The invoice goes out. Three electricians, two days, and the labor line reads electrical work — 47.5 hrs.
The GC calls. He is not accusing anyone of anything yet. He just cannot reconstruct the charge, and the sheet in your folder does not help him.
If you searched for what to write on a timesheet as an electrician, you already have a timesheet. You are staring at the blank description field.
Every template out there hands you a grid and walks away. This page is the other half — the actual words that go in that field, by work type, ready to copy.
One thing to settle first. The note is not a report card on the crew. It is the crew's defense of work they actually performed, and it is the only part of your paperwork the customer ever reads.
The one test every timesheet note has to pass
Write the line so a customer reading it six weeks later can picture the work without calling you.
That is the whole standard. If a stranger cannot form a mental image of what happened from your sentence, the sentence is not finished.
Payroll only needs a number. Billing needs a sentence, because 8.77 hrs asks the customer to take your word for it.
Thu 7:02a–3:48p — pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing does not ask for anything. It just answers.
The charge was almost always fair. What was missing was the explanation.
The five-part formula for a timesheet description
Every good field note answers five things in order: what, where, why it took that long, what it took, and what happens next.
| Part | What it answers | Example fragment |
|---|
| 1. WHAT | Verb + component + count | pulled and terminated circuits 12–18 |
| 2. WHERE | Building, floor, zone, panel or circuit ID | second-floor east wing, panel LP-2 |
| 3. WHY IT TOOK THAT LONG | Conditions, access, what you discovered | hard lid, fished above finished drywall |
| 4. WHAT IT TOOK | Material, equipment, permits, inspections | 26 ft scissor lift, 610 ft of 12/2 MC |
| 5. WHAT'S NEXT | Status: done, blocked, ready for inspection | ready for rough inspection Thursday |
Parts 1 and 2 are not optional. They are the difference between a note and a shrug.
Parts 3, 4, and 5 go in when they apply. Part 3 is the one that ends disputes, because it explains the hours rather than just reporting them.
The 15-second version: verb, component, count, location.Set 22 boxes and pulled 610 ft of MC, second floor east. That is a complete note and it took eleven seconds to type.
Before and after: eight timesheet notes rewritten
Same day, same hours, same work. Only the sentence changed.
| Situation | The line that starts an argument | The line that ends it |
|---|
None of those took a full minute to write. All of them survive a customer reading them cold.
A copy-paste phrase bank by task type
Start with the verb. The verb is what makes the line verifiable, and most vague notes are vague because they never got one.
Troubleshooting and service calls — traced, isolated, megged, load-tested, thermal-scanned, verified, restored, re-terminated, torqued to spec.Traced [fault] on [circuit] to [component] at [location]; [repair], verified [reading] under load.Megged [n] branch circuits off [panel], found [circuit] reading [value]; isolated fault to [location].Thermal-scanned [panel] under load, found [temp] on [lug/breaker]; re-torqued to [in-lb] per label, rescanned at [temp].
Rough-in [area]: set [n] boxes, pulled [ft] of [wire type] for circuits [range], made up [n] boxes.Pulled [n] [size] THHN and [size] ground in [conduit] from [source] to [dest], [ft] run, terminated both ends.Stubbed and sleeved [n] penetrations at [location], firestopped per detail [x].
Trim-out [units/rooms]: installed [n] devices ([breakdown]), tested all for polarity and ground.Hung and terminated [n] [fixture type] at [location], aimed and dimmed per owner walkthrough.Landed and labeled [n] circuits in [panel], dressed panel, updated directory.
[Old amps] to [new amps] service change: permit pulled, [utility] disconnect at [time], set [panel], re-landed [n] circuits, drove [n] ground rods (tested [ohms]).Set [size] subpanel at [location], fed with [conductors] in [conduit], [ft] run, bonded and grounded per NEC 250.
Set [amps] service-rated ATS, load-tested standby unit under building load for [minutes], exercised transfer and retransfer twice, verified [volts]/[Hz].
