Frequently asked questions

Operator rounds for water and wastewater treatment plants. Operators walk the plant with an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, and each checkpoint is a sign: its equipment status, its readings and its leak check, with each reading checked against your own limits as it’s typed. The round works with no signal, and when it’s submitted, the report is emailed to the chief operator and supervisors.

In the console, on the web, supervisors build the routes, read every report, follow issues until they’re fixed, and see readings over time.

Water and wastewater treatment plants of any size, run by a city, a water district or a private utility. Operators walk the rounds; chief operators and supervisors set up the routes and read the reports. It’s built around a treatment plant’s own equipment and words: pumps, filters, clearwells, chemical feed, blowers, clarifiers and lift stations.

Every route is your own. A checkpoint starts from a template, such as a pump, a filter or a lift station (see the checklists), or from nothing, and takes your own items: readings in your units with your limits, statuses, yes-or-no questions, choices, notes and photos. You set the areas, the walk order, and when each route is due on each shift.

You can walk a round the day you sign up. Set up your utility and a plant, and invite your operators. Drinking water, wastewater, lift station and distribution plants can start from a route of typical checkpoints to change as you like; other kinds of plant start empty, ready for your own. Every trial also comes with a sample plant and a week of its rounds, so the reports and trends have something in them from the start.

$129 a month per plant, or $1,290 a year per plant, which is two months free. There’s one plan, with every feature, for any number of people, shared devices, routes and checkpoints. See Pricing.

Yes: 15 days, with every feature, no card to enter and no one to talk to first. Before it ends, an owner or chief operator chooses monthly or yearly under Billing in the console. Nothing is charged before then.

The utility becomes read-only. Everyone can still sign in and read everything it recorded, but nothing new is saved. Thirty days later it’s deleted, with all its records and photos, and its owners and chief operators are emailed before then. Choosing a plan in that time makes it writable again, with nothing lost.

Yes. We invoice public utilities on 30-day terms, monthly or yearly. Write to us to set it up. To pay by card instead, an owner or chief operator subscribes under Billing in the console, through Stripe.

Prices don’t include sales tax, which is added where we collect it. Send us your utility’s exemption certificate, and you aren’t charged it once we have it.

A plant counts if your utility runs it in ShiftRounds. A lift station doesn’t need to be a plant of its own: it can be a checkpoint on a plant’s route, as many as you have. The sample plant a trial starts with isn’t counted.

A plant added later adds its price, and we confirm the new amount before it’s billed. A plant taken out of service comes off at the next renewal.

A utility paying by card cancels from Billing in the console, on Stripe’s billing page; one paying by invoice writes to us. Everything keeps working to the end of the period already paid for. We don’t refund part of a period.

Yes. A whole round can be walked with the phone in airplane mode. Every reading is saved on the phone as it’s taken and sent once there’s a connection, minutes or hours later, with the time it was taken. The report says when the round reached the server.

The app runs on iPhone and iPad, from the App Store, and on Android, from Google Play. It signs in with the same account as the console. The console runs in any current browser, on a computer or a tablet.

Yes. A supervisor enrolls a shared tablet or phone with a one-time code from the console. Each operator taps their name and types a four-digit PIN, which works with no signal, and every reading on their round is recorded as theirs. Someone without an email address can be on the list.

With NFC tags, as far as a tag can. Stick one at each area, such as the Intake door, or at a single checkpoint, and the operator taps it with the phone on the way in. The report marks each checkpoint Tapped, or No tap with the operator’s reason.

A tap shows the phone touched the tag shortly before the checkpoint was finished. It doesn’t prove a reading is right. iPads have no NFC reader, so a round walked on one says so.

It’s judged as it’s typed, against the limits you set: out of range shows yellow, an alarm limit or a fault red, and a leak orange, each with its word. The report lists findings first.

A leak or a critical finding is emailed to the chief operator and supervisors as soon as it reaches the server, and a critical one also goes to their phones if they’ve turned alerts on.

The operator can change it until the round is submitted, and a number the gauge can’t show is caught before it’s saved. Every change is kept: a correction is a new entry, and the first one stays in the record.

They skip it with a reason: locked, flooded, not safe to enter, out of service, or something else, with a note. The report lists every skip, so nobody takes it for a checkpoint that was checked.

A leak or a critical finding opens an issue at its checkpoint, and an operator can report one by hand, with photos. The issue is followed until a supervisor closes it with what was done, and the same problem seen again goes on the same issue rather than a new one.

Every connection uses HTTPS. The database keeps each utility’s records apart, and people see only the plants they’re given. Photos are private, and anyone can turn on two-step sign-in. The database is in Amazon Web Services’ US East region. Security has the details.

Your utility does: its plant setup, rounds, readings, photos, tag taps and issues. See the Terms.

Your readings, yes. Export in the console downloads a plant’s readings as a spreadsheet, one row for each item a round recorded, for any days up to a year. It also downloads each meter’s daily flow in MGD for the monthly operating report, with the two readings each day’s figure came from. The app’s Console emails the same files to you. They open in Excel or Google Sheets.

Photos, issues and the change log aren’t in the export yet. Write to us for a copy of those. Each round’s report is also emailed when it’s submitted, with the report as a PDF to print or file, and the console keeps every report and downloads any of them as a PDF.

Anyone can delete their own account, under Your account in the console or More in the app. When the last person who can run a utility deletes theirs and nobody else uses it, the utility goes with it. To close a utility other people still use, write to us.

Yes. ChemLevel tracks a plant’s chemical tanks and chlorine cylinders and forecasts when to reorder, and it’s made by the same team. Connected, a tank level or a cylinder’s weight read on a round is logged in ChemLevel too. The link needs ChemLevel’s Team plan, and either side can disconnect.

No, on purpose: a plant’s SCADA network belongs off the internet. Instead, any item can be checked against SCADA. The operator types what the SCADA screen shows, and the round marks where SCADA and the field disagree.

No. ShiftRounds records the rounds and follows the problems they find until someone closes them with what was done. Work orders, parts and labor stay in your maintenance system.