The crew clock: one tap for the whole boat

A five-person barge working twenty stops is a hundred taps to record something one person already knows: the boat got there, and the boat left. The crew clock replaces all hundred with twenty.

How it works

When you deploy a crew you can name one person the operator. From that moment the deployment owns the clock for everybody aboard:

• The operator presses Start the clock for the crew when the boat gets to a property, and Stop the clock for the crew when it leaves.
• Everyone else sees who is running their clock, and no buttons. There is nothing for them to remember and nothing for them to forget.
• The operator is on the clock too. Their tap covers themselves along with the crew.

Everyone still gets their own hours

A headcount on a single shared row would be cheaper to store and impossible to un-sum later. So LakeOps does not store one.

Who has the clock, and when it changes hands

The rule is simple enough to say in one line: while you are on a deployment with an operator, you do not run your own clock.

• Joining a crew hands your clock to the operator. If you had a timer of your own running, LakeOps closes it at that moment rather than leaving it open where you can no longer reach it.
• Coming off a crew hands it straight back, running clock and all. If the operator had you on the clock, that timer keeps going — it is yours now, and you stop it yourself when you are done. The operator's next stop cannot touch it: they are stopping the clock for their crew, and you are not on it any more.

This is not just which buttons are on screen. The rule is enforced when the write reaches the server, so it holds for the office, for the crew app, and for taps that were made out of range and synced hours later.

If you do not name an operator

Nothing changes. A deployment with nobody named operator manages no clock, and every person aboard starts and stops their own exactly as they always did. You can run some boats one way and some the other, and you can change your mind mid-season.

With no signal

The operator's tap is saved on the device first, like every other tap in the crew app, and syncs when the boat has bars again. The day pack the crew downloaded in the morning already knows who is aboard, so the tap does not need to ask the server anything.

Sync it twice and nothing doubles. Each person's timer is identified by a value computed from the tap and the person, so a replayed crew start lands as the same entries rather than as a second set. See working with no signal.

Somebody with a timer already running

A person can only have one clock running at a time — the database enforces it. If a crew member forgot to stop a timer at an earlier stop, the operator's tap starts the clock for everybody else and says so: “Clock started for 4 people. Already on the clock: Dale Hovda.”

One forgotten timer never costs the rest of the boat their clock, and the operator finds out on the water instead of at payroll.

Fixing an entry afterwards

The same way as any other. Time entries are never edited or deleted — a wrong entry is voided with a reason and replaced, so the labor report stays auditable. See running the clock for what the minutes feed into.