Masonry Contractor Crew Time Tracking: Masons, Tenders and Winter Heat

A masonry crew's day is set by the mortar board, the scaffold and the weather, and little of it shows up on a paper timesheet. JobSnap handles crew time tracking for masonry contractors on each worker's phone: masons and tenders clocked in on site, hours on the right wall, and heater hours and progress photos on the same job.

How a masonry day actually runs

A typical crew is four to eight people: two to four masons, a tender for every one or two masons, and a foreman who usually lays too. Tenders are first in and last out. They mix the first batch and stock the scaffold, then wash the mixer and cover the walls after the masons leave. When the wall reaches the plank, everyone stops to raise the scaffold, an hour or two with no units laid.

Rain stops the work and the wall has to be covered. In a Canadian winter, laying means tarped enclosures and propane heaters, sometimes running overnight, often billed to the customer as winter protection. Restoration crews have the opposite problem: a chimney in the morning, front steps in the afternoon. Production is counted in units, and some masons are paid per block or per thousand brick.

Where tender hours, scaffold time and heater days go unrecorded

Tender hours. On paper, tenders get the same eight hours as the masons, when they often worked an hour more.
Time that lays no units. Scaffold raises, waiting for lintels, no forklift on site. That time eats the margin on a unit-price job and vanishes on a sheet that says "8".
Heat and enclosure. The GC agreed to pay for winter protection. Now they want to know how many days the heaters ran.
Progress for billing. When you bill by percentage of wall complete, the GC's super and your foreman rarely agree on how far you got.
Damage after you leave. Chipped units, mortar smears, blocked weep holes: some are yours, some came from the trades that followed.

How a masonry crew uses JobSnap

Everyone punches their own time. A geofence on each site clocks the tender in at 6:30 and the mason at 7, and out again when each one leaves. The foreman can also clock in the whole crew at once.
Small jobs, separate hours. A restoration crew that visits three houses gets its hours split by job on the timesheet, so the chimney that took five hours stops hiding behind the steps that took two.
Heaters and machines as equipment. The mortar mixer, the telehandler, the mast climber and each heater can be tracked with equipment tracking. Heater hours per job are the number behind your winter protection extra.
A daily report that records the stoppages. The foreman notes what got done, what caused delays (rain, no lintels, a scaffold raise) and what is needed tomorrow, such as sand or mortar. The weather is recorded. Add a field for units laid if you track production.
Photos of every elevation. A photo of each wall at the end of the day makes the job feed a dated record of progress. Mark up a chipped unit with an arrow and send a batch to the GC from your phone.
Two visits, two crews. Masonry often comes in twice: block backup or foundation first, brick veneer after the windows go in. With crew scheduling, a job can have two date blocks, each given to a different crew.

A two-person repointing outfit can do fine with a notebook and a phone camera. The app pays off once you run more than one crew or bill winter protection. Your block often sits on footings poured by a concrete crew, who have their own page.

What it costs

$5 CAD per active employee per month, $20 minimum, every feature included. A crew of three masons, three tenders and a foreman is seven people: $35 a month. If four are laid off from December to March, pause them, and the three who stay on heated work cost the $20 minimum. Free 30-day trial, no credit card.

Questions masonry contractors ask

We pay some masons per block. How does that fit?

Keep paying per block; JobSnap tracks the hours beside it. Record units laid in a daily report field and compare them with the hours to see what a wall really cost.

How do I show the GC how long the heat was on?

Heater hours per job, the daily report with its weather, and dated photos of the enclosure. You put the agreed rate on the invoice.

Half my crew prefers French. Is the app bilingual?

Yes. JobSnap works in English and French on iOS, Android and the web.