Pulled [ft] of plenum [cable] to [n] drops on [floor]; terminated and certified [n] with tester, all passed.Addressed and programmed [n] devices on loop [x], walk-tested with the AHJ.
Disconnected and made safe [n] circuits in [area] ahead of demo; capped and labeled at [panel].Set and maintained temp power: [n] spider boxes, [ft] of cord, GFCI-tested all outlets at start of shift.
Callback, no charge: [symptom]. Found [cause]. [Correction], re-tested [n] cycles clean. Our workmanship — not billable.
How to split hours across jobs and cost codes in one day
One line per job, per person, with in and out times on each. Never one lump total for the day.
A lump sum is uncostable. Nobody can put it on a phase, nobody can put it on an invoice, and the estimate never gets corrected.
Here is a real-shaped day, split the way it should look:
| Job / code | In – Out | Hrs | Description |
|---|
| Riverside Med — rough-in | 7:02a – 10:15a | 3.22 | Rough-in second-floor east wing: 22 boxes set, 610 ft of 12/2 MC pulled for circuits 12–18. |
| Travel / material — Riverside to Weston | 10:15a – 11:05a | 0.83 | Riverside Med to supply house to Weston Apts; picked up 14 dimmers and 2 40A breakers (PO 4471). |
| Weston Apts — trim | 11:05a – 2:40p | 3.58 | Trim-out units 204–208: 42 devices installed and tested for polarity and ground. |
| Travel — Weston to Hall | 2:40p – 3:10p | 0.50 | Weston Apts to Hall residence, 9 miles, truck 4. |
| Hall residence — service | 3:10p – 4:45p | 1.58 | Traced open neutral to a backstabbed receptacle behind the fridge; replaced device, verified 121V under load. |
Total: 9.71 hrs, and every minute between 7:02a and 4:45p lands on a line. If you run phase codes, put the code in the first field and keep the sentence in the last one — the code is for you, the sentence is for the customer.
More on tying hours to phases: job costing for electricians.
Travel, supply-house runs, and waiting time: log it or leave it?
Log all of it. Whether you bill it is a separate decision made by your contract, not by the timesheet.
Hours that never get written down cannot be billed later, cannot be costed, and cannot be defended. Hours written down plainly can be billed, absorbed, or waived on purpose.
| Activity | How to word it | Usually billable on T&M? |
|---|
| Travel between jobs | Travel [job A] to [job B], [miles], truck 4. | Depends on contract — many T&M agreements bill portal-to-portal, many do not |
| Supply-house run | Picked up [items] for [job], PO [number]. | Often yes when the material is job-specific and the PO is named |
| Waiting on another trade | On site, work stopped 9:10a–11:40a; ceiling grid crew occupying east wing. Notified super at 9:15a. | Usually yes if you were held on site and you notified someone |
| Waiting on inspection | On site for AHJ window 1:00p–3:00p, inspector arrived 2:35p, passed rough. | Usually yes |
| Rework of your own error | Corrected [issue] from [date]. Our workmanship — not billable. | No. Log the hours, code them to rework |
| Warranty callback | Callback, no charge: [symptom], [cause], [correction]. | No. Log it anyway — it is your best warranty record |
The waiting-time line matters more than it looks. "Waited around all morning" reads as a bill for nothing.
"Held on site 9:10a–11:40a by the grid crew, super notified at 9:15a" reads as a documented delay someone else caused.
Writing up out-of-scope work before it becomes an argument
The moment you find work that is not in the contract, stop and write three things: what you found, why it is outside the original scope, and what you did next.
That is the entire change-order defense, and it takes one line.
Opened the wall at grid line 4 to fish the new home run and found the existing 12 AWG spliced outside a box, three splices in the cavity. Not in scope — original scope was new circuits only. Stopped, photographed, called the super at 10:20a. Holding until direction.Read that back. There is nothing to argue with. It names the discovery, the scope boundary, the time, and the person notified.
The two failure modes are silence and drift. Silence means you fixed it and billed for it with no paper. Drift means you kept going and the extra hours got buried in a normal day's total.
