Not every task your team performs is a scheduled Service Visit or delivery. Team members may also prepare replacement materials, work on a client proposal, complete quality checks, attend internal training, or handle general warehouse tasks.

Recording this work is important not only for administration, but also for accurate job costing. Work outside Service Visits and commute time is easy to overlook, yet these tasks can add up and eat into your margins if the time is not tracked and attributed appropriately.

Unplanned Activities let your team record this work in a structured way, even when it was not on the schedule.

In the Back Office, open the Job Settings section and find Unplanned Activity Types. Click the plus sign next to Unplanned Activity Types to add the activity types your team may need. You can edit the list or remove types that are no longer useful.

The activity types you create are shown to field team members in a dropdown when they log an unplanned activity in the mobile app. Build a list that covers the tasks your team commonly performs outside the schedule, and use clear names so people can choose the closest match.

You can also use activity names to tell the team whether a task should be allocated to a customer for job costing. For example, name a client-specific task “Replacement preparation (allocate)” or “Proposal preparation (allocate)”. For work that should not normally be assigned to a customer, use names such as “Internal training (don’t allocate)” or “Warehouse chores (don’t allocate)”. Agree on the naming convention with your team so people can make consistent choices.

When a team member needs to record work that was not scheduled, they can select the relevant unplanned activity type in the mobile app and enter the time spent. Depending on the activity, they can also add a comment to explain what they did or provide context.

When the work is specific to a customer, allocate it to that customer. For example, preparing a proposal or preparing replacements for a particular client is part of the job costing for that client. General work, such as internal training or warehouse chores, may not need to be allocated to a customer. Follow your company’s naming convention and allocation rules.

Completed unplanned activities appear in the Timesheets section of the Back Office alongside other time entries. The entry shows the activity type and, when provided, the team member’s comment and customer allocation. If someone forgets to log an activity, an administrator can add a record manually in Timesheets.

You can also find an overview of completed unplanned activities on the Service Site card, in the Visit tab. This gives you a site-specific view of the unplanned work recorded for that account.

Unplanned activities are categorized as Other Time. When an activity is linked to a Service Site, the time is included in that site’s budget as Other Time. This helps you track work that happens outside scheduled visits and compare the time spent with the budget.

Allocation matters: client-specific work can be assigned to the relevant customer, while general work can remain unallocated. This helps prevent general internal tasks from being assigned to a customer that did not receive that work, and helps ensure customer-specific tasks are included in the correct job costing.