The day docket that actually gets kept

What a day docket is really for

Strip the paperwork away and a day docket is four facts, recorded on the day they happened: what work got done, who was on it and for how long, what the builder or super directed you to do outside your scope, and what held you up. Nobody needs those facts on the Tuesday. You need them three weeks later, when the progress claim goes in and the head contractor's memory of the door frame is different from yours. Daily records are boring right up until they're the difference between a paid variation and an argument you lose politely.

Why paper dockets and site diaries don't survive

The docket book lives in the ute. The day ends at 3:30 with tools to pack and a school run to make. The entry becomes “I'll do it tonight”, tonight becomes Friday, and Friday's entry for Tuesday is fiction. The problem was never knowing you should keep records — every subbie knows — it's that writing is a desk job and 3:30pm is not a desk moment.

Instead: forty seconds at smoko or in the ute

Talking isn't a desk job. Say the day while it's still true:

Two things landed from one note. The day's record — hours, direction, delay — sits on the Riverside job with the date on it, next to every other note from that site, and you can add photos of the relocated frame to the same job. And the directed extra became a priced variation draft ready to put in front of the builder this month, not discovered in your head at claim time. The price is yours: Prices come from the user and stay editable. Timmy structures the work and wording; it does not invent amounts.

What Timmy asks when the note is thin

When an important detail is missing (a price, a customer, a scope item), Timmy asks rather than making it up. On a day-record note, expect questions like:

• “What's the price for the door frame work?” — if you described the direction but not the number, the variation holds the scope with the amount open.
• “Which job is this?” — if you're across two sites and didn't name one.
• “Who gave the direction?” — worth answering; “the super” with a name is what holds up at claim time.

Before the variation goes to the builder

Nothing is sent automatically. Every quote, variation and follow-up is a draft the user reviews, edits and shares themselves. Your notes are yours; nothing reaches the builder until you share it. Before you do, check the variation names who directed the work and when, that the number covers labour and materials with the GST right, and that it matches whatever your subcontract says about how extras get approved — many head contracts want written direction before the work, so the sooner this leaves your phone, the stronger you stand.

Honest limits

TradieCue is not a timesheet system — your note can record who worked and how long, but there's no clock-on/clock-off, awards or payroll. It won't build a head-contract claim schedule or track retention either; if you're running multiple crews under formal contracts with scheduled progress claims, that's job-management-suite territory, and the trade-offs are laid out in AI assistant vs job management software. What TradieCue does is the layer underneath that either system depends on: the facts, captured on the day, on the right job — and the extras turned into paperwork while they're still fresh. The wider evening routine this fits into is in end-of-day tradie admin.

The manual alternative

Memory plus a camera roll. Hours reconstructed at month's end from text messages and fuel receipts, the door-frame direction recalled as “sometime week two”, the delay unclaimed because you can't put a date on it. Builders' quantity surveyors are professionally good at declining claims that arrive vague — not because they're crooked, but because vague is easy to decline. A dated note in your own voice, made the day it happened, with the variation sent the same week, is hard to decline. The method for pricing and documenting those extras properly is in how to document extra work.

Common questions