If you write it up in the field, the office can turn it into a change order the same afternoon. There is a printable change-order log and a T&M work authorization form in the T&M Billing Backup Kit, free and no email required.
What not to write on a timesheet
Some lines cost you money quietly. They are not lies — they are just phrasings that hand the argument to the other side.
| Don't write | Why | Write instead |
|---|
| Misc electrical work | Not verifiable, and reads as a placeholder | Any verb + component + location |
| Same as yesterday / per usual | Meaningless the week after, useless in a dispute | Repeat the actual work, even if it is identical |
| Waited on the GC all morning | Sounds like a bill for nothing | On site, work stopped 9:10a–11:40a, east wing occupied. Notified super at 9:15a |
| Fixed my screw-up | Confessional in a document the customer may read | Corrected [issue] from [date]. Our workmanship — not billable |
| Customer was a nightmare | Opinions about people age badly and can end up in evidence | Access to the panel room delayed until 10:40a |
| Any internal cost rate or what you pay the worker | Cost and margin are nobody's business but yours | Keep the cost report internal; give the customer the bill rate only |
| 8.0 every day, every week, no detail | Round numbers with no narrative are the first thing an auditor questions | Real in and out times, even when they land on 8.02 |
One more: never write a note you would not want read aloud. Assume the sheet gets attached to an invoice, because on T&M work it often does.
How much detail is enough, and when six words is plenty
Match the detail to how the job gets billed. Fixed-price work needs enough to cost the job. T&M work needs enough to defend the invoice.
| Billing type | Target length | Must include |
|---|
| Fixed price / bid work | 6–15 words | Phase + area + quantity. It is for your job costing, not the customer |
| T&M / cost-plus | 20–45 words | All five parts of the formula. This line is the invoice backup |
| Service call, flat rate | 10–20 words | Symptom, cause, correction, verification |
| Change-order or extra work | 30–60 words | Discovery, scope boundary, who was notified and when |
| Warranty / callback | 15–30 words | Symptom, root cause, correction, and that it is not billable |
Set 22 boxes, second floor east is a perfectly good note on a bid job. The same six words on a T&M invoice for 8 hours is where the phone call starts.
Work order vs. timesheet: what goes where
They are two documents and people mix them constantly. The work order describes the job. The timesheet describes the labor.
| Goes on the work order | Goes on the timesheet |
|---|
| Customer, service address, contact | Worker name and classification |
| Scope of work as sold | Clock in, clock out, lunch, total hours |
| Panel ID, circuit numbers, equipment schedule | What was actually done in those hours |
| Materials, quantities, part numbers | Job and phase or cost code the hours land on |
| NEC references, inspection results, permit number | Delays, discoveries, and out-of-scope finds |
| Customer signature accepting the work | Approval of the hours by a foreman or the office |
If you only keep one for billing purposes, keep the timesheet. Hours are what a T&M invoice actually charges for, and hours are what gets questioned.
Write it at clock-out, not Friday afternoon
A note written at the truck at 3:48p is a record. The same note written Friday from memory is a reconstruction, and it shows.
The details that settle a dispute are the first ones to go — circuit numbers, panel IDs, the time the super was notified. Those are the specifics you cannot reconstruct on Friday, and they are the only part of the note that ends an argument.
By Friday, what is left is "worked on the second floor," which is exactly the note that loses an argument.
Three ways shops make it happen, in order of cost. A carbonless labor backup sheet in the truck, filled at the end of the shift. A standing 30-second voice memo or group text to the office. Or software that puts the question on the screen at clock-out so it cannot be skipped — that is the specific thing FieldTimesheet does, and it is one option among the three, not a requirement.
What matters is the timing and the prompt, not the medium. Paper written at 3:48p beats an app filled in on Friday.
Ask for one sentence, not a paragraph. Crews will give you a specific line every day if the ask is small and they know why it exists.
Turning the note into the backup your customer reads
Attach a one-page labor sheet to every T&M invoice: date, worker, classification, in and out, hours, bill rate, amount, and the note.
