Recording volunteer hours

Volunteer time reaches TrailsIQ through several doors, because volunteers reach you in several ways: some are on your team, some sign up for a workday on your website, some check in with the TrailsIQ Report app, and some simply turn up. Whichever door an hour comes through, it lands in the same count — the Work report, the annual report, and your umbrella account's figures if you have one.

This article puts every option side by side so you can pick the right one for each kind of volunteer. The articles it links to have the step-by-step detail.

Which option fits which volunteer

The volunteer	How their time is recorded	Counted as
A member of your team	Logged on a task, or entered on Work hours	Their own hours, by name
A member who worked alongside somebody else	Ticked under Who else worked this session? on the task	Their own hours, by name
A group that is not on your team	Volunteers not on your team on the task's work log	Outside volunteers
Somebody who signed up for a workday	Came on the event's attendee list	By name
Somebody who checked in with the Report app	Scanned the QR code or checked in by location	By name
Somebody who turned up at a workday	Add walk-in on the attendee list, a name is enough	By name with an email, otherwise Outside volunteers

Volunteers on your team

Volunteers who have a TrailsIQ login are members of your organization, usually with the Volunteer role. Invite them from Team like anybody else, and every hour they give is counted under their name. Members, roles and permissions covers invitations and roles.

They have two ways to record time.

On the task, from the field

Open a maintenance task in the field app or on the dashboard and press Work log. Enter the hours and minutes, say what you did, and press Log. It works with no signal and uploads once you are back in range.

That time counts straight away on the task, on its project and in the Work report. It also appears on the person's Work hours as a draft reading "From task:" and the task's name, so nobody has to type it twice — it is submitted with the rest of their week.

On the timesheet

Work hours in the sidebar is the timesheet. Press Log hours, pick the date and the hours, choose a category — Trail maintenance, Infrastructure, Training, Meeting, Travel and the rest — and optionally link it to a project or a task. Use it for time that was not spent on one task: a planning meeting, a training day, a drive to the trailhead.

Entries start as drafts, private to the person who made them, and count once they are submitted and approved. Drafts in the header lists everything not yet submitted, whatever its date. If your team does not want a manager signing off every timesheet, an owner or manager can untick Submitted hours need a manager's approval under Settings → Work hours, and submitted hours then count at once.

Time off — Holiday, Vacation, Sick, Other leave — is kept on the timesheet for payroll and is never counted as volunteer time.

Work hours and expenses has every control on both screens.

Logging a session for everybody who was there

Most trail work is done by a crew, and one person can record it for all of them. Under the hours on a task's work log, Who else worked this session? lists every active member of your organization. Tick the people who were with you and each gets their own entry for the same date, the same hours and the same note.

It is the same session, so it is the same time for each person: three of you for two hours is two hours each, six in total. Each entry says who logged it, so a total somebody did not enter themselves always has an author to ask. The draft on their Work hours carries the same line.

Groups who are not on your team

A school group, a scout troop, a corporate volunteer day, neighbors who came to help: people who will never have a login. On the task's work log, set Volunteers not on your team to how many of them worked the session.

They get one entry between them, reading "8 outside volunteers", and each is credited for the full session: eight volunteers for three hours is twenty-four hours. That time counts as volunteer time everywhere — on the task and its project, as the Outside volunteers figure in the Work report, in the annual report and in your umbrella account's figures. It never waits for approval, because there is nobody's timesheet to put it on.

Volunteer days and other events

For a planned workday, the event does the counting. Create it under Events with a start and an end time — the length is what each volunteer is credited — and take signups on your website. Events explains creating one, signups, waivers and the waitlist.

On the event's day its attendee list turns into a Came list. Once the event is over, every row ticked as came counts for the length of the event, times its party size. Signing up alone never adds hours. On the list you can:

• Untick Came for somebody who signed up and did not show.
• Change the hours on a row for somebody who left early or stayed late.
• Add walk-in for somebody who turned up without signing up. Only a name is needed. The field app has the same button, and a walk-in added with no signal uploads later.

Who the hours belong to depends on who the person is:

• Somebody on your team — matched by the email they signed up with — gets the hours on their own Work hours for that day, already approved. Untick them and the entry goes again.
• Somebody with an email who is not on your team is counted by name in your reports. They are not added to your team and get no invitation.
• A walk-in with no email counts under Outside volunteers, the same figure as a group logged on a task.

If you log time on a task for the same day a linked workday already counts somebody, the work log warns you first, so the same afternoon is not counted twice.

Volunteers with the TrailsIQ Report app

The TrailsIQ Report app is free for anybody to install, and trail users can sign in to it with an email address and a six-digit code — no password, and no seat on your team. A volunteer with the app can:

• Sign up for your events from your organization's page in the app. The signup lands on the event's attendee list like any other, marked as coming from the app, and the app can remind them the day before.
• Check themselves in on the day. Show the event's QR code at the sign-in table — open Check-in on the event, or print its sign — and volunteers scan it from the app's menu or with their phone's camera. If you set a check-in spot at the meeting point, anybody within 300 meters can check in from the event's page with no scanning.

A check-in finds the person's signup and marks them as came; if they never signed up, it adds them. Either way they are counted by name, with a checked in badge on the list, and never under Outside volunteers. A team member who checks in gets the hours on their own Work hours, the same as when you tick them.

Check-in opens an hour before the event starts and closes two hours after it ends, in your organization's time zone. You can still untick Came or change the hours for anybody who checked in.

Volunteers and paid staff

Every member counts as a volunteer until you say otherwise. On Team, open a member's Edit window and switch on Paid staff, with the date it started. From that day on their hours are shown as paid staff hours, apart from volunteer hours, in the Work report, the annual report and an umbrella account's figures. Their earlier hours stay volunteer hours, because that is what they were.

Where the hours show up

• The task and its project. Every session logged on a task, outside volunteers included.
• Reports → Work report. Volunteer hours, paid staff hours and outside volunteers over any window, by member, by trail and by task type, with a CSV and a PDF. Event hours appear here once the event is over.
• Reports → Annual report. Approved timesheet hours, outside volunteers and everyone who came to your events, for any period, with the ten people who gave the most time under With thanks. For organizations in the United States the hours are also given a dollar value at the Independent Sector national rate for volunteer time. See The annual report.
• Your umbrella account, if you are hosted by one, sees your approved hours and their value beside your other chapters.

Approved hours are what a report calls volunteer time. Timesheet entries still in draft or waiting on approval are not in the annual report or an umbrella's figures until somebody approves them, so if a total looks low, check Work hours → Needs review first.