time.
Keep it in a spreadsheet and it will hold up fine. Any time app that stores a note per entry and a bill rate separate from the wage will render it too — FieldTimesheet is one of those, and it isn't the only one. The format is what does the work, not where it gets typed.
Bill rate and cost rate are different numbers
Never hand a customer a document built on what you pay your electricians.
Most "labor reports" that come out of a time or accounting system are cost reports. The rate column resolves to a wage, and the total at the bottom is your labor cost.
Export that, email it to a general contractor as backup, and you have disclosed your margin on a page with your logo on it.
| Column | Internal job cost report | Customer billing backup |
|---|
| Worker name | Yes | Yes (name or initials) |
| Date, time in / out | Yes | Yes |
| What was done | Yes | Yes |
| Hours | Yes | Yes |
| Cost rate (wage + burden) | Yes | Never |
| Bill rate | Optional | Yes |
| Labor cost | Yes | Never |
| Margin or budget variance | Yes | Never |
Set the bill rate at the job level so it can't be forgotten on a Friday, and keep the two reports in two different folders with two different names.
The internal side of that — coding hours to a job and a phase so you can see where a job actually went — is covered in job costing for electricians.
Telling your crew the van has a box in it
Put it in writing before the devices go in, not after somebody finds one behind the dash.
A short sample of what the ground looks like, which is not legal advice and not a survey:
- Connecticut requires employers to give prior written notice of electronic monitoring (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 31-48d).
- Delaware has a comparable notice requirement (19 Del. C. § 705).
- California Penal Code § 637.7 bars using an electronic tracking device to determine a person's location, with an exception tied to the registered owner of the vehicle — which is why company ownership of the van matters.
- Texas Penal Code § 16.06 makes it an offense to place a tracking device on a vehicle owned by someone else without consent.
- In Cunningham v. New York State Dep't of Labor (2013), New York's highest court found that tracking an employee's personal vehicle around the clock — evenings, weekends, and a vacation included — was unreasonable in scope even inside a legitimate investigation.
Company-owned vehicles are equipped with GPS location devices. These devices record vehicle location, ignition on/off, and travel history. The information is used for dispatch, vehicle recovery, maintenance scheduling, and to corroborate job-site arrival on customer invoices. Employees assigned a take-home vehicle should understand that location is recorded any time the vehicle's ignition is on. No device is installed on any personally owned vehicle. Questions go to [name, title].
Three practical notes. Company vehicles are the easy case and personal vehicles are not — don't put a device on a truck you don't own, even with a handshake. If you're a union shop, read the agreement before you order hardware. And get a signed acknowledgment from each employee and file it, which takes one minute and settles the question permanently.
What it costs and what it takes to install
Two recurring costs: a device per van and a monthly service fee per van. Add install labor if you go hardwired.
| Line item | How it's usually priced | Ask before you sign |
|---|
| Device | One-time per vehicle, sometimes waived with a term commitment | Who owns it — and who eats it when one dies |
| Service | Per vehicle per month, often tiered by ping interval | What the interval is at the quoted price |
| Contract | Month-to-month or 12–36 months | Cancellation terms, and what happens to history if you downgrade |
| Install | DIY for OBD-II; per-van labor for hardwired | Removal before a lease return |
When a tracker is the right buy, and when it isn't
Match the tool to what is actually happening. Three different problems hide inside this one search, and only one of them is a GPS problem.
| What's actually happening | What fixes it | What won't |
|---|
| Vans move after hours; tools and copper walking | Vehicle GPS with an after-hours movement alert | A timesheet, of any kind |
| Dispatch — who is closest to the callback right now | Live vehicle location | End-of-day time entries |
| Payroll hours don't match what people actually worked | Per-person clock-in and clock-out, on a phone or on paper | Van GPS — one dot, three men |
| A customer is holding a T&M invoice and asking what the hours bought | Dated per-person notes plus signed authorizations for extra work | Van GPS alone |
| You can't tell which jobs made money | Hours coded to job and phase at the time they're entered | Van GPS |
If your problem is on the top two rows, go buy hardware and don't overthink it. If it's on the bottom three, hardware won't touch it, and buying it first is how shops end up with a subscription and the same argument.
Frequently asked questions
Does service van GPS tracking prove how long my electrician was on the job? No. It proves how long the van was on the job. Those are the same number only when one person drives one van, stays with it, and parks at the address. Can I bill a customer straight from GPS data? You can support a bill with it. You can't build one from it, because a location log has no scope, no worker breakdown, and no rate — and a customer disputing T&M is disputing scope. What if three electricians ride in one van? You get one arrival for three payroll records and three billable lines. Federal recordkeeping under 29 CFR 516.2 is per employee per day, so the vehicle log can't stand in for it. Does van GPS replace timesheets? No, and no vendor should tell you it does. It corroborates a timesheet that already exists; it doesn't produce one. Do I have to tell my crew the van is tracked? Some states require prior written notice — Connecticut (§ 31-48d) and Delaware (19 Del. C. § 705) among them. Do it in writing everywhere regardless, because the notice costs nothing and finding a device by accident costs a journeyman. Can I track a take-home van after hours? A company-owned vehicle is a different legal question than an employee's own truck. New York's Cunningham decision found round-the-clock tracking of a personal vehicle unreasonable in scope, so keep devices on vehicles you own and say plainly in your policy what gets recorded and when. Does GPS work inside a metal building or an underground garage? Poorly or not at all. The U.S. GPS program office puts GPS-enabled smartphones at roughly a 16-foot radius under open sky, and says accuracy worsens near buildings; with no sky there is no fix, and a cellular tracker also needs signal to report. Will GPS data hold up if a general contractor disputes my invoice? It corroborates that you were there, which is rarely the point of contention. The line that says what got installed, on what date, by whom, with a change-order reference for extra work, is what closes it.The short version
- GPS puts your van on the site. It does not put your work on the invoice.
- Hours are per person. Vans are not.
- One line per man per day, written at clock-out, in nouns and numbers.
- Bill rate on the customer's page. Cost rate never leaves the office.
- Written notice before the device goes in.