Daily logs
Daily log software a foreman will actually finish.
A daily log is worth nothing on the day it is written and everything nine months later, when a GC says your crew was not there, or was there and did nothing, and you have to prove otherwise. The problem has never been that subs do not know this. It is that logging the day competes with going home. SubMark keeps the log short, keeps it on the phone already in the foreman’s pocket, and puts every field user on it for free.
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- One log per job per day: weather, what got done, what got in the way, who was there, what went in.
- A delay is recorded with its cause — weather, material, labor, access, GC direction, inspection.
- Field users are free and unlimited, so who documents the job is never a license decision.
Why daily logs fail.
They get written on Friday
A week reconstructed on Friday afternoon is four days of guessing. It will not survive being read next to somebody else’s log in a meeting, and the person reading it will know, because the weather is wrong.
They say nothing that helps
“Worked on building B” proves you had a truck there. It does not say what crew, for how many hours, what was in their way, or which superintendent told your foreman to stand down at ten in the morning. The entry exists and the evidence does not.
The delay has no cause attached
Six months later the question is not whether you were delayed. It is who caused it. A free-text note that says “slow day” is not an answer; “access — stair tower not turned over” is.
Nobody in the office reads them
A log the office never opens is a log whose gaps nobody finds until the gaps matter, which is always in a room with a lawyer in it.
The license fee decides who logs
If every foreman costs another seat, somebody decides that three of your eight will log. That is how a documentation gap gets designed into a company on purpose.
How a day gets logged in SubMark.
One log per job per day, so there is never a second version of Tuesday. The foreman writes it, the office reviews it, and the hours only get entered once.
- 01 The foreman logs the day
Weather and temperature, a short work summary, any delay with its cause, safety incidents, visitors to the site, and photos from the phone he is already holding.
- 02 Work areas and phases, not just prose
He records which areas or phases were worked, so the log says where the day went in terms your office and your GC both recognize.
- 03 Labor goes on the same log
Hours per worker on this job on this day, entered once. Those are the hours that roll into payroll and into the job’s labor cost — not a second set that has to agree with the first.
- 04 Sub crews get counted
If you have lump-sum crews on the job, the log carries their company, headcount and area worked, so a day with twelve people on it reads as twelve people.
- 05 The office reviews it
A log is a draft, then submitted, then reviewed. A thin entry gets caught the next morning by somebody at a desk, which is the only time it is cheap to fix.
- 06 And then it is evidence
When the dispute arrives, the log, the hours, the delay cause, the photos and any change order the field tied to that day are all on the job, filed by date.
Everything above ships today and none of it is a tier you upgrade into. The core modules are on in every trade pack from setup; a few extras, like the invoices inbox, are a switch in Settings. The full list is on the product page.
In the app
What the log asks for, and why each field earns its place.
Short enough to finish in a truck, specific enough to be worth reading a year later:
- Weather and temperature
- Clear, partly cloudy, overcast, rain, heavy rain, wind, snow, extreme heat. Picked, not typed, so a month of weather is something you can actually search.
- Work summary
- What got done. The one free-text field that matters, and the one the office should be reading.
- Delay and its cause
- Weather, material, labor, access, GC direction or inspection. The cause is the field that decides who pays for the day.
- Work areas and phases
- Where the day went, in the phase names your trade pack loaded — so the hours come back tagged to the part of the job they were spent on.
- Labor
- Hours per worker, per job, per day. Entered once, used by payroll and by job costing.
- Materials
- What went in, so a material-driven delay or an overrun has a record behind it.
- Sub crews
- Lump-sum crews by company, headcount and area, for the days your own roster is not the whole story.
- Safety and visitors
- Incidents, and who came on the site. Both are routinely the thing somebody asks about later.
- Draft, submitted, reviewed
- A workflow, not a folder. The review step is what turns a pile of entries into a record somebody stands behind.
One log per job per day is enforced, which sounds small and is not: two half-filled logs for the same Tuesday is the condition in which a daily log stops being evidence.
