Employee Time Clock Policy for Field Crews: A Plain-English Template

A time clock policy tells the crew when to punch, what to do when a punch is missed or blocked, and that every hour worked gets paid. This post gives you the full policy as eleven numbered clauses in plain English, explains the rule behind each clause, and shows how to put it in front of the crew.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 · BY THE CLOX TEAM

What a field crew policy has to cover

An office time clock policy is short because everyone punches at the same door. A field crew punches at the shop, at three job sites, and at a supplier's counter, and drives between those places on the company's time. The policy has to answer the 6:40 a.m. questions: is loading the truck on the clock, what happens when the app blocks a punch, and who fixes a forgotten clock-out.

It also protects you. A written rule that says clock in for every work act and report a missed punch the same day is your record that you tried to capture every hour. That includes the hours we listed in off-the-clock work for field crews.

The template

Copy the clauses below into your handbook or onto one sheet. Wherever the clauses say "the Company", put your business name.

Purpose. This policy explains how the Company records work time so that every hour worked is paid correctly and our records are accurate.
Who this covers. This policy covers every hourly employee of the Company, including foremen and apprentices.
When to clock in and out. Clock in the moment your first work act begins, at the site or at the shop, and clock out when your last work act ends. Loading the truck, picking up material, and a safety meeting are work and happen on the clock. Sitting in your truck at home is not work, so do not clock in there. If anyone asks you to work off the clock, clock in first, or tell the office the same day.
Breaks and lunch. Start and end your lunch in the app so it is recorded as it happened. If you worked through lunch because the job needed it, do not record a lunch, and tell your foreman that day. The Company does not deduct a lunch you did not take.
Where you can clock in. Employees assigned to worksites clock in only at an assigned worksite. If your punch is blocked because you are off site, go to the site and try again, and tell your foreman if you believe the block is wrong. A blocked punch means the app did not place you at the site; once you are on site, the punch goes through.
Missed and forgotten punches. If you forget to clock in or out, tell your foreman or the office the same day and give the real time. Corrections go through a correction request in the app or through the office, and a manager reviews every correction before it changes your timesheet. The Company pays for all hours you actually worked, whether or not the punch was recorded.
Punching for someone else. Clock in and out only for yourself. Do not punch for another employee and do not ask anyone to punch for you. Where the Company uses clock-in photos, the app takes a photo of you at clock-in and a manager reviews it.
Drive time. Driving from home to your first stop and from your last stop home is your commute and is not paid. Driving between job sites during the workday, or from the shop to a site after you have started work, is work time and is paid, so stay on the clock for it.
Overtime. Get approval from your foreman before working past your scheduled hours. Overtime you work without approval is still paid at the overtime rate; working it without approval is a policy matter handled separately from pay.
Records. The Company keeps time and pay records for at least three years. You can ask the office for a copy of your own time records at any time.
Questions and corrections. Questions about this policy go to the office. Nobody is disciplined for reporting a missed punch, an unpaid hour, or an error in a time record.

I have read this policy and understand it. Employee name, signature, and date: ________________________________

How to put the policy in place

Replace "the Company" with your business name and read the clauses once for anything that does not match how you run the crew.
Read the policy aloud at a crew meeting and take questions; the questions tell you which clause the crew did not understand.
Have each employee sign and date a copy, and keep the signed copies with your personnel records.
Give the policy to every new hire on their first day, before their first punch.
Print the foreman cheat sheet for each foreman so the person who answers questions on site has the answers.
Review the policy once a year and whenever a rule changes.

Why each clause is there

Clauses 3 and 6 rest on the same federal rule. Under 29 CFR 785.11, work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time. If you know, or have reason to believe, that someone is working, it is hours worked and it is paid, whether or not the punch exists. That is why the policy says the Company pays for all hours actually worked. Our post on recording clock-in and clock-out times accurately covers what a good punch record contains.

Clause 3 also handles the other direction: clocking in from the driveway adds a paid commute to every day, so the policy puts the punch at the site or the shop. The fixes for early punches are in how to stop employees from clocking in early.

Clause 8 follows DOL Fact Sheet 22. Travel from home before the regular workday and back home at the end of it is ordinary home to work travel, which is not work time. Travel from job site to job site during the workday is part of the principal activity, so it is work time and must be counted as hours worked, and it counts toward overtime. We go through the cases in do you have to pay for drive time between job sites.

Clause 9 is written the way it is on purpose. You can require approval for overtime and discipline someone for skipping it, but you cannot withhold the pay, because the hours were worked and you knew about them, which is the 29 CFR 785.11 rule again. A policy that says unapproved overtime is not paid puts the rule in writing against you.

Clause 10 follows DOL Fact Sheet 21. Required records include hours worked each day and total hours each workweek, the regular rate, straight-time and overtime earnings, deductions, and total wages each pay period. Payroll records must be preserved for at least three years, and time cards for two, so keeping everything for three years is the simpler rule. Our guide on how long to keep timesheets and payroll records has the full list. The same fact sheet says any timekeeping plan is acceptable as long as it is complete and accurate.

Pitfalls in a policy like this

Rounding written into the policy. Under 29 CFR 785.48(b), rounding to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth of an hour, or quarter hour is allowed only if, over time, it does not fail to compensate employees properly. A policy that rounds start times up and end times down fails that test.
A no-pay penalty for a missed punch. Some handbooks pay a shift without a clock-out as zero hours or as a flat eight. Both are wrong: the hours worked are paid, and the fix is a corrected record.
A lunch deduction with no way to cancel it. If the app deducts 30 minutes every day, the worker needs a way to say the lunch did not happen.

What this looks like in Clox

Clause 5 is a Clox setting. A worksite is a named location with a GPS coordinate and a radius, 200 meters by default. Geofencing is turned on per employee, not for the whole company, so you can apply it to the crews that move between sites and leave it off for the shop. When a geofenced worker taps clock in outside every worksite assigned to them, the punch is blocked and the phone shows a message to get on site. Location is read only at the moment of the punch, with no tracking between punches.

app.getclox.com/worksites

Clox

TodayTimesheetScheduleWorksitesMore ▾

Riverside Heights150 m

On site

Diego · clocked in

Clock in blocked0.4 mi from job site

Punches outside the geofence are refused, never created.

On siteGeofenceBlocked off-site

A worksite radius on the map, the boundary a geofenced worker has to be inside at clock-in.

Clause 6 runs through correction requests. From the phone, a worker picks a past shift, sets the corrected start and end to the exact minute, adds an optional project and reason, and submits. The manager reviews the request before it changes the timesheet. Managers can also correct or add a shift on the web, every change is written to an audit log, and an approved shift is locked until a manager reopens it.

For clause 8, a worker switches projects without clocking out, so the drive between sites can sit under its own project. The clocking in and out doc walks the crew through each of these, and the owner cheat sheet covers the approval side.

FAQ

Do I have to pay an employee who forgot to clock in?

Yes. If you knew or had reason to know the work was done, the hours are paid under 29 CFR 785.11. Fix the record with the real time.

Can my time clock policy say unapproved overtime will not be paid?

No. You can require approval and discipline someone for skipping it, but overtime that was worked is paid. Write it the way clause 9 does.

Is drive time between job sites paid?

Yes. DOL Fact Sheet 22 treats travel from job site to job site during the workday as hours worked. The commute from home to the first site and back is not paid.

Does the policy need a lawyer to review it?

The template follows the federal rules cited above, but states add their own break and overtime rules, so have someone who knows your state's rules read it first.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Clox comes with a 14-day free trial, no credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first paid subscription. Start a free trial, hand the crew this policy and the app on the same day, and run one real week.