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Subcontractors clock in on the same phone screen your W-2 electricians use, and every entry carries the worker, the job, the hours, and their rate. In January you export the year and hand it to whoever files. What FieldTimesheet does not do yet: flag a worker as W-2 or 1099, or produce a 1099-NEC report. Below is what exists today, and a free tracker for the part that does not.
Most electrical contractors run mixed crews. You have W-2 journeymen on payroll and 1099 subcontractors who come in for specific jobs or busy seasons. During the year, everyone works side by side on the same job sites, clocking the same hours. But when January arrives and 1099-NEC forms are due, you need to untangle twelve months of mixed data. Which payments went to subs? How many hours did each one work? Did any contractor cross the $600 threshold on a job you forgot to track? The scramble is real, and it happens every single year. The IRS deadline does not care that your records are a mess.
The stakes are higher than a few hours of paperwork. The IRS has stepped up enforcement on worker misclassification, and penalties can reach 100% of the unpaid employment taxes if you misclassify a W-2 employee as a 1099 contractor. Even if your classifications are correct, sloppy record-keeping makes it nearly impossible to defend yourself during an audit. You need clean, separated records showing exactly how much you paid each subcontractor, on which jobs, for how many hours. Reconstructing that data from memory or a shoebox of invoices in January is how contractors get burned.
The common workaround is a separate spreadsheet for subcontractor tracking. But spreadsheets always fall behind. Someone forgets to log a sub's hours for two weeks. The spreadsheet lives on one person's computer and nobody else can update it. By October, the spreadsheet is so incomplete that you end up calling subcontractors individually to reconcile hours before year-end. FieldTimesheet does not solve the classification half of this. What it does solve is the hours half: a sub who clocks in on the same system as your crew leaves a timestamped record of every hour, tied to a job, that nobody has to remember to write down. The classification and the payment totals still live in your spreadsheet or your accountant's file — so the honest version of this page is the rest of it, plus a free tracker for the columns FieldTimesheet does not keep.
Simple setup. Immediate results.
A subcontractor is added the same way a journeyman is: name, email, hourly rate. There is no W-2 or 1099 field to set — FieldTimesheet does not store worker classification, so it cannot sort your crew by it. Keep that list where you keep it now (your accountant's file, or the free tracker below) and use FieldTimesheet for the hours.
Set each subcontractor's hourly rate when you add them to the system. FieldTimesheet calculates totals automatically as they clock in and out. If a sub's rate changes mid-project, update it and all future entries reflect the new rate. Historical entries preserve the rate that was active when the work was performed.
Subcontractors use the same simple mobile clock-in as your W-2 employees. They open FieldTimesheet on their phone, select a job, and tap Clock In. No separate system, no extra training, no different workflow. At clock-out they answer what they worked on, and that note travels with the entry — which is the line that settles a dispute over a sub's hours later.
There is no 1099-NEC report. What there is: a CSV export of time entries filtered by date range and worker, carrying name, job, hours, rate, and calculated labor cost. Open it in Excel or Sheets, filter to the subs you pay on a 1099, and you have hours and labor cost per sub for the year. That is a filter step you do once in January, not a reconstruction from memory.
Built specifically for electrical contractors
Subs and employees clock into the same system, so there is one place where hours live instead of an app for the crew and a text-message trail for the subs. Sorting that record by worker classification is still on you — FieldTimesheet does not store it — but nobody has to reconstruct the hours themselves.
Hours accumulate as they happen, so year-end work is exporting a date range and filtering to the subs you pay on a 1099. You still total the payments yourself, from your own records — FieldTimesheet knows hours and rates, not what you actually paid out.
Every entry carries a worker, a job, a date, a duration, and what got done. If a sub's hours are ever questioned, the record is job-level and timestamped rather than remembered. Classification is a separate question and one this product does not answer.
Subcontractors use the same mobile clock-in as employees. There is no separate app, no different workflow, no additional training. A 1099 sub who shows up on Monday morning can be clocking in by lunch with the same two-tap process your W-2 crew already uses.
Each subcontractor's hourly rate is stored in the system, so labor costs are calculated automatically. You can see exactly how much a sub is costing per job without manual math or spreadsheet formulas. Rate changes are tracked historically so past entries stay accurate.
Compare the hours FieldTimesheet recorded against the invoices your subcontractors submitted. When a sub's invoice says 40 hours and the clock records say 32, you want to find that before the check goes out. Usually it is a day logged to the wrong job or a code mix-up, and it is a two-minute conversation when both numbers sit in the same system instead of an awkward one three weeks later.
According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), approximately 10-30% of employers misclassify workers as independent contractors. The IRS actively audits construction companies for misclassification, and penalties are steep: 1.5% of wages plus 40% of unpaid FICA taxes for unintentional misclassification, and up to 20% of wages plus 100% of FICA taxes for willful violations. In 2017 alone, DOL investigations recovered over $86 million in back wages for misclassified workers across construction and other industries.
Beyond classification risk, the practical challenge is tracking subcontractor payments accurately throughout the year. When sub hours are tracked in separate spreadsheets, text messages, or paper logs, the data is invariably incomplete by January. Office managers spend days or weeks in January chasing down totals and cross-referencing bank statements to prepare 1099-NEC filings — a process that introduces errors and delays.
Having subs clock in alongside the regular crew does not settle the classification question, and no time tracker can — that is a question about how the work is directed and controlled, and it belongs to your accountant. What it does remove is the reconstruction: a complete, timestamped record of every hour worked, tied to a job, built as the year happens. Discrepancies between hours recorded and invoices submitted surface while the work is fresh instead of in January.
There is none, and that is the honest answer. FieldTimesheet has no worker-classification field: a sub and a journeyman are both workers with a name, a rate, and time entries. Nothing in the product separates them, and every entry syncs to QuickBooks as an employee time activity regardless of how you pay the person. If you need the two groups split, you split them in the export or in QuickBooks. A classification flag and a 1099-NEC report are planned for Q4 2026.
No, and it does not prepare them either. FieldTimesheet records hours and hourly rates; it does not track what you actually paid a subcontractor, which is the number a 1099-NEC reports. Hours times rate is an estimate of that number, not the number. Export the year, filter to your subs, and give the hours to whoever reconciles them against the checks you wrote.
No. A worker can only see their own time entries, clock-in history, and profile. Subcontractors cannot see other workers' hours, rates, or job assignments. Only admin users have access to the full dashboard and reporting across all workers.
Nothing changes in FieldTimesheet, because it never recorded the classification. Their time entries keep the rate that was active when the work was performed, so the hours and labor cost stay accurate. The classification history — which is the part that matters in an audit — has to live wherever you keep it today.
No. FieldTimesheet tracks hours and calculates labor costs based on hourly rates. It does not track material purchases, equipment rentals, or other expenses. For material and expense tracking, most contractors use QuickBooks directly. FieldTimesheet focuses on doing one thing well — time tracking — and syncing that data to QuickBooks where it joins the rest of your financial records.
State filing requirements vary — some states require separate filings, others participate in the Combined Federal/State Filing Program. Your accountant or tax software handles that. FieldTimesheet contributes hours and rates to the picture, not payment totals, so treat its export as one input your accountant reconciles rather than the filing data itself.
If you are mid-year with subs on multiple jobs, do not wait on software to get organized. This free 1099 subcontractor tracker gives you the columns that matter — payments with a running total per sub, hours, which job, W-9 on file, filed yes or no — as a spreadsheet or a printable sheet. January becomes a lookup instead of a reconstruction.