Moving company time tracking, from the yard to the last box.

How moving company time tracking works from the yard

Pair a tablet in the dispatch office or use the crew chief's phone. Each mover holds up a printed QR badge at the yard in the morning, and again when the truck is back and unloaded at night. Movers need no app, account or smartphone.

A long local move day for a three-person crew:

That's 11 hours 40 minutes at the yard, minus a 30-minute lunch: 11 hours 10 minutes. In California, that's 8 regular hours and 3 hours 10 minutes at time and a half. TrackBadges works it out on the timesheet as soon as the last scan lands.

Driving from one job to the next is work time under 29 CFR 785.38, so the crew stays on the clock between moves. If crews meet at the first job instead of the yard, the crew chief scans them there, and the GPS stamp records where.

Overtime for movers: weekly, daily and the interstate question

Moving means long days in summer and quiet weeks in winter, so overtime rules matter.

• Weekly: the FLSA requires 1.5× the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek.
• Daily: California pays 1.5× after 8 hours in a day and 2× after 12. Alaska, Nevada and Colorado have their own daily rules.
• Interstate moves: some drivers and helpers on interstate moves fall under the FLSA's Motor Carrier Act exemption from overtime. Local moves often don't, and state law can still require overtime. Ask your payroll provider or an employment lawyer which applies to your crews.

TrackBadges applies one daily and one weekly threshold to every timesheet. Double time over 12 hours and California's seventh-day rules are applied by your payroll provider from the CSV export. Check a week with the California overtime calculator, and read California overtime rules for the full picture. This isn't legal advice.

Meal breaks on a long move

A meal break is a scan out and a scan back in, wherever the crew is. In California, rounding meal-period punches isn't allowed (Donohue v. AMN Services, 2021), so if your crews scan out for lunch there, leave rounding off. Raw scan times are always kept, whatever you set.

Peak-season helpers

From May to September you add helpers by the day and the week. A helper is ready the morning they start: add their name, print a badge and scan them in at the yard. A lost badge is reissued in a click, and the old one stops working. In October, archive the helpers who are done; archived people don't count toward your plan.

When a crew forgets to clock out

After a 12-hour move, nobody is thinking about the time clock. Auto clock-out closes any shift left open after the limit you set and flags it for review, so a missed scan doesn't become 20 hours of overtime. You correct the time, and the edit history records the change. See what happens when someone forgets to clock out.

What it costs

TrackBadges is free for up to 3 people with every feature. Pro is $9 a month for your first 3 people, plus $1.50 a month for each person after that, so 20 movers in peak season is $34.50 a month. Billing follows active headcount and is prorated, so the bill shrinks with the crew after Labor Day.

When it isn't the right fit

TrackBadges records your crew's hours, not the customer's billable clock. It doesn't invoice customers, dispatch trucks or schedule crews. Commercial drivers' hours-of-service logs are a separate federal requirement that a time clock doesn't replace. Use TrackBadges for payroll hours, and keep your moving software for the rest.