Reconcile Service Autopilot drive time with job costing

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Reconcile Service Autopilot drive time at the segment, resource, visit, and payroll levels before using it to judge job profitability. Run the same controlled route once with automatic Team App tracking and once with manual tracking. Include the trip to the first job, every job-to-job trip, a planned fuel or supply stop, lunch, the trip after the last job, a missed-punch recovery, and a crew change. A matching daily total is not enough if time lands on the wrong visit or payroll state.

Download the Service Autopilot drive-time reconciliation worksheet. It provides one row per travel or non-work segment and fields for Team App, Dispatch Board, Clocked Time, Work Time, Job Costing, payroll boundaries, automation expectations, corrections, and evidence. Its two rows are synthetic examples, not results; delete them before use.

This is a desk-researched test protocol, not a report of hands-on Service Autopilot testing. Official documentation and independent landscape-industry guidance were opened and checked on September 21, 2026. Account settings, permissions, app releases, payroll policy, and local employment rules can change the correct setup. Have payroll and accounting owners approve those rules rather than deriving them from this article.

How does Team App drive tracking work?

The Team App currently offers two modes.

This rank is for the first controlled test, not a permanent product recommendation. Manual mode exposes the boundaries the team intends. Automatic mode reduces field taps. Choose the production mode only after both are compared against the same approved segment rules.

Service Autopilot’s March 13, 2026 release notes call this the first Team App drive-time iteration. They say automatic tracking begins when one job is completed and continues until the next starts, while manual tracking adds a truck button. The release says both feed job costing and communicate a driving state to the office through the Dispatch Board.

The current help page also states that Start Day begins automatic drive time to the first job. It does not fully document every possible last-trip, off-route, or mixed-state allocation into individual job-cost rows. Those are acceptance-test questions, not blanks to fill with assumptions.

What does the Job Costing Report calculate?

The Job Costing Report includes completed visits only. Service Autopilot says its accuracy depends on configured job-cost settings and identifies four main inputs: labor cost, on-site time, drive time to the site, and product cost.

The report keeps several measures distinct:

• Actual Hrs: time clocked on the visit, including the effect of multiple resources;
• Drive Effect Hrs: drive time associated with visits, displayed as decimal hours;
• Drive Effect Cost: labor cost accrued during Drive Effect Hrs, based on each employee’s Payroll/Job Costing settings;
• Target $/Hr with Drive: the service-level profitability target that accounts for drive cost; and
• Target with Drive Over (Under): the reported difference from that target.

Before testing, confirm employee labor-burden values, service targets, product costs, visit rate, budgeted total man-hours, dispatched resources, and completion status. Do not “fix” drive-time output until the input setup has been checked.

The report terminology also prevents a common unit error. Twenty minutes in a truck carrying three paid employees is not twenty worker-minutes. NALP’s mobilization guidance says to count travel at the individual level and include departure and return. Use:

crew drive worker-hours = segment minutes ÷ 60 × paid resources in segment

For a cost check:

expected drive labor cost = Σ(resource drive hours × approved resource burden rate)

Keep burden rates in the authorized payroll system. The worksheet needs only a pass/fail comparison and controlled evidence location; it does not need to expose wages or private payroll data.

For a broader comparison of estimated and actual labor, material, equipment, and subcontractor costs, see the landscaping job-costing data model.

Why must payroll and job time be reconciled separately?

Service Autopilot’s Timesheets screen has two tabs:

• Clocked Time contains payroll-related records.
• Work Time contains job-related records.

The office can edit or add records from Accounting > Timesheets when the role has the required rights. Team App’s Edit Timesheets permission is narrower: the current settings page says it allows editing time spent on services but not the day’s clock-in and clock-out.

That separation means a change can make a job row look right while leaving the payroll span wrong, or the reverse. Every correction record should name:

1. the original Team App or office record;
2. the affected resource and crew;
3. the visit or non-job state;
4. Clocked Time before and after;
5. Work Time before and after;
6. Drive Effect Hrs and Cost after the visit is completed and reporting refreshes;
7. the editor, reason, and correction time; and
8. the payroll and job-cost reviewers.

Do not approve payroll from a job-cost screenshot. Do not approve job cost from a matching paid-day total.

What route should be used for the test?

Create three conspicuous non-customer test visits or use an approved internal training route. Use the same:

• resource IDs and crew membership;
• vehicle and mobile devices;
• visit order and route;
• service definitions and budgeted man-hours;
• dispatch assignments;
• start area and finish area;
• planned fuel or supply stop; and
• lunch window.

Run automatic mode on one controlled day and manual mode on a comparable day. Traffic and weather make elapsed minutes non-identical, so this is not a race between modes. The comparison asks whether each mode classifies and allocates the observed states correctly.

Build an independent event ledger without asking anyone to operate a device while driving. An office observer can record dispatch transitions and planned checkpoints. Preserve the app and report evidence after the route. If GPS is used, treat it as supporting location evidence, not proof of paid work or the correct job-cost allocation.

The GPS policy and acceptance test covers notice, access, retention, off-hours boundaries, and accuracy checks. Follow company policy and applicable law before collecting route evidence.

How should automatic mode be tested?

1. Start Day and the first trip

Confirm the crew membership shown at Start Day. Record the independent start time, then travel from the approved start area to the first test visit. At the property, start only the intended resources and services.

Check whether:

• a drive segment starts at the intended Start Day boundary;
• the Dispatch Board shows the expected driving and on-site transitions;
• starting work closes drive time;
• the segment is associated with the intended first visit;
• every paid crew member contributes the expected worker-time; and
• Clocked Time, Work Time, and Drive Effect do not duplicate the interval.

