Time tracking for carpenters
Track visits throughout your day
Your work can include Setting studs and joists, Hanging drywall and backing, Installing crown molding. You might visit New residential builds, Kitchen remodeling sites, Commercial fit-outs in one day. Use your timeline to review each recorded visit before billing.
Common time-tracking challenges
- Difficulty distinguishing between active site time and travel between scattered residential stops
- The struggle to justify mileage for long drives between remote job sites during tax season
- Missing billable increments when transitioning from rough framing to finish work mid-day
How TradesTimer handles it
- Automatically detects every jobsite stop from framing to finishing without manual timers
- Creates an automatic, exportable mileage log for every trip between sites
- Provides rounded billable hours to capture every minute spent on-site
The founder’s experience with carpenter work
Carpentry is most of my resume: framing, full-gut renos, extension builds, decks, and more IKEA kitchen installs with custom moulding than I can count. The days that make carpentry money are exactly the days that are hardest to track — a morning finishing a closet at one client's place, an afternoon templating at the next, a lumber run in between.
I kept my hours in old notebooks and spiral-bounds, and I still have them. Paper works if you're disciplined every single day. But on the days you pour concrete at 6 a.m. and case windows until dark, the notebook is the thing you forget — and forgotten hours are hours you don't invoice.
So the app works the way a carpenter's day actually runs: it notices the stops and the drives on its own, and at invoice time you name them and read off the totals. No timer to start with your hands full of casing.
Time-tracking experiences from carpenters
Each quote links to its original public discussion.
we've been in business for a few years already but are looking to move towards digital methods instead of paper methods as we are currently using.
The paper-to-digital jump doesn't have to mean a per-user platform — an app that logs stops automatically covers the timecard half on its own.
Five days to try it. Pro to keep tracking.
The upcoming paid release includes five days of tracking without payment details or automatic charges. Continue with Pro, including encrypted backup. Exports remain available after the trial.
- Automatic stop and trip recording
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit stops and trips
- Rounded billable hours, exported as text or CSV
- Travel log with estimated distances
- 7-day summary view
- History stored on your phone
Canada: CA$9.99/month or CA$69.99/year. Both plans include the same features.
- Continued automatic tracking and timeline review
- End-to-end encrypted cloud backup
- Restore your full history on a new phone
- A backup stored separately from your phone
US prices are shown in USD; Canadian prices are shown in CAD. Your local App Store or Google Play price may differ. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled through the store where you purchased.
Control your location history
TradesTimer stores your history on your phone. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider. You choose where to share your hours and travel exports.
If you enable Pro backup, TradesTimer encrypts your history before uploading it. Your recovery code unlocks the backup. See the privacy policy for details about address lookups, exports, and other data use.