A Painting Contractor Time Tracking App for Rain Days, Repaints and Touch-Ups

Painting crews move more than people think. An exterior gets rained out at ten, the crew drives to an interior across town, and the timesheet still says the whole day went to the first house. JobSnap is a painting contractor time tracking app that follows the crew from job to job, keeps the paint store receipts with the right job, and records what the walls looked like before you touched them.

How a painting day actually runs

Most painting crews are two to five painters, often more in summer when students join. A residential repaint takes two to four days, so a crew starts a new job every few days. Exterior work runs on the weather: no painting in the rain, siding wet with morning dew until nine, a minimum temperature printed on the can, and a short season. Many keep interiors in reserve for wet days.

The day often starts at the paint store, picking up product and tinted colours. The equipment is airless sprayers, ladders, planks, scaffold, a pressure washer and the odd rented boom lift. In new construction the crew primes after the drywall, comes back for the final coat after flooring and cabinets, then returns for touch-ups after the move-in. Work is quoted by the room, by the square foot or as a lump sum, and repairs are often billed by the hour.

Where rain days, receipts and touch-ups get lost

Rain-day switches. When the crew moves from an exterior to an interior at mid-morning, the hours stay on the first job and both look wrong.
The paint store run. Forty-five minutes every morning, and receipts that fade on the dashboard before they reach the office.
Extras the client forgets. More wall repair than the quote allowed, a colour change after the first coat, a third coat to cover a dark red. Without a record, the client remembers the price and not the change.
Touch-up visits. The GC's list after the other trades scuffed the walls. Three short return trips, none of them on an invoice.
Damage that was already there. Cracked plaster, peeling trim on the shady side, a stain on the hardwood. If you did not photograph it first, it becomes yours.

How a painting crew uses JobSnap

Hours that follow the weather. With a geofence on each job, time tracking clocks the crew out of the exterior when they leave and into the interior when they arrive. The rain-day switch lands on both jobs.
Receipts in one shot. Switch the jobsite camera to receipt mode at the paint store counter. JobSnap reads the vendor and the line items and attaches the receipt to the job.
Before photos on day one. Walk the house before the first drop cloth goes down and shoot every crack and stain. They sit on the job, dated, if a client complains in October.
Colours and touch-ups in a note. Keep the colour schedule for each room, with brand, colour code and sheen, in a note linked to the customer. Turn the GC's touch-up list into a checklist and tick it off.
Quotes by the room. Save line items such as "bedroom, walls and ceiling, two coats" with a unit and a price, and build estimates and invoices from them on your phone. The estimate becomes the invoice, and a colour change is one more line.
A schedule that bends. When a week of rain pushes the exteriors, drag the jobs to new days in crew scheduling. Students ask for their days off in the app.

A two-painter shop with one job at a time can manage on a wall calendar and a shoebox of receipts. The app earns its $20 once jobs overlap and weather moves the crew around. Most finish complaints start under the paint, so it helps to know how drywall crews track their own work.

What it costs

$5 CAD per active employee per month, $20 minimum, every feature included. An owner and four painters in spring and fall is $25 a month. Add four students for the summer and it is $45 while they work. Pause them in September, and when only two painters stay on interiors in winter you pay the $20 minimum. Free 30-day trial, no credit card.

Questions painting contractors ask

Do I pay for summer students all year?

No. You pay for active workers only. Pause students when they go back to school instead of deleting them, and turn them back on in May.

Can I quote by the square foot instead of by the room?

Yes. Each saved line item has its own unit and unit price, so you can price by the square foot, by the room, by the door or as a lump sum.