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How do I set up driving time calculations for an employee?

Turn on automatic driving time for an employee, choose how it's calculated, and learn exactly when Clean Smarts does and doesn't add a drive entry between locations.

Clean Smarts can add a drive-time entry to an employee's timesheet when they clock out of one location and clock into another. You turn it on for each employee, then choose how drive time is measured for the whole company.

Applies to: Account administrators and payroll staff. Turning drive time on for an employee requires Users (Edit). Company-wide drive-time settings require Manage Account. Setting a special driving pay rate also requires the Costs module on the Expert plan.

Before You Start

  • Drive time is calculated between locations, so each location needs a street address that maps correctly. A location that can't be placed on a map can't produce a drive estimate.
  • The setting only affects future clock-ins. It doesn't add drive time to entries that already exist.
  • Decide whether drive time should be paid as regular working time or classified separately with its own pay code. See Choose a drive-time pay code.

Step 1: Choose How Drive Time Is Calculated

This setting applies to every employee who has drive time turned on.

  1. In the web portal, click your profile in the bottom-left corner and choose Company Settings.
  2. Select Timekeeping.
  3. In the Drive Time section, choose a Drive time calculation method:
    • Estimated — Clean Smarts uses the driving time between the two locations from Google Maps, as long as that's no longer than the time the employee actually spent between punches.
    • Actual — Clean Smarts uses the full time between clock-out at one location and clock-in at the next.
  4. Click Save Changes.

Estimated example: An employee clocks out of Site A at 2:00 p.m. and clocks into Site B at 2:30 p.m. Google Maps estimates 23 minutes of driving. Clean Smarts adds a 23-minute drive entry. If the employee clocks into Site B at 2:15 p.m. instead, the actual gap (15 minutes) is shorter than the estimate, so the drive entry is 15 minutes.

Actual example: The same employee clocks out at 2:00 p.m. and into Site B at 2:30 p.m. The drive entry is 30 minutes, no matter what the map estimate says.

Choose Estimated when you want to pay for the trip and not for stops along the way. Choose Actual when you want every minute between sites accounted for.

Step 2: Turn On Drive Time for the Employee

  1. Open Manage Users and select the employee.
  2. Open Time & Pay.
  3. Turn on Calculate driving time ("Track time spent driving between locations").
  4. Click Save.

From the employee's next clock-in forward, Clean Smarts checks each new clock-in for a drive entry using the rules below. Turning the setting off later stops new drive entries but doesn't remove ones already created.

Choose a Drive-Time Pay Code

Drive entries use the Default driving time pay code. To set or change it:

  1. Go to Company Settings → Timekeeping.
  2. In Drive Time, choose a Default driving time pay code.
  3. Click Save Changes.

How the code you choose affects pay:

  • No pay code selected: Drive time is treated as paid working time and counts toward overtime.
  • A pay code that counts as working time (for example, a Drive Time code of type Hourly): Drive time is paid and counts toward overtime. Use this when you want drive time to show up under its own code in reports and exports.
  • A pay code that does not count as working time: Drive time is left out of regular, overtime, and double-overtime hours. Whether it's paid then depends on whether that code is set as paid.

Review your payroll provider's earning-code setup before changing this, because exports use the entry's pay code.

Give an Employee a Special Driving Rate (Optional)

By default, drive time is paid at the same rate that would apply to any other entry for that employee. To pay one employee a different rate for driving:

  1. Open the employee under Manage Users → Time & Pay.
  2. Under Driving time standard pay rate, choose a Standard Pay Rate. Leave it set to No Pay Rate to use the normal rate.
  3. Click Save.

This field only appears for users with the Costs module. The driving rate takes priority over the rate on the drive-time pay code. For the full priority order, see How Do Pay Codes and Pay Rates Work Together?.

How the Calculation Rules Work

Clean Smarts checks for drive time at the moment an employee clocks into a location (or when you add a time entry for them on the web). A drive entry is created only when all of these are true:

  1. Drive time is turned on for the employee. The setting must be on when the clock-in happens.
  2. There's a previous completed entry. Clean Smarts looks at the employee's most recent entry that was clocked out before this clock-in. Deleted entries are ignored.
  3. The new location is different from the previous one. Back-to-back entries at the same location never create drive time.
  4. Both entries are in the same work day. The previous clock-out must fall within the same work day as the new clock-in. Work days begin at the Start time under Company Settings → Timekeeping → Workweek starts on. This means:
    • The first clock-in of a work day never gets drive time, because the previous clock-out was on an earlier work day. Clean Smarts doesn't pay for the commute from home.
    • If your work day starts at 12:00 a.m., leaving a site at 11:30 p.m. and clocking into another at 12:10 a.m. doesn't create drive time, because the two punches fall on different work days.
  5. The gap is less than 8 hours. If the time between clock-out and the next clock-in is 8 hours or more, no drive entry is added. Exactly 8 hours doesn't qualify. This limit is fixed and can't be changed in Company Settings.
  6. Nothing else happened in between. If the employee has any other entry that started between the previous clock-out and the new clock-in, Clean Smarts assumes that entry already accounts for the time and doesn't add drive time.

If any rule isn't met, Clean Smarts doesn't create a drive entry for that clock-in.

What the drive entry contains

  • Start and end: The entry starts at the previous clock-out. With Estimated, it ends after the estimated driving time (rounded using your company's rounding setting). With Actual, it ends at the new clock-in.
  • Location: The entry is assigned to the destination location, which is where drive time is counted for budgeting.
  • Distance: Clean Smarts also records the mileage between the two locations from Google Maps. It's the mapped distance between the two addresses, not the route the employee actually drove. Drive distance appears as Driving Distance in Time Detail, using your company's distance unit.
  • Travel assumptions: Estimates use driving directions that avoid toll roads.

Add Drive Time Manually

If an employee has drive time off, or a rule above prevented an entry, you can add the trip yourself:

  1. Go to Time Detail or Approve Timesheets and click Add Time Entry.
  2. Choose the User and the Location they drove to, then enter the start and end times.
  3. Turn on Classify as Drive Time.
  4. Choose the Drive Start Location (where the trip began).
  5. Click Save.

Manual drive entries follow the same company method. With Estimated, a manual drive entry is capped at the Google Maps estimate when that estimate is shorter than the times you entered. If you need the entered times to stand, switch to Actual or adjust the entry afterward.

Troubleshooting

An employee clocked between two locations, but there's no drive entry.

Check each rule in order: Is Calculate driving time on for that employee? Are the two locations different? Did the previous clock-out fall in the same work day as the new clock-in? Was the gap under 8 hours? Was there another entry between the two punches? Also confirm the clock-ins happened after drive time was turned on.

The drive entry is much shorter than the time between sites.

Your method is Estimated, and Google Maps estimates a shorter trip than the gap. Switch to Actual if you want the full gap paid as drive time, or add the extra time as its own entry.

The drive entry has zero minutes or no distance.

One of the locations may be missing a map position or have an address Google Maps can't find. Open the location and correct its address, then add the drive entry manually for entries already affected.

Drive time isn't counting toward overtime.

Open Company Settings → Timekeeping and check the Default driving time pay code. A code that doesn't count as working time keeps drive time out of overtime totals.

An employee's drive time is paid at the wrong rate.

Check Manage Users → Time & Pay → Driving time standard pay rate. A rate set there overrides the drive-time pay code's rate. A rate set directly on a time entry overrides both.

I turned drive time on, but yesterday's entries didn't change.

The setting only affects clock-ins that happen after it's on. Add drive entries for earlier trips manually.

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