Your EVV app lost a shift

Fix it in this order

1. Write down what you worked, today. Date, start time, end time, who you were with. Do it before the day blurs. A note made the same day carries far more weight than one reconstructed in three weeks, and you will need the exact times in step 3.
2. Correct it in your program's own system. You usually do not have to go back to the person's home to fix a missed check-in. In California IHSS you correct it on the timesheet entry screen of the Electronic Services Portal. If you have never registered for the portal, register now rather than during a pay dispute.
3. Put it in writing the same week. Not a phone call. An email or portal message creates a dated record. There is a template below you can copy.
4. Screenshot the app showing the missing or wrong entry, before it changes. If the entry is simply absent, screenshot the day showing nothing there.
5. Check the pay stub against your own note, not against the app. The app is the thing that failed, so it is not the thing to check against.

An email you can copy

Change the bracketed parts. Send it to whoever processes your timesheets: your agency, your fiscal intermediary, or your county IHSS office. Keep a copy.

The last line matters most. Asking which pay period it lands in converts an open-ended complaint into a commitment with a date you can follow up on.

If nothing happens, escalate in this order

1. Your union, if you have one. Many California IHSS providers are represented by a union local, and an underpaid timesheet is exactly what a steward handles. If you pay dues, this is the first call, not the last. Check your pay stub for the local's name.
2. Your county IHSS office, if you are in California. Numbers change, so use the current list at CDSS county IHSS offices rather than a number copied off a forum.
3. The agency or fiscal intermediary's supervisor, in writing, referencing your earlier email by date.
4. A state fair hearing if a payment decision is not corrected. There are filing deadlines, so ask about them early rather than after they pass.

Ask at each step how long the correction takes and which pay period it lands in. Without a date, "we are looking into it" can run for months.

Why this keeps happening

The apps you are required to use were bought by a state agency to satisfy a federal rule. Their customer is the payer. That shows up in the ratings.

The bottom row is the interesting one. Time4Care runs under the same federal rule and does the same clock-in and clock-out, at 4.69 from over thirty thousand ratings. It serves self-directed programs, where the person receiving care approves the worker's time. Whatever is wrong with the others is not the federal requirement.

The reviews describe lost entries rather than clumsy design. From Sandata's listing: My paycheck is determined by this app, and It often loses my history or states there's nothing there, even after I've just finished logging a client visit. From California's: In what world do you electronically clock in and when clocking out you have to manually calculate how many hours and minutes you worked. These are selected from the one and two star reviews; the listings hold better ones too.

What the federal rule does and does not require

Section 12006 of the 21st Century Cures Act requires an EVV system to capture six things: the type of service, who received it, the date, the location, who provided it, and the time it began and ended.

Client agreement is not on that list. EVV confirms somebody was at an address. It was not built to record that the two of you agree on what was worked, so when the record is wrong there is no step in the system where either of you says so. That is the gap your own note fills.

The Act also does not require GPS, does not require continuous tracking, and does not name a vendor. States chose those parts, and it says the system must be minimally burdensome.

California IHSS specifics

These apply to California. Other states run different systems, and the correction route in step 2 will differ.

• You are paid from the hours on your timesheet, not from the gap between check-in and check-out.
• A missed check-in is corrected in the Electronic Services Portal at the timesheet entry screen, without returning to the location.
• Live-in providers are exempt from checking in and out once form SOC 2298 is on file with the county. That form also affects how those wages are treated for income tax, so it is worth understanding rather than just signing.
• The mobile app is optional. The Electronic Services Portal and the Telephone Timesheet System are equally valid ways to check in and out.
• Location is captured at check-in and check-out only, and only when you select "home". You are not tracked through the day.
• Late timesheets and exceeding authorised hours are a separate problem from a lost entry, with their own consequences. If your issue is authorised weekly hours rather than a dropped shift, that is a conversation with your county social worker, not a correction request.

Keeping your own record

Not because anyone is out to get you. For the same reason you keep a receipt: when the official record is missing a day, the conversation is otherwise your memory against a blank screen.

A note written the same day gives you exact times when the correction form asks for them, lets you name the specific shift when a cheque is short, and shows you a whole month in one place when your hours split between a program and private-pay work. No program system shows you that second part, because each one only sees its own funding.

What TrackWork does for this

It is free. You tap start and stop per person you work for, and it totals the hours, so you are not doing the subtraction the state app leaves you to do. It works on iPhone and in any browser, in English and Spanish.

The part that matters here: on iPhone with iOS 16.2 or later, a running session shows on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, counting up. Where the state app takes a check-in and a check-out and hands you the arithmetic at the end, you can see the running total every time you glance at your phone. A shift that ran long is obvious while it is happening rather than at timesheet time.

Two honest limits. There is no automatic stop, so you tap both ends. And manual entries go back 30 days, which is shorter than some pay disputes run, so if you are reconstructing something older than a month, write it down somewhere durable now and use the printable hours log instead.

What it deliberately does not do

• No location tracking at any point. Not at clock-in, not during, not at all. Disability rights organisations have objected to EVV precisely because it puts monitoring inside somebody's home, and a record you keep for yourself does not need to know where you are.
• No photos and no verification of the person you care for.
• Nothing is sent to your agency, county or state. It is yours.
• It is not EVV and cannot be submitted as EVV. It sits alongside, never instead.

Common questions

More on keeping records

• Printable hours worked log, for reconstructing anything older than a month.
• Nanny hours apps compared, if you also work for a family directly.
• Hours across several clients, if you take private-pay work alongside a program.