Time Tracking for Your Business

Time Tracking for Energy & Solar Companies

Energy and solar jobs run on crews, sites, and phases that change daily. When time goes unlogged, labor costs are a guess, invoices get disputed, and the next estimate repeats the same mistake. Sandtime.io lets your team clock in from any phone on site, assigns every hour to the right project automatically, and gives you accurate labor data before you invoice or run payroll.

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Energy & Solar Companies: why they choose Sandtime.io

Track time by site

Assign hours to the right project and site - surveys, design, installation, commissioning, and maintenance - as work happens. Know where labor time actually goes on each job.

Log from any job site

Crews clock in and out from any phone on site. No paper timesheets to collect at the end of the day or hours to reconstruct when payroll runs.

Know labor cost before billing

Know what each installation or service call is costing in labor before you invoice. Catch overruns early and use real data to sharpen future estimates.

One account for the whole crew

Track time across project managers, installers, engineers, and subcontractors from one shared account. No merging separate crew logs at month end.

How a solar installer tracks crew hours per site

An energy or solar company sets up Sandtime.io with a project per installation site or service contract, split into survey, installation and commissioning where those stages are priced differently. Installers log hours from their phones on site, and the office compares labor per site with the estimate before invoicing and payroll.

  1. Create a project per site and stageName projects by site reference and stage, such as a site number followed by installation. Put maintenance contracts on their own long-running projects, and travel between sites on a non-billable one.
  2. Invite installers, engineers and subcontractorsInstallers and subcontractors join as Users and see only the sites they are assigned to. Project managers can be Project Administrators for their sites, and whoever runs payroll is an Administrator.
  3. Log hours at the site, not back at the officeCrews start a timer in the iPhone or Android app when they reach the site and stop it when they pack up. Designers and engineers in the office use the web or desktop app, and a missed entry is added later with its start and end time.
  4. Compare labor with the estimateGroup a report by project to see labor hours and cost per site, and by year-month for the monthly total. Export it to Excel or CSV for invoicing and payroll, and use last quarter’s actual hours when you estimate the next job.

Step by step in the help center: invite the team with the right role, approve a week from the email, and turn on auto-locking.

Track your first installation freeFree for unlimited users. No credit card required.

Common use cases

  • Log crew hours per installation site and project phase
  • Track time across multiple concurrent projects without mixing hours
  • Compare actual labor hours to estimates after each job
  • Pull client billing reports without reconstructing the week
  • Keep installer, technician, and subcontractor time in one account
  • Export project time data for payroll, invoicing, and job costing

Key features

One-click timers

Crews start a timer at the job site and stop it when the shift ends. One tap logs to the right project without any paperwork.

Retroactive time entry

Add site hours after the fact when a crew member forgets to clock in. Supervisors can enter time for their team as needed.

Multiple job sites at once

Run separate trackers for multiple active job sites simultaneously. Each project tracks independently so hours never get mixed between clients.

Export and report

Pull time reports by project, crew member, or date range. Export to CSV for payroll, invoicing, or job cost reviews.

Where Sandtime.io stops

Better to know before you invite the team. These are the gaps people in this line of work ask about most.

  • No clock-in or GPSThere is no kiosk, GPS, geofence, or photo check. People start a timer or add their hours afterwards, then submit the week for approval. If a verified location is a requirement, compare a clock-in app such as Jibble.
  • No offline recording on mobileThe mobile apps need a connection to record time. If a site has no signal, add the hours afterwards with their start and end time.
  • No leave managementHolidays, sick days, and leave requests are not managed in Sandtime.io. Keep them in your HR tool, or start from the free leave policy template.
  • Reminders are a weekly emailThe fill-timesheet reminder is one email, sent on Friday at 6 PM while auto-locking is on. It is off by default, so each member switches it on in their notification settings.

Free templates for this workflow

Use a practical file now, then move to Sandtime.io when collecting, approving, locking, and reporting records becomes ongoing work.

Daily, weekly, and monthly timesheets

Start with an editable daily, weekly, or monthly timesheet when a simple file still fits the process.

Employee work schedule

Plan a weekly rota with one row per person and a column for each day for shift-based teams.

Overtime request form

Document the business reason, expected hours, project impact, manager decision, conditions, and actual overtime.

Timesheet approval and correction policy

Set clear submission, review, approval, correction, locking, and escalation rules before the workflow becomes inconsistent.

PTO and leave policy

Set clear rules for paid time off, sick leave, unpaid leave, requests, and approval in an editable Word policy.

Project staffing and capacity planner

Plan available hours, billable and non-billable work, leave, remaining capacity, utilization, and workload review in Excel.

Keep exploring

Continue with the most relevant Sandtime.io pages for this topic.

Create a project for reported time

Create projects that people can report against, mark them billable or non-billable, and keep reporting tidy.

Open page

Access Control

The system of permissions controlling who can view, edit, or manage resources. Defines what each role can do.

Open page

Create a new organization

Create a separate workspace from your account menu, then name and configure the new organization. It keeps its own projects, members, and data.

Open page

Administrator

A user with full organization control: settings, members, every project, and all cost and revenue rates.

Open page

Create and switch organizations

Create separate workspaces, switch between organizations, and find focused help when data appears missing.

Open page

Assignment

The relationship between a team member and a project. Assignments control who can log time and at what rates.

Open page

Choose the best next step

Use this workflow page as the starting point, then move to the route that answers the next buying question - proof, product fit, pricing, or immediate setup.

Start with a timesheet template

Download a free daily, weekly, or monthly timesheet for Excel or PDF when a simple file is the right starting point.

Measure lost billable hours

Estimate how much forgotten client work may already be missing from invoices before you change anything else.

Explore time tracking software

See the main commercial overview built for teams that bill, budget, and report against time.

See pricing and plan details

Review the free plan, unlimited-user model, and trust-first approach before you invite the team.

Go straight to free time tracking

Start with the free product if the problem is already clear and you want to capture work immediately.

Compare Sandtime.io with other tools

See how Sandtime.io compares with Clockify, Harvest, Toggl, Jibble, and more, with each vendor's prices checked on its own site.

Related guides

Not quite the right fit? These pages cover the situations teams most often compare before choosing.

Sandtime.io vs Jibble

Jibble is built around GPS clock-ins, kiosks, and face recognition. See when that fits a field crew better, and when a free timesheet with approvals is enough.

Working Time Rules in the EU

The 48-hour average week, 11 hours of daily rest, and the duty to record working time under EU law, with notes for Poland, France, and Germany.

Time Tracking for Small Business

See how growing service teams handle cleaner billing, project visibility, and shared accountability.

Billable vs Non-Billable Hours

Learn which hours you can bill, why the split drives utilization and your real rate, and how to track it without surveillance.