Driver timekeeping in NEMT: clock-ins, shift records, and payroll exports

What the records have to show

Every non-exempt driver needs a daily record of hours worked, a weekly total, and enough pay detail to prove minimum wage and overtime were paid. That is the federal floor under the Fair Labor Standards Act, set out in 29 CFR 516.2, and it applies to hourly, daily, and per-trip pay alike. Part 516 covers employees. Whether a driver paid on a 1099 truly qualifies as a contractor is its own test, explained in the 1099 or W-2 guide.

The rule prescribes no form. Paper and software both work, provided clear copies can be pulled up by date or pay period on request (29 CFR 516.1). Keep them at the office or a central location, and have them ready within 72 hours if the Wage and Hour Division asks for them from a central office (29 CFR 516.7).

The federal list is a floor. Part 516 says outright that it does not excuse any other federal, state, or local recordkeeping rule, and three kinds often apply to NEMT:

• State wage orders. California’s Order 9 for the transportation industry requires time records showing when each work period begins and ends, plus meal periods, split-shift intervals, and total daily hours, kept for three years.
• Broker manuals. Louisiana’s Medi Trans operations manual has providers hold each driver’s duty status records for at least ten years: total days worked, hours on duty, hours behind the wheel, and when the driver came on and went off duty each day.
• Federal hours-of-service rules. When vans count as commercial motor vehicles in interstate service (the DOT number guide sorts out when), a passenger driver has 10 hours of driving after a full 8-hour break and stops driving once 15 hours on duty have passed (49 CFR 395.5). The short-haul exception frees drivers from logbooks when they work within a 150 air-mile radius, return to their reporting location, finish within 14 hours, and have 8 hours off before the next shift. In exchange, the carrier holds a daily record for six months: the start time, the hours on duty, and the release time for each driver (49 CFR 395.1(e)).

Build your records to satisfy the strictest rule that reaches you, and hold them for whichever retention period runs longest.

Clocking in on the phone

A clock-in on the driver’s phone is the most accurate way to capture an NEMT day, because drivers rarely start at an office. The app stamps the minute, and the same screen can tie the shift to a vehicle, an odometer reading, and the pre-shift vehicle check.

No federal rule makes you buy a time clock. The Labor Department’s recordkeeping fact sheet allows any method that is complete and accurate, including a timekeeper or employees writing their own times. What matters is that the recorded start and stop match when work actually began and ended.

Where the clock should start and stop

Start the clock before the driver does anything for the company, and stop it after the last task is done:

1. Arrival at the lot. If drivers have to collect the van at your lot, driving from the lot to the first rider counts as part of the workday (29 CFR 785.38).
2. The vehicle check. Preparing the tools of the job before the first task is itself work under the federal hours rules. The regulation’s example is a machinist who oils and cleans a lathe before starting work (29 CFR 785.24), and the pre-trip walk-around of a van is the closest NEMT parallel. Clock in, then inspect.
3. Trips, waits, and drive time between them. All on the clock unless the driver is truly released, covered below.
4. Return, fuel, and paperwork. Driving the van back to the lot, fueling it, cleaning it, and finishing trip notes are work. Federal rules count work the company knows about or allows as paid time, even when nobody asked for it, and they name preparing records at the end of a shift as an example (29 CFR 785.11). Clock out last.

Drivers who take a company van home raise a separate commuting question. The overtime guide covers when that first drive of the day is paid.

Setting up phone clock-ins

• One login per driver. Nobody clocks in for anyone else. Shared logins make every record in the file doubtful.
• Tie the shift to the van. Record the vehicle and starting odometer at clock-in and the ending odometer at clock-out, so hours and miles come from the same record.
• Work without signal. Choose an app that saves the clock-in on the phone and sends it later, so a lot with no coverage never produces a missing punch.
• Tell drivers what is recorded. Put in writing which data the app collects at clock-in and during the shift, and limit location tracking to working time.

Meal breaks and waits on the timecard

A timecard should show unpaid time only when the driver was fully off duty. Everything else stays on the clock.