The vendor documents automatic first-trip tracking. The test determines how it appears in this account’s report and resource configuration.

2. Complete the first job and add a fuel stop

Complete the first visit, then make the planned fuel stop before the second visit. Record the stop’s start, end, purpose, resources, and company-approved time category.

The opened Team App documentation does not define a dedicated fuel state. Do not silently call the whole job-to-job interval productive drive or on-site work. Compare the automatic record with the written policy and record whether a correction or separate non-job code is required.

Use the same method for a supply stop. Service Autopilot’s Pause Work page gives picking up supplies as an example of pausing a visit: the worker remains on the clock while the visit record closes. That is one documented workflow, not proof that every company should allocate every supply run to the paused visit.

3. Use the lunch control

Use the coffee-cup control and select lunch for the intended resources. The vendor says this closes the existing clock-in record, creates a lunch timesheet record for payroll, then closes lunch and clocks the resource back in when lunch ends.

Verify lunch does not become visit time or drive effect. Also check a partial crew case: one resource at lunch while another remains in a different approved state.

4. Create a safe missed-punch exception

At a stationary test point, omit one planned transition. Do not compromise safety or a customer visit to create the exception. Record what the Team App, Dispatch Board, timesheets, and report show before correction.

The test passes only if the team can identify the malformed interval, assign one correction owner, repair both payroll and job-facing records as needed, and preserve evidence. A plausible daily total that hides the missed boundary is a failure.

5. Complete the last job and Finish Day

After the last visit, travel to the company’s approved day-end location, then use Finish Day and log out. The current clock-out page says Finish Day adds a Clock Out record for payroll.

Reconcile the final visit-to-Finish-Day segment separately. Determine whether it appears as drive time, which visit or cost bucket receives it, which resources are included, and whether the treatment agrees with payroll policy. Do not infer the return-trip result from the documented first-trip example.

How should manual mode be tested?

Repeat the route with Manual Drive Time enabled for the field role. Before each trip, the authorized user taps the truck icon. At arrival, stop it with the truck icon or by starting work at the intended visit.

For every segment verify:

• the truck control was available only to the intended role;
• the selected destination matched the actual next visit;
• all and only the intended resources were included;
• the Dispatch Board reached Driving to Site;
• drive stopped exactly once;
• fuel, supply, lunch, and paused work used approved states;
• no open segment crossed the last job or Finish Day; and
• the resulting Drive Effect row matched the visit and resources.

Manual mode may produce clearer boundaries, but it adds a human action. Record forgotten taps and correction effort instead of deleting them from the test. The winning mode is the one the crew can execute and the office can reconcile, not the one with the more precise-looking total.

How should each segment be reconciled?

Use the downloadable worksheet in route order. Compare five layers:

Then run three controls.

Does elapsed time reconcile?

For each resource:

paid span = on-site work + drive + paid break + paid other time + approved adjustments

Adapt the categories to approved payroll policy. Do not use this equation to decide whether lunch or travel must be paid; that is a legal and payroll decision.

Does crew time reconcile?

Sum resources, not vehicles:

segment worker-minutes = Σ(each included resource's segment minutes)

A crew membership change must split the segment or preserve resource-level time. Service Autopilot says team assignments directly affect labor cost for each job, so verify the dated assignment before dispatch and again in the report.

Does visit allocation reconcile?

Match each Drive Effect row to the intended visit, route sequence, resources, and burden setup. A day can have the right total Drive Effect Hrs and still charge the wrong visit. Classify mismatches as:

• missing segment;
• duplicate segment;
• wrong visit;
• wrong resource or crew;
• wrong state, such as lunch recorded as drive;
• open-ended or overlapping punch;
• payroll-only correction;
• work-time-only correction; or
• report/setup mismatch.

Who should own corrections?

Use the narrowest authorized role and require a second review.

Service Autopilot’s Close Out Day guidance says completed status, budgeted hours, start and end times, job rate, actual job time, number of resources, and products affect job-cost reporting. Review these before attributing every variance to drive tracking.

Never rewrite observed time merely to make the report match a budget. Correct a record when evidence shows the record is wrong; explain an operational variance when the event really occurred.

What is the Team App automation-trigger limitation?

As checked September 21, 2026, Service Autopilot’s drive-time page says Team App tracking does not work with the Drive Time Started automation trigger. The trigger catalog says it runs when a user manually selects driving and currently works only with the Legacy app; Team App inclusion is described as future work.

This creates two important test rules:

1. A Team App drive record without an automation is not automatically a failed drive-time record.
2. An on-the-way message or automation log is not valid evidence that Team App drive hours reached job costing.

Do not switch an operational team to the Legacy app merely to make this article’s test pass. If an on-the-way automation is required, ask Service Autopilot to document a supported current workflow and test that workflow separately from drive-cost reconciliation.

What is the acceptance rule?

Choose automatic or manual Team App drive tracking only after the controlled route proves:

• first, between-job, and last trips are visible and intentionally allocated;
• fuel, supply, lunch, pause, and missed-punch states follow written rules;
• resource-level worker-time agrees with crew membership;
• Dispatch Board status supports operations without being mistaken for payroll evidence;
• Clocked Time and Work Time reconcile after corrections;
• completed visits show the intended Actual Hrs, Drive Effect Hrs, and Drive Effect Cost;
• burden, target, rate, budgeted-hours, and resource inputs are approved; and
• the team does not rely on the unsupported Team App automation trigger.

Run the protocol again after app changes, payroll-policy changes, crew-role changes, or a material reporting update. Use the route-density calculator to value measured drive-time changes, and the recurring route-change workflow to pilot route changes without confusing a tracking-mode test with a schedule redesign.