That is it. No cost rate, no margin, no internal codes — only what the customer is entitled to see.
The reason to do it is arithmetic you can run yourself. Example: one disputed 4-hour line on a $95/hr T&M invoice is $380. Six of those in a year is $2,280, plus whatever the slow-paid invoices cost you in the meantime. Run it with your own bill rate and your own count.
You can see a filled-out version, annotated to show why each element ends a dispute, on the sample billing packet page. If you want to price out what the arguments themselves cost, there is a dispute calculator.
For how the whole T&M package should be structured — estimate language, backup, and the four questions customers actually ask — see T&M billing best practices.
Classification, certified payroll, and how long to keep the sheets
On prevailing-wage work the classification on the line matters as much as the description. Apprentice, journeyman, and foreman carry different rates and different reporting.
Federal Davis-Bacon jobs require a weekly certified payroll with a signed statement of compliance. DOL's Form WH-347 is the optional standard format, and it asks for each worker's name, work classification, daily hours, and rate. If your timesheet does not carry classification, someone is retyping it from memory later.
On retention: under the federal recordkeeping rules at 29 CFR Part 516, payroll records must be kept three years, and the supplementary records that time cards fall under must be kept two years. Many contractors keep job records longer than that anyway, because lien and warranty windows outlast both.
Add one more field while you are at it: who approved the hours. A sheet nobody reviewed is a sheet the customer can treat as unreviewed.
Frequently asked questions
What should an electrician write in the description field of a timesheet?A verb, the component, a count, and a location, at minimum — "pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing." On T&M work, add why it took the time and what happens next. The test is whether a customer reading it in six weeks can picture the work without calling you.
How much detail is too much on a timesheet note?Past about 60 words on a single line, you are writing a daily report, not a timesheet entry. Bid work can live on 6 to 15 words because the note is for your job costing. T&M work needs 20 to 45, because the note is the invoice backup.
How do you describe troubleshooting time when you didn't find anything?Write down what you tested, how you tested it, and what the readings were. "Load-tested circuits 6, 8, 10 for 2.5 hrs, megged each at 500V, thermal-scanned the panel under load, no fault reproduced, all readings in spec" is billable diagnostic work. "Looked for the problem" is not, in the customer's mind.
What should a timesheet say when you're waiting on another trade?Name the clock window, the cause, and the notification. "On site, work stopped 9:10a–11:40a, ceiling grid crew occupying the east wing, notified super at 9:15a." A delay someone else caused and you documented in real time is a very different conversation from "waited around."
How do you document out-of-scope work on a timesheet?Three things, in the field, the moment you find it: what you found, why it falls outside the original scope, and what you did next including who you called and when. That line is what a change order gets written from, and it is the difference between extra work that gets paid and extra work that gets buried.
Can a customer ask to see the timesheets behind a T&M invoice?Frequently, yes. Most cost-plus and T&M agreements include a records or audit clause giving the owner the right to inspect the backup for labor billed, and many GC contracts require the daily sheets with the pay application. Check your specific contract — but write every note as if the answer is yes.
Should electricians write timesheet notes at the end of the day or as they go?At clock-out on the job, before leaving the site. As-you-go is even better on a day split across three jobs, since the in and out times are already in front of you. Friday reconstruction loses the circuit numbers, and the circuit numbers are the part that settles disputes.
What phrases should never appear on a timesheet a customer might read?Your internal cost rate or what you pay the worker, opinions about the customer, "misc work," "same as yesterday," and anything confessional about your own errors. Log the rework hours honestly, mark them non-billable, and keep the editorializing off a document that may end up attached to an invoice.
The short version
Give the field one instruction: verb, component, count, location, every line, every day.
Give the office one rule: nothing goes to a customer with a cost rate on it, and nothing goes to a customer without a sentence.
Do those two and the invoice conversation changes from "prove it" to "yeah, I remember that." Every worksheet on this page is free and works on paper — no software required.