For sheriff's deputies

The rotation

Sheriff's offices lean toward twelve-hour patrol rotations, most often Panama or 2-2-3 or 4 on 4 off, because they cover a large area with a smaller roster than a city department. Detention and court divisions frequently run something different from patrol, and deputies move between them.

You can save more than one pattern and apply whichever one your current assignment runs, from whatever day it starts.

More than one job under one badge

Patrol, jail, court security, civil process, transport, warrants — these are different days with different hours and different places to be, and lumping them together as "work" makes your own records useless when you need them.

Because you build your own categories, each one can be its own color with only the fields it needs. Court security does not need a rate. A transport run needs mileage. A civil process day needs an address. Turn off the fields a category does not use and they disappear from the form.

Distance is the difference

County geography is what separates this job from a city one. Transport runs, service across a rural county, courthouses an hour apart, off-duty details on the far side of the line. Miles add up in a way they never do downtown.

Mileage is recorded per job, with the rate you set, and totalled for whatever period you ask for. If your agency charges for taking a unit to an off-duty detail, the figure is already there rather than reconstructed in February.

Off-duty work

Deputies often work details for employers spread across the county — fairs, festivals, ranches and farms, county facilities, construction on the highways. Each job goes under the employer who hired you, with the hours, the pay, the miles, and whether you have been paid. Unpaid jobs stay visible until they are settled, which is the whole point.

The year exports as a PDF with every job listed and the totals worked out.

Addresses you actually need

Jails, courthouses, hospitals, gate codes, tow companies. On a county-wide beat that list is longer and further apart than it is in a city, and it is worth having in your pocket rather than in a group text.