Snow service time tracking
Wintertrace records the shifts behind every operation. Total shift hours, time per customer, time per operation, standby time — captured automatically while the operator runs the documentation flow they would run anyway. CSV export goes straight to payroll.
A typical office time-tracking tool assumes one long task per day, started and stopped at the desk. Snow service runs on a different rhythm — long shifts of short tasks, pre-positioning time before the first operation, travel between sites, standby time during gaps in conditions, and a closing routine after the last customer.
The hours that need to be captured are not just the operation hours; they are the whole shift. The operation records describe what was done. The shift record describes the time inside which those operations happened.
A driver may be on the road at 03:00 to be ready for the first operation at 04:00. Capturing only the operations leaves the hour of pre-positioning untracked — and unpaid in many payroll models. Wintertrace separates shift time from operation time so both are visible.
A typical winter shift is not one long task — it is six or eight short operations, often with travel in between. Tracking total hours, productive hours, and per-customer time at the end of a shift is tedious to do by hand. The structured shift record handles it.
Some contractors pay standby differently than active time. Wintertrace can record a shift as "open but with no operations" — the standby state is visible without inventing fake operations to capture the hours.
A spreadsheet of "driver, date, shift start, shift end, hours, operation count" is what payroll usually wants. CSV export covers that directly; the underlying database is available for anything more custom.
The structured fields behind every shift record. Each is part of the database, available for reports and CSV export.
Four output shapes operators end up needing.
Total shift hours per driver per month. Productive-hours-only column where the operator wants to distinguish.
Useful for contracts that bill by hour or that need monthly evidence of service density.
Standard CSV with the fields most payroll systems consume directly. Custom columns can be added through the structured database.
Every shift state change is recorded with timestamp and actor. Late edits or corrections leave traces.
For winter service shifts, in most cases yes. The shift records capture open, close, operations within, and driver identity. For contractors with significant non-winter work or complex multi-job-site time accounting, a dedicated time-tracking tool may still be the right choice — and CSV exports from Wintertrace can flow into it.
Open and close timestamps are stamped from the device clock and locked once a shift closes. Notes can be added; corrections to timestamps require a separate workflow visible in the audit log. The structure prevents quiet post-shift edits.
Shifts that span midnight are handled as one record from open to close. Daily reports split the hours across calendar days automatically; monthly reports aggregate normally.
A shift can be open without operations attached — that is the standby state. Hours are still recorded. The distinction between active and standby time is visible in the report. How those hours map to payroll is the operator policy.
The default CSV covers the common payroll cases. The underlying database is fully accessible to the operator, so custom CSV layouts can be generated with standard SQL tools when needed.
GPS data is recorded against operations, not against the whole shift. Travel time between operations is implicit in the shift timeline. Operators who want a per-minute GPS record of the entire shift would need a different tool — Wintertrace's GPS scope is the operation window, not full surveillance.
Through a separate correction workflow that records the original value, the corrected value, the actor, and the timestamp. The audit log makes it visible. Honest correction is supported; quiet alteration is not.
Source code on GitHub. Free under GNU AGPLv3.
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