Why keep your own record
Many agencies use a scheduling system to assign and bill off-duty work. That system belongs to the department or its vendor, and it only knows about the jobs that ran through it. A job paid by check from a business owner, a detail for a second employer, department overtime and court time usually live somewhere else. Your own tracker is the one place that holds all of it, and it goes with you if you change assignments or agencies.
What a good off-duty job tracker records
- Who and where. The employer or job name and the address you worked.
- When. The date, the shift start and end, and the hours worked.
- How it pays. The rate, and whether the money arrives as contractor pay with a 1099, a check with no 1099, wages on a W-2 from another employer, or department overtime.
- Whether you have been paid. Details are often paid weeks later. An open list of unpaid jobs is the fastest way to notice one that was missed.
- Your weekly hours. Most departments limit off-duty hours in a week. You want the running total before you accept the next job, not after.
- Mileage and expenses. The miles you drove to contractor jobs, and receipts for equipment, uniforms and similar costs.
- Tax paperwork. Which W-2 and 1099 forms you expect, and which have arrived.
How Centurion Blue records a job
On the Home tab you add a job with the employer, date, job type, shift start and end, and rate. Enter the shift times in 24-hour time and the hours fill in on their own, overnight shifts included. The pay is worked out as you type. Jobs you work often can be saved as one-tap prefills, and a repeating job can be added across several dates at once.
The job types are 1099, Check Only (Non 1099), Direct Employer for W-2 work at another employer, and the department types: Department Paid Overtime, Department Double Time, Call Back and Court Time. Department types are priced from your own hourly rate and the overtime multipliers you set in Settings.
Hours, calendar and getting paid
Set your weekly off-duty hours cap in Settings. Home shows your hours this week against that cap, and if a job would put a week over it, the app warns you before saving. It is a warning, and you decide whether to save.
The Calendar tab shows every day worked with its hours and pay. You can subscribe your phone or computer calendar to a single link so logged jobs appear there and update when you edit them.
Home also keeps an Unpaid list with each employer that still owes you and the total outstanding. Tap Mark Paid when the money arrives.
Mileage, expenses and receipts
On 1099 jobs the app measures the drive and values it at the IRS standard mileage rate in force on the job's date. You choose how miles are counted in Settings, under Mileage deduction rules. The mileage log guide explains the choices. On the Other Expenses tab you can snap a photo of a receipt and the app reads the vendor, date, amount and category into a new expense row for you to check.
Tax time
The Tax Center shows an estimate of what to set aside from off-duty income. Year End Tax Reports prints your jobs by month, quarter or year and downloads a tax summary PDF for whoever prepares your return. The Log and Other Expenses tabs also export to CSV. The W-2 Tracker at the bottom of the Log tab lists each employer, the form you expect from it, and whether you have marked it received. See how off-duty income is reported for the background.
Private to you
You sign up for yourself and pay for yourself. There is no department account and no report that goes back to your agency. Centurion Blue runs on iPhone, iPad, Android and in any browser, and the phone apps add App Lock, home screen widgets and push alerts.
This page is general information and record keeping, not tax or legal advice. Rules vary with your situation. Ask a tax professional what applies to you.