How to export a site diary to CSV or PDF
Filter the diary, tap Export, and pick a CSV for payroll or a PDF with photos for someone who isn't on Foreman.
To export a site diary from Foreman, open Site diaries, filter it down to what you need, then tap Export and choose Download CSV or Download PDF. The CSV is a spreadsheet for payroll and invoicing. The PDF is a record of the day, photos included, that you can email to someone who isn't on Foreman. Either way, you get exactly the entries you can see on screen.
Admins can export any project. A Site Manager can export the projects they manage. Site Crew don't get the Export button.
How to export the diary
- Open Site diaries. It sits under Projects in the menu, or Diaries in the bar at the bottom of your phone. A project's own Site diary page has the same Export button.
- Set the filters: Project, Site crew, and the From and To dates. The summary line shows how many entries and hours you've got.
- Tap Export at the top right. On a phone it shows as a download icon.
- Pick the format you need. A spinner shows for a moment while the file is built.
If an option is greyed out, the reason is written underneath it. For a Site Manager, that's usually because the view includes a project you don't manage. Pick one of your projects in the filter and it comes back.
Download CSV: for payroll and invoicing
The CSV has one row per entry, with these columns:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
id | The entry's unique ID |
entry_date | The day the entry covers |
user_id | The crew member's unique ID |
crew_member_name | The crew member's name |
hours | Hours as a decimal, to four places |
description | What they wrote |
photo_count | How many photos are attached |
submitted_at | When the entry was actually saved |
project_id | The project's unique ID |
project_name | The project's name |
If your business has Geolocation turned on, four more columns sit just before the project ones: latitude, longitude, location_accuracy_m and site_location (on_site, off_site or missing).
It's a CSV file rather than an Excel workbook. Every spreadsheet app opens it, and it drops cleanly into most payroll and billing tools.
Reading the hours column
Hours are decimals, so 8h 38m exports as 8.6333. Four decimal places means you can always get back to the exact minute (multiply by 60). A shift that closed itself after 12 hours with no check-out has an empty hours cell, not a zero. Nobody recorded those hours, and a zero would wrongly say nobody worked. A spreadsheet sum skips the blank, and Foreman's own totals leave it out too, so set the real hours in Foreman first and export again before you run payroll.
Using it for payroll and invoicing
Set the dates to the pay or billing period before you export, so the file holds just that fortnight.
- For payroll, total
hoursbycrew_member_name. A pivot table does this in a few clicks. - For invoicing a client, filter to that project and total
hours. That's the time spent on the job.
The summary line on screen shows the same totals, so you can check the numbers before you export.
Download PDF: to send a day's record
The PDF is for the people who need to see what happened on site but shouldn't have a login: a subbie asked to fix a defect, a client, a consultant. Filter to the project and the day, download the PDF and attach it to an email.
What's in it:
- Your business logo (or your business name), the project name or "Site diaries" when it covers several projects, and the date or date range
- A summary: entries, hours, people and photos
- Every entry, grouped by project and then by day, oldest first. Each one shows who, their check-in and check-out times (or "Entered by hand"), the hours, the full description, and its photos, two to a row
- "Logged by … for …" on entries a manager logged for someone else
- A note on the first page if the dates include today, because more entries may still come in
On-site and off-site badges and the Possible duplicate mark aren't printed. They're for checking the diary inside Foreman, and mean nothing to someone outside it.
How big a PDF can be
One PDF holds up to 120 photos and 300 entries, which keeps it small enough to email. Over that, Download PDF is greyed out and tells you how many photos or entries the view has. Narrow the dates, pick a project or pick a crew member, and it comes back. Download CSV has no limit.
The whole project in one ZIP
To hand over everything for one project, open the project, tap Download at the top of the page and choose Project data export (zip). The ZIP is named after the project and today's date. Its diary_entries.csv has exactly the same columns as the CSV above, with every entry on the project.
The same ZIP includes the rest of the project as separate CSVs: the project details, team, tasks, form submissions, induction register and document list. There's also a README.txt that lists how many rows each file holds. If a section has no data yet, its CSV is still there with just the header row.
Good to know
- Photos are in the PDF, not the CSV. The CSV gives a count. View them in Foreman or send the PDF.
- Deleted entries are gone from future exports. Edited entries export with their current values.
- Archived projects can still be exported.
- You can export several projects at once. Leave the Project filter on all projects. Each CSV row says which project it belongs to, and the PDF groups entries by project. As a Site Manager this works when every entry in the view is on a project you manage, so pick your projects in the filter if Export is greyed out.
- Foreman records hours, not dollars. Rates and pay are worked out in your own payroll or accounting software.
For how the hours get into the diary in the first place, see logging a site diary entry and check in and check out, or read more about Foreman's site diary.