Federal law does not require meal or rest breaks. Breaks you offer that run roughly 5 to 20 minutes count as paid hours. A meal period is unpaid only if the driver is completely relieved of duty; 30 minutes or more is ordinarily long enough, and a driver who has to perform any duty while eating, even an inactive one, is still working (29 CFR 785.19).

States add rules on top. Two examples:

• California. Order 9 requires a 30-minute meal period for a work period over five hours and a second one after ten hours, each waivable only in narrow cases. A meal where the driver is not relieved of all duty counts as time worked, and an on-duty meal is allowed only when the work prevents relief and a written agreement is in place. For each workday a required meal period is missed, the driver is owed an added hour of pay at their regular rate. The order also calls for a paid 10-minute rest period for every four hours worked or major fraction of four hours.
• Washington. WAC 296-126-092 calls for a half-hour or longer meal break that begins between the second and fifth hour of the shift, paid when the employee must stay on duty at a prescribed work site, and a paid 10-minute rest period for every four hours worked.

Waits follow the same logic. A driver required to remain with the van, ready for a will-call return, is working. Under 29 CFR 785.16, an unpaid gap needs three things: dispatch tells the driver ahead of time that they are free to go, names a set hour to resume, and leaves enough time for the driver to do something of their own with it. The driver shifts guide covers designing split shifts around that rule.

Avoid an automatic 30-minute lunch deduction unless the driver confirms each day that the break happened. If dispatch sends a trip during that half hour, the deduction quietly removes paid time, and management is responsible for seeing that unwanted work is not performed rather than accepting it unpaid (29 CFR 785.13).

Matching hours to trips

Compare each driver’s timecard with the trips that driver actually ran, every week, before pay closes. Timecards and trip records are two views of the same day, and the differences point to either a timekeeping error or a dispatch problem.

Accurate records protect the company as much as the driver. In Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. (1946), the Supreme Court held that when an employer’s records are inaccurate or inadequate, an employee can prove unpaid hours by just and reasonable inference, and the employer must then produce evidence of the precise hours or rebut that inference. A timecard that disagrees with your own trip log is hard to defend.

Keep every correction traceable. Record who made the change, when, and why, keep the original entry, and have the driver acknowledge it. Brokers can ask for records too. The Louisiana manual lets Medi Trans request reports at any time to verify compliance, including documentation that supports fees, charges, or mileage. A driver shown clocked out while completing a trip is the kind of mismatch that invites questions. The trip reconciliation guide covers the billing side of the same weekly check, and the broker audit guide explains what else auditors pull.

Building the payroll export

A clean payroll export is one row per driver per workweek, with daily detail behind it. Close the week on the same day and time each week. The workweek is a fixed, recurring run of seven days (29 CFR 516.2(a)(7)), and each one stands alone for overtime (29 CFR 778.104).

Per-trip and daily pay plans need extra care. Record the pay basis itself, because 516.2(a)(6) requires it. In any week with overtime, add up everything earned that week (trip pay, bonuses, and pay for waiting) and divide by the hours worked to get the regular rate (29 CFR 778.111). The overtime guide walks through that math, and the driver pay guide compares pay plans.

State pay stub rules can decide which columns you need. California Labor Code section 226 requires every wage statement to show total hours worked, each hourly rate with the hours worked at that rate, and, for piece-rate pay, the units earned and the rate. Section 226.2 adds that piece-rate employees get separate pay for rest periods and other nonproductive time, and the statement shows those hours. Time a per-trip driver spends under your control that the trip rate does not pay for, such as waiting between assignments, is the kind of time the section reaches.

A weekly routine that holds up:

1. Close the workweek at the same cutoff every week.
2. Have each driver review and confirm their timecard.
3. Clear the mismatches from the trip comparison.
4. Export the week and send it to your payroll service or accountant.
5. Save the export, the timecards, and the corrections together for the retention period.

Timecards in HealthRide

Drivers clock in and out in the HealthRide driver app, and the start of each shift records the vehicle, the inspection checklist, and the odometer. Hours are built from those clock-ins, miles from GPS records, and trip counts from the trips each driver actually ran. The driver and timecard reports export each driver’s hours and miles for the week, so nobody rebuilds it by hand.