Straight answer
What it does not do.
A product page that only lists wins is a product page you stop trusting in week two. These are the gaps, in our own words, before you find them yourself.
- Daily-log uploads are images. Photos, yes — a marked-up PDF belongs with the drawings instead, where it can be zoomed and pinned.
- It does not write the log. The submit-and-review workflow exists so the office can catch a thin entry the next morning, not so software can invent a day it was not on.
- The web app works on a phone today. A native field app with offline support is on the list and is not shipped, so a basement with no signal is still a basement with no signal.
Which trades feel this most.
Same problem, different shape. Each trade page leads with that trade's own phases, schedule of values and wording.
Concrete
Pour days are the ones you get asked about: weather, temperatures, times, who was there.
Masonry
Cold-weather protection and weather days are a daily-log argument waiting to happen.
Electrical
Access, other trades in your way, and who told your foreman to stand down — all of it is next year’s dispute.
Questions
Daily logs: what a sub’s office actually asks.
What goes in a SubMark daily log?
Weather and temperature, a work summary, any delay with its cause, work areas and phases, labor hours per worker, materials, lump-sum sub crews with headcounts, safety incidents, visitors and photos. One log per job per day.
Do our foremen need paid seats?
No. Field users are free and unlimited in SubMark, which is deliberate and is the reason this module works at all. The moment documentation costs money per person, somebody decides which of your crews documents the job.
Can a foreman log from a phone?
Yes. The web app works on a phone today, and the log is laid out for one. A native app with offline support is on the roadmap and is not shipped.
Can we attach a PDF to a daily log?
No — uploads on a daily log are images. Drawings and marked-up sheets belong in the plan set, where they can be zoomed and pinned, rather than buried as an attachment on one day’s entry.
Does the office have to approve logs?
A log moves from draft to submitted to reviewed. Whether you enforce the review is up to you, but it is the step that finds the thin entries while they are still cheap to fix.
Do the hours on the log feed job costing?
Yes. Labor logged on the day is the labor that lands against the job’s budget, costed at the rate that applied on that date. T&M hours are the exception — those are billing, and they stay out of costing actuals on purpose.
Read next
A foreman daily log template that holds up nine months later
The eleven fields a sub’s log needs, and what makes an entry worthless in a dispute.
T&M tickets: getting signed, and getting paid
The daily log is the corroborating record behind every ticket. Same habit, same two minutes.
Billing extra work without a signed change order
What to put in writing the day the extra work happens, before anyone knows there will be an argument.
Have a foreman log one day.
Start the trial, invite one foreman as a free field user, and have him log today. If it takes him more than a couple of minutes, we would rather hear about it than have you buy it.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
The rest of the job
Change orders
From the day the field finds the change to the day it is in the schedule of values, with an audit trail at every step.
T&M tickets
Priced in the office off your own rate lists, signed on site, and several tickets roll into one change order.
Schedule of values
One SOV per job, built from your trade’s own breakdown, locked when the first draw goes out, and approved change orders added to it automatically.
Draw tracking
Fifteen jobs, nine GCs, nine cutoff dates and nine submission methods — in one calendar and one log, with drawn, certified and received as three different numbers.
Retainage tracking
Five or ten percent of everything you have ever billed, sitting somewhere, on jobs some of which finished last year.
Lien waiver tracking
Which waivers went up the chain, which the GC has received, and which draw is sitting still because one of them has not.
Job costing
The overrun you can still do something about, instead of the one you find in the end-of-job autopsy.
Crew scheduling
Who is on which job on Monday, across every job — and a flag the moment the same crew is promised to two of them.
QuickBooks
Bills and card purchases pull back as job costs. Draws and POs push across with a click. Your books stay your books.
Time tracking
Hours per worker, per job, per day — signed by the worker who worked them, approved by the office, and read straight into job costing.
Safety records
Toolbox talks signed off per person, scored site inspections, and certification and COI expiries you see 30 days out instead of on the day.