Carpenter time tracking, without the timer.
How a carpenter's day actually looks
Most time-tracking apps assume a steady, predictable day. A carpenter's day is the opposite. You're framing structures and installing finish trim, switching between addresses like New residential builds, Kitchen remodeling sites, Commercial fit-outs, and doing tasks like Setting studs and joists, Hanging drywall and backing, Installing crown molding. Timers get forgotten. Manually entering jobsites in advance does not match how calls actually come in.
Friction carpenters tell us about
- 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
Tracking hours as a carpenter: notes from the tools
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.
How carpenters actually track hours (and where it breaks)
Real threads from real tradespeople — each quote links to the original 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 — a free app that logs stops automatically covers the timecard half on its own.
Free. The whole app.
The whole time-tracking app is free — no trial, no feature gate, no ads, no per-user fees. (Encrypted cloud backup is on the roadmap.)
- Automatic day reconstruction from background GPS
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit any block
- Rounded billable-hours summary, shareable as plain text
- Automatic mileage log, exportable for taxes
- 7-day summary view
- All location data stays on your device
Your location history stays on your phone.
There is no TradesTimer server storing your location trails. No account. No sign-up. Your GPS history lives on the device that recorded it — for as long as you want it. The only time anything leaves your phone is when you choose to share your billable-hours summary yourself.
The app does not talk to any third-party service with your location. Nothing about where you've been is uploaded anywhere. See the privacy policy for